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1. Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay. For my first startup, I lost half the founding team when things started getting stressful. Needles

1. Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay. For my first startup, I lost half the founding team when things started getting stressful. Needless to say, that made things even more stressful. 2. Don't trust big companies to take you seriously. I've been burned by "lets use market leader XY" and then later "why won't market leader XY return our calls" and then "we're offline due to market leader XY not responding to support ticket AB" more often than I can remember. 3. Never commit to support stuff outside of your control. That means you don't guarantee uptime ever unless you have your own datacenter and your own admin team. Otherwise, always scope contracts to say "we will be online 99% of the time that cloud X is error-free". 4. If stuff goes to shit and it's not your fault, announce that loudly to your customers. Otherwise, they will blame you simply because you're the messenger bringing them the bad news. People just love to shoot the messenger (metaphorically). 5. When you need money, banks will ignore you. When you have too much of it, you get flooded with additional offers for cheap credit. Plan accordingly, so you need to borrow long before you start the project and borrow enough to get you over the cash flow shortage. If you wait until you actually need the money, terms will be horrible. 6. People are suckers for social proof. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Make sure you have your top customers featured on your website and update that list regularly. Go to conferences so that you can invite your top customers for dinner and people will talk about it. 7. Some people start drinking when stuff gets tough. And some people change their character 180 degrees when they are drunk. Not sure how to defend against that, though. EDIT: 8. Research the market in advance. I once had a product that people loved, but my customers going bankrupt produced serious churn for us, reduced customer LTV, etc. Building stuff in that market was lots of work for little benefit.

ilamont 4y ago
> 1. Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay. Thank you for saying that. I would also add that being a solo founder has many advantages including avoiding flaky cofounders and dealing with painful equity negotiations.
- patiiipot_ 4y ago
  Yes :< I heard that there are cofounders that think so superior. Luckily, I found mine on https://founderscafe.io/ https://founderscafe.io/ They are actually nice solo-founders (Experienced and newbies are there too). Felt comfortable meeting them the first time I joined the community. :D
arethuza 4y ago
"Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay." You can stay around too long - I stayed following an acquisition of the company I had co-founded and other co-founders left. Was an utterly miserable experience winding down the team I had spent years building up.
baud147258 4y ago
> And some people change their character 180 degrees when they are drunk. Not sure how to defend against that, though. maybe not letting people coming to work drunk? Or forbidding drinking while at work?
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  People used the company PCs on the evenings and weekends to play LAN games. Disallowing alcohol would have seriously reduced morale for the rest of the team. But actually I was referring to friendships between people who met at work and then when the work became too stressful, their personal relationships suffered for it.
algoatecorn 4y ago
> 5. When you need money, banks will ignore you. When you have too much of it, you get flooded with additional offers for cheap credit. Plan accordingly, so you need to borrow long before you start the project and borrow enough to get you over the cash flow shortage. If you wait until you actually need the money, terms will be horrible. I've noticed this mechanism, but how do you go about it strategically? Which exercises or workflows can you use to determine how much to borrow and when?
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  You can borrow money long-term and then use it to buy safe stocks, like ETFs. If done right, the stock yields will cancel out the interest rate payments, so then you have sort of like a pre-approved credit that the company keeps around.
marcosdumay 4y ago
About #2, 3, and 4, yes, quality starts at the supply line, and the supply line is all abut relationships. You should vet those carefully, and if you can't get enough quality from the immediate market you want, go into their suppliers and do it yourself (or co-start with somebody that can meet your expectations). Hamming, as always, is quite insightful.

ilamont 4y ago

> 1. Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay. Thank you for saying that. I would also add that being a solo founder has many advantages including avoiding flaky cofounders and dealing with painful equity negotiations.

patiiipot_ 4y ago
Yes :< I heard that there are cofounders that think so superior. Luckily, I found mine on https://founderscafe.io/ https://founderscafe.io/ They are actually nice solo-founders (Experienced and newbies are there too). Felt comfortable meeting them the first time I joined the community. :D

arethuza 4y ago

"Verify that co-founders are emotionally committed to stay." You can stay around too long - I stayed following an acquisition of the company I had co-founded and other co-founders left. Was an utterly miserable experience winding down the team I had spent years building up.

baud147258 4y ago

> And some people change their character 180 degrees when they are drunk. Not sure how to defend against that, though. maybe not letting people coming to work drunk? Or forbidding drinking while at work?

fxtentacle 4y ago
People used the company PCs on the evenings and weekends to play LAN games. Disallowing alcohol would have seriously reduced morale for the rest of the team. But actually I was referring to friendships between people who met at work and then when the work became too stressful, their personal relationships suffered for it.

algoatecorn 4y ago

> 5. When you need money, banks will ignore you. When you have too much of it, you get flooded with additional offers for cheap credit. Plan accordingly, so you need to borrow long before you start the project and borrow enough to get you over the cash flow shortage. If you wait until you actually need the money, terms will be horrible. I've noticed this mechanism, but how do you go about it strategically? Which exercises or workflows can you use to determine how much to borrow and when?

fxtentacle 4y ago
You can borrow money long-term and then use it to buy safe stocks, like ETFs. If done right, the stock yields will cancel out the interest rate payments, so then you have sort of like a pre-approved credit that the company keeps around.

marcosdumay 4y ago

About #2, 3, and 4, yes, quality starts at the supply line, and the supply line is all abut relationships. You should vet those carefully, and if you can't get enough quality from the immediate market you want, go into their suppliers and do it yourself (or co-start with somebody that can meet your expectations). Hamming, as always, is quite insightful.