The Most Common Startup Mistakes
Hello dear friends, I’m starting a series of educational posts to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned in my professional experience. If you like what you read — please like, repost & follow and I’ll keep them coming.
Here are the most common startup mistakes.
1. Poor Business and Financial Planning
The early stage of your business is perhaps when it’s most important to have a legitimate strategy for execution, business and financial planning in place. A lot of entrepreneurs think thatthey know everything and have everything covered, it’s why 99% fail.
2. Skipping Research and Discovery Stage
Before prototyping anything you must know what you are building, who is going to use it and if
they even need it. Very important to make decisions based on data, not just your intuition.
3. Jumping Straight into the Build-Mode
Why do so many startup entrepreneurs make their MVP’s with no strategy or plan? They need to slow down and go over the finances, business plan, research/discovery and the best case will be to then test the idea with real customers via prototyping, focus groups, UX surveys, personas etc. — all these items are very very valuable, especially at this stage.
4. Lack of Focus
If you want to accomplish one business you need to give it all of your focus and all of your time. These days, to be a good CEO you need to be a Superhero! You need to know all aspects of your business and actively solve problems on a daily basis. Some people have a full-time job, some of them fly to space and catch the stars and some of them are…
5. Spreading Yourself Thin
Yesss, this is a very common mistake. After building a “successful” business, people think of them as magical creatures or even rarer, the new Elon Musk. Someone who can apply the same models and experience that worked before to launch something in a totally different industry. Unfortunately, they’re gonna keep learning and making the same mistakes time after time.
6. Building the Product for Yourself
Some “smart people” think that because they’re gonna use a product everyone will be using it too. To make good business you need to solve problems for everyone in the easiest way possible. Will anyone else identify with your product?
7. Bros Before Experts
Everyone is trying to build a team of people they can trust and rely on but also with no budget they can’t hire professionals. But it’s better to have one expert than five buddies who may often spend more time socializing than moving your project. So rather than taking the easy step to invite someone you know to the team, consider finding someone who will actualize the goal.
8. Not Letting Go
9. Launching Too Late/Early
10. Over/Underspending
11. Wrong Hire
12. Forgetting to Have Fun
13. Poor Marketing
14. Wrong Investors
15. Giving Too Much Equity
16. Working Too Hard
17. Underestimating Competitors
And many more…
Thank you for reading and let me know your feedback!
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