What creating a Startup in 2022 has taught me 🤔

I am creating the Zencal.io Project, which was originally intended to be a clone of Calendly. Today we are very similar, but at the same time very different. Among other things, we are different in that we focus on teams and provide the possibility to sell meetings in a subscription model.

Here's what creating my own startup in 2022 taught me:

1. Pareto eternal. 20% functionality makes 80% of our users see great value in Zencal as a product that really improves their productivity.

2. It's no good basing your product on the opinion of random people. A real-life example of someone who vowed that she would move to Zencal as soon as the HubSpot integration was available. To this day, she is not with us. Fortunately, we found others interested in such an integration.

3. focusing on money is destructive in the early stages of project development. In the first phase, the full focus should be on real value for the user. This approach results in messages like 'where can I buy a subscription because I want to pay you back somehow' becoming common feedback.

4. good UX is one of the main factors by which some products succeed and others fall away. Attention to detail is insanely important in building product value.

5. act fast - a repeated maxim in all startup material, but the real power has to be felt to actually understand how important speed is.

6. if you are not productive, you are lost. For some time now, I have been paying special attention to my work style and the time ⏳ I 'spend' (dedicate) to creating Zencal.

7. learn to appreciate the small successes. Often we don't appreciate the small victories 🏆 which, de facto, can be great marketing material. It's also worth appreciating yourself and others to raise motivation levels.

8 Highlight the value of your product but maintain 🏆 respect for your competitors. A "we are better, the competition is weak" attitude leads to nothing.

9. Consume content (podcasts, blogs, social media posts) with the intention of learning 🧑🎓 Often you can learn interesting lessons from other founders' stories when others say "interesting story".

10. build strong habits and keep discipline 💪

I'm curious 🤔 what other founders could share. Let me know in the comments.