What are the things that first time founders typically get wrong?
Mubeen Masudi
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Salil Sethi@salil_sethi
Not delegating enough.
Building a successful company requires constantly executing on several categories - product building, market research, marketing, sales, accounting, payroll, etc.
Within each category, there are several tasks (e.g., product building requires coding, designing, and gathering customer feedback)
I have seen first-time founders take on too much and not execute as well as they can. Depending on the startup goals, it can be overwhelming.
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@salil_sethi I agree on not delegating enough. While obsessing about the core aspects of your business/product early on is critical. As a first time founder myself I ended up wasting a lot of time in micromanaging mechanical stuff such as payrolls, accounting, compliances, etc. Could have easily been delegated and opened up by bandwidth for more critical/creative stuff.
Managing a small team is much harder than managing one where everyone understands their roles.
First-time founders seldom give the team more importance than the idea they are working on.
This causes a lot of friction in the pursuit of something great leading to conflicts and low success rates.
Time and energy management.
Comp & equity, especially for co-founders. It's an extremely awkward conversation and not an area where founders have a ton of experience. More often than not this means a scheme under which cofounders set fixed percentages without regard for any subsequent work. That work ends up feeling "unpaid" and can be a huge factor in burnout (or conflict).
Figuring out the money makers & the money drainers in your P&L
@charlotte_chiang1 Yeah I guess - there is an important nuance here. I have seen first time founders obsess a lot about product and far too less on the business. This is a critical polarity that has to be managed for a successful startup
building something nobody wants...
@tomas_spada2 Or may be building something that a LOT of people want but no one wants to pay for!
Saying Yes more than No
@askthedata nailed it.
Getting obsessed about little details. They lack the ship first think later mentality
@mehdi_rifai Interesting.
For the average person starting a business, a specific problem with a specific action plan will be better than some high level market analysis or product strategy.
In the beginning try to use common sense to answer questions rather than through research and analysis, which will save you a lot of time and help you reach users as soon as possible.
Decide of priority.