Kim Li

Previously, Flow automatically formatted your text differently depending on whether you were in an email app or a messaging app. In emails, Flow used full punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks to look polished. In messaging apps, Flow made things a bit lighter and more casual.

That worked fine for most people, but it didn t always reflect your personal writing style.

I wrote a list of all the things I learnt by becoming a first-time founder and leaving a role in big tech. It s more than I had when I started, so I hope it finds you at the right time:

Here we go:

• Getting going: Make sure you have a clear reason and those in your life are on same page. It is consuming!

• Unfair advantage: Founders aren t special, they just optimize to what makes them different (becomes important when raising too). It can be as simple as "worked in big company, saw firsthand the XXX problem"

• Getting started isn t easy: Make sure you consider the financial impact if leaving a job to get going Consider 12-18 months of no revenue or funding and if you can manage that

• Full-time or nothing: You can t do both a job and a startup. Investors won t back part-time conviction

• The pitch doc: Forces clarity, the problem, the customer, the market, and why you should solve it

• Raising money: Start with belief and momentum. An idea, a plan, and an MVP are enough to find your first backers

• Accelerators: Early programs like YC or Techstars can help refine your product and give you fuel to move faster. I have a longer list of Accelerators in case anyone needs it...?

• Foundations: Lock down your domain, name, trademarks, and structure early - future you will thank you

• Advisors: Find people who open doors and offer perspective, not control, ideally top % in their domain

• SaaS reality: You ll spend more on tools than you expect, it s part of building

• Building: Nothing s real until users touch it. Ship early, get feedback, iterate. It was extremely painful to hear users complain about our early bugs, but without that, we wouldn't be more reliable now...

• Co-founder: Pick someone with complementary skills and shared energy. You ll need each other

• Runway: Track every cost. I have a spreadsheet with every single one, also helps with tax reporting. Burn awareness is survival

• Energy: In a startup, you are the momentum. Working Saturday isn t working Saturday , it s pushing your dream forward

• Loved ones: Communicate early. The work will consume you; don t let it quietly consume them too

• Attention: Building is one thing. Getting noticed is harder. You ll code-switch between product, marketing, finance, and sanity

• What if you fail: Most startups do. But you ll come out sharper, braver, and more ready than ever

My journey in startups began 10 years ago, and I've launched 18 startups, most of which failed. Briefly on why they failed:
1. Contract Online my first startup in 2015, which was supposed to be an online service for remote signing of contracts for any transactions between individuals. A kind of analogue of a secure transaction. For this startup, I even managed to attract a business angel who invested $16,500.

Reason for failure: I had two lawyers on my team who discovered in the process that the legal framework at the time could not provide reliable grounds for protecting our users in remote transactions. The contracts would not have been considered legally signed.
2. Natural Products In 2015-2018, I became very passionate about healthy eating, but in the process, I discovered that products in all chain stores are full of chemicals, and stores with truly natural products are inaccessible to the majority. Hence, the idea emerged to create my own online platform where you could order natural products directly from farmers at affordable prices.

Reason for failure: For several years, I tried to launch this project, even trained as a baker of natural bread and tried to create my own farm, but in the process, I found that few people are willing to pay for truly natural products, even if these products were only 20-30% more expensive than market prices, and not 2-3 times more, as in premium stores. Hence, the market was so small that all my attempts were doomed.