Serial Entrepreneurs: What was the most valuable lesson learned from your first startup effort?

Question

Everyone on our founders team is a first time entrepreneur. Looking back on the last few months we already learned so much and would be a lot faster and resource efficient if we went through the process again.  Curious to hear which learnings you consider most valuable!

Mert Baser · Accepted Answer

Never ever fully outsource any of your company's departments (marketing, development, sales etc.)

Either build your in-house team or at least have at least one person in your team working full-time with the outsourced team

Matthew Johnson · Answer

Choose your co-founder very carefully. Just like any relationship, don't expect them to change once you get started on the project. Try to know as much about their work ethic, flaws, etc. as you can, and then make sure you are comfortable with those before diving in.

Junior Owolabi · Answer

Do lots of Customer Interviews with early adopters to avoid focusing on problems little to no one has and a solution no one wants

Juliane Stephan · Answer

For us, making the right hiring decisions has been a big learning factor. At the beginning we were pretty inefficient in screening and filtering out potential support and it was very time consuming. We now got a much better sense of when to use platforms like Upwork and when to look for a new team member that will support the team long-term. We also got better at evaluating culture fit and at making sure expectations align which is important for us as a fully bootstrapped startup - we need team members who see themselves as co-founders and owners and that are okay with equity as biggest comp component.

David J. Kim · Answer

@mertbaser We had to learn this too. It's also really tempting because it can be so cheap.

Serial Entrepreneurs: What was the most valuable lesson learned from your first startup effort?

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