As a 16-year-old high school student, I was captivated by Paul Graham’s essays. He wrote about how a few smart developers could create immense value through shared creativity and speed, and that idea fascinated me. While some kids my age were falling in love with pop artists, I saw engineers as the real rock stars.
At 22, I started my first company. This venture led my co-founder and me to join another startup, VectorWatch. A few years later, Fitbit acquired VectorWatch, and we established the largest European Development Office. We worked on global projects that impacted millions of users. Eventually, Google acquired Fitbit, and we created the biggest Wearable Development Center in Central Eastern Europe for Google.
My journey had its ups and downs, teaching me invaluable lessons along the way. In 2012, I joined a startup accelerator program and continued to mentor for subsequent editions. I wanted to give back, sharing the lessons I learned to help young founders avoid the mistakes I made.
5 Key Learnings Every Entrepreneur Needs
Over the past 10 years, I’ve mentored more than 100 early-stage startups, ranging from idea stage to scale-ups with thousands of users.
Startups are hard, but there are key strategies you can implement to increase your chances of success.
Here are the top 5 things I’ve learned through my experience as a mentor and entrepreneur, including going through two acquisitions:
The Power of Diverse Teams
Innovation thrives on diversity. It took me a while to understand how innovation truly happens, but after observing many startups and teams, I noticed that diversity is often the key ingredient.
When you bring together people with different backgrounds, views, and experiences, something magical happens. The combined perspectives of a diverse team create ideas and solutions that are far greater than the sum of their parts. It’s a perfect example of how 1+1 can equal so much more than 2.
Diversity alone isn’t enough to ensure success, but it is a crucial building block. During my college years, I struggled to build real businesses because I lacked the ability to sell and didn’t team up with people who had that skill. My friends and I got excited about building platforms and apps, but once they were built, we lost interest and moved on to the next project.
In hindsight, I realized that we lacked the understanding of how to create something users wanted and how to sell it. We could have either learned these skills ourselves or partnered with someone who was good at it.
When we finally did this in a later startup, the difference was remarkable. By including business-savvy colleagues on our team, we achieved success. They knew how to sell, and their expertise complemented our technical skills perfectly.
If your team is composed solely of technical founders, you’ll likely struggle to build a successful business. Aim to build a diverse team with a mix of perspectives, backgrounds, and skills. Doing so will significantly increase your chances of success.
The Value of Mentors: Buying Time and Experience
Mentors save you time. You might become an expert in marketing and sales after a decade of hard work, but wouldn’t you rather fast-track that experience today? A great marketing mentor can teach you the tricks of the trade that you won’t find in books, saving you time and pain by accelerating your learning process.
The challenge with mentors is that the best ones are hard to find and even harder to convince. The top mentors aren’t cheap, but the time and expertise they offer are invaluable.
To secure a great mentor, you need to sell yourself. Think from their perspective: what’s in it for them? It could be a percentage of your business, the opportunity to learn more about your niche, or a desire to pay it forward. Understanding their motivations is key to convincing them to mentor you.
I mentor startups to give back to the community. During startup programs, I spend a few hours with each startup and stay connected via emails and LinkedIn messages throughout their journey. For more time-committed mentorship, I can be convinced by the team, the niche, or both.
One crucial element is chemistry. You need to have a good rapport with your mentor. If you don’t like or respect each other, the relationship won’t work.
Think of it as buying time and experience. Yes, you could become a marketing expert in 10 years, but why not accelerate that journey with a mentor? Startups are all about gaining competitive advantages, and having a great mentor who can teach you and open doors is one of the best advantages you can have.
The Value of Mentors: Buying Time and Experience
Mentors save you time. You might become an expert in marketing and sales after a decade of hard work, but wouldn’t you rather fast-track that experience today? A great marketing mentor can teach you the tricks of the trade that you won’t find in books, saving you time and pain by accelerating your learning process.
The challenge with mentors is that the best ones are hard to find and even harder to convince. The top mentors aren’t cheap, but the time and expertise they offer are invaluable.
To secure a great mentor, you need to sell yourself. Think from their perspective: what’s in it for them? It could be a percentage of your business, the opportunity to learn more about your niche, or a desire to pay it forward. Understanding their motivations is key to convincing them to mentor you.
I mentor startups to give back to the community. During startup programs, I spend a few hours with each startup and stay connected via emails and LinkedIn messages throughout their journey. For more time-committed mentorship, I can be convinced by the team, the niche, or both.
One crucial element is chemistry. You need to have a good rapport with your mentor. If you don’t like or respect each other, the relationship won’t work.
Think of it as buying time and experience. Yes, you could become a marketing expert in 10 years, but why not accelerate that journey with a mentor? Startups are all about gaining competitive advantages, and having a great mentor who can teach you and open doors is one of the best advantages you can have.
Choosing The Right Co-Founders
Many teams break up because they avoid discussing their real interests up front. They shy away from hard conversations, knowing they should have them but postponing them instead.
Through my own experience and observing other startups, I’ve learned that avoiding these difficult discussions leads to bigger problems down the road. It’s much better to face them early on.
People start startups for different reasons. Some seek fame, others want money. Some are excited about working on impactful projects with smart people, while others simply want to escape authority and be their own boss. Understanding the true motives of each co-founder is crucial. This insight helps you gauge whether they will stick around when things get tough or when a new, shiny opportunity comes along.
It’s important to have a diverse team that complements your skills. If your founding team is entirely technical, you’ll have a huge blind spot towards the business side. You might excel at building products and creating great tech, but you risk developing a fantastic system that nobody wants because it doesn’t solve a real problem. This scenario can lead to avoiding tough conversations with users who might tell you your idea or product isn’t good. However, those early, honest conversations are essential for success. I’ve been there, and it’s not a fun place to be.
The reverse is also true. If everyone on your team only knows how to sell, you risk selling customers on an idea that can’t be delivered. This imbalance can be just as damaging as having a purely technical team.
In short, choosing the right co-founders involves having honest, upfront conversations about everyone’s motives and ensuring a balanced, diverse team. This approach sets the foundation for a resilient and successful startup.
Navigating a Sea of Advice
Mentors can be incredibly valuable, but there are a few things you need to watch out for. One common issue is conflicting advice. If you’ve ever participated in a startup accelerator program with speed mentoring, you know what I mean. It’s like speed dating, but with mentors, and in just 20 minutes, you’ll often hear vastly different opinions on the same question.
This can lead to advice paralysis, where you’re overwhelmed and end up stuck, unable to move forward. Getting stuck is one of the biggest causes of startup failure. You need to absorb all the advice, but ultimately, you have to decide which direction to take. In the early days, the risk of your startup failing because you didn’t move is greater than the risk of taking a path, realizing it’s wrong, and then quickly pivoting.
Another key point is to avoid following advice from mentors outside their areas of expertise. Mentors, like everyone, have biases. They might be experts in one field but not in others. Even if they sound confident, consider whether their advice comes from their main area of expertise. The best mentors are aware of their limitations and make it clear when they’re stepping outside their domain.
In summary, while mentors are invaluable, it’s essential to:
- Be mindful of conflicting advice and avoid getting stuck.
- Make decisions quickly to keep your startup moving.
- Evaluate whether a mentor’s advice aligns with their true expertise.
By keeping these points in mind, you can effectively navigate the sea of advice and steer your startup towards success.
The Importance of Speed
You might not start with a perfect idea or team, but there’s one thing you absolutely need: speed.
Your initial idea is likely flawed. It will need to evolve, and that requires moving quickly. You have to keep progressing, constantly iterating until you reach the cutting edge of your field.
Paul Graham has a great short essay on generating new ideas. By pushing to the frontier of a field, you’ll eventually stumble upon unsolved problems. Solving these will set you apart and society will reward you for offering something new and needed.
This journey is all about trial and error, iterating, and uncovering new truths. Nassim Taleb discusses the idea of trying things with unlimited upside and limited downside.
Startups are hard but not impossible. To improve your chances of success:
- Build a diverse team with complementary skills.
- Align your motivations and goals with your co-founders.
- Seek out mentors to fast-track your learning and save time.
Speed is crucial. Find ways to outpace your competition and keep pushing forward. Best of luck!
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