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Lessons for Early Stage Founders
- troughway 6y agoThe thing I like about this post is that it isn’t dependant on VC backed ventures. It’s good, sane advice regardless.
- ganeshkrishnan 6y agoIt's absolutely dependent on investors. Hire, send investor updates, choose partner, view from angel investor etc. Most of these only applies to invested startups and mostly in SV. Bootstrapped startups cannot hire unless they have hit a certain profit mark and certainly not preemptively.
- birken 6y agoA very good post, but angel investors can also give you terrible, terrible advice that you should completely ignore. If you are founding a company, take the good advice, sure, but ignore the bad advice. Don't just assume because somebody is an angel investor they have any idea what they are talking about in terms of your product/company.
- zpeti 6y agoHow do you know what’s terrible advice and what’s not?
- jbverschoor 6y agoThe advise is probably good advise for the wrong situation and person
- birken 6y agoWell if you founded a company then you should probably go with your instincts on what is good advice and what isn't. A random angel investor knows far less about your company than you do, no matter how successful their company was.
- randomsearch 6y agoI like the answer (not mine) that you should go with what resonates. Your intuition may not always be right but that way you’ll feel ok with it and adjust your instincts based on feedback.
- bluecalm 6y agoTruly valuable advice doesn't resonate. Otherwise you would already know it yourself. Good advice is about things you think you get right but you don't. It's also one most difficult to take.
- randomsearch 6y ago> Truly valuable advice doesn't resonate. Otherwise you would already know it yourself I think often valuable advice is actually being told something you already felt but couldn't elucidate.
- dennis_jeeves 6y agoLol, the guy is probably only 15 years old. He just 'knows' good advice from bad:)
- davros 6y agoDefinitely. Get advice from a variety of people with different styles/backgrounds then process that to make your own decisions. Even the most amazing investor will give advice that is wrong for you at times. Great investors respect that. My other additional advice for founders is get support from other entrepreneurs at a similar stage - that peer support is super helpful especially on bad days!
- danieltillett 6y agoAs a former angel investor (I am too busy these days) it is not that angel investors give bad advice, just advice that matched their experience. Good advice, wrong situation. The advice I have given that seems to have been most useful is not around product or market fit, but how to resolve internal conflicts. Human nature seems to have not changed much.
- albatruss 6y agoIsn't the quality of advice categorically contextual? It doesn't make sense to call inappropriate advice good, any more than cutting your arm off is good advice because there are some situations where it is warranted.
- danieltillett 6y agoI would tend to categorise bad advice as advice that is always bad, while good advice that just doesn’t fit the situation is on a different level. In some ways this sort of advice is more dangerous since it can make a lot of sense and seem logical, but it just is not the right for the exact situation. Anyway my experience is very few people are looking for advice, they are looking for validation and cover to do what they wanted to do before speaking to you.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoSome angel investors are in it for the short term - flippers so to speak. I have seen them give bad advice to new founders. And since they control the money the bad advice is followed in spite of good counsel otherwise.
- danieltillett 6y agoYes I can imagine this sort of advice is always bad, but most of the angel investors I have worked with have not fallen into this group - I don’t want to co-invest with them either.
- yowlingcat 6y agoI liked how down to earth and practical this advice is. As I work on something early stage myself, I find that this is resonating a ton with respect to what I'm hearing from others and what I /actually/ need to do.
- mikesabbagh 6y agoI liked this post, as i am building a PAAS now. We are still at the product stage trying to go public. Going public is not easy because I think we are too scared it does not get the traction it deserves. So we keep delaying and fix a comma here and there... The goal is set for Jan 2021. Let's see if we keep the promise
- bonfire 6y agoReally liked this post.
- supernova87a 6y agoI have to say this just reads like any other robotic startup founder advice column that we get here. Dime a dozen. Every person who goes down this path has to make decisions like the ones described. Read the YC library, it's full of "how tos". I think the more interesting lessons and questions are (which they are not incentivized to have you think about): -- Decide early on who's going to control your path: you, the product, or the money? Many figure out too late who's in control. -- Are you willing to hand over the keys if some day you discover you're not the right person to lead? What will you do if you find out this isn't what you signed up for? -- What are you not willing to do in pursuit of growth? -- Are you willing to walk away from a lot of money today, for something deeper tomorrow? -- Who do you want to be, and what does this company do for you in your life? I myself generally hate that things have to become "people stories", but in my experience, these are far more fundamental questions that you will have to confront when you talk to your team, the VCs, the investors, more so than anything about how to manage a feature roadmap or the perennially boring, "when to hire a CMO", etc.
- soneca 6y agoI don’t think it is important to think of any of that on early stages. All of those are, to me, the same type of distraction as deciding the color of the Maserati you will buy once you get rich with your startup. More introspective for sure, but still a distraction. I feel that I am perfectly fine making this decisions when the time arrives. Not only that, but it is totally unreal to expect that my answer to those questions now when my startup is generating almost no revenue will have any influence on the real action that I will do when there is a ton of money on the table and the stakes actually matter. These seem to be real questions for late stage founders.
- supernova87a 6y agoYou may be surprised, you are making decisions that tap these questions, even if your team is only 3 people.
- soneca 6y ago
- smckk 6y agoA lot of successful founders have thankfully documented their paths through the startup world through blogs and books. A great one to start with is Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. You can find more startup books here https://www.startuplit.com https://www.startuplit.com