Founders, Don't Make These Common Mistakes

I’m privileged enough to meet new founders almost every day, and I generally like to keep up on their progress. It makes me super-happy when I get emails in from startups telling me that they’ve got to the next level with their product - or they’ve finished a funding round, or they created a job for a new employee.

All of that being said, I see a number of founders make the same mistakes repeatedly. Please stop doing these!

1. Forgetting Paperwork - Paperwork is boring, its expensive, and it’s not the most exciting thing to be dealing with when you’re beginning a new company. That being said, do it. Have a vesting agreement, capital agreement, corporate docs, and you’re 83b if you’re planning to raise money.
2. Failure to Launch - You’re product is the culmination of everything in the world you’ve been pouring your heart and soul into for months. Awesome, remember it doesn’t have to be perfect. Many founders don’t launch (and then run out of capital) iterating on their product before testing to see if it works. Take small steps, it’s okay to have a basic product to test your initial hypothesis. Think middle-school science fair.
3. Hiring to early - You don’t need a huge team as soon as you get some interest and/or capital. You need a team that can get the job done. I think it’s a far more challenging to have a product team thats small and effective than to throw wasteful resources at shipping product. Build the right team, don’t over-spend no matter how much money you have, and remember that headcount != credibility.
4. Not having a real marketing plan - Just because you’re product/service/company is online doesn’t mean that as soon as you launch you’ll be met with hundreds of people begging to use it and pay you. You need to have a legit marketing plan. Know how you’ll advertise and what the cost per acquisition of a given customer is… note I said customer, not user.
5. Pitching to early - There are a lot of people who say that talking with Angel’s and VC’s early and often is a good thing. I don’t disagree. However, theres a key difference between talking and pitching. If you don’t yet have something thats investable, with a clear means of enabling an investor to make money - you shouldn’t be pitching.
6. Missing the market - Your market segmentation is crucial, if you’re trying to sell the new and coolest swimwear to people in the ultra-cold parts of Alaska, you’re probably not going after the right market. It’s important to gauge a sense of need from your prospective client base so you have a focus when it comes to selling. Please please don’t tell me something like “I see everyone in the world being a customer for this product.