You’re starting your own startup. What are the most important things to consider?

Most startups fail when they build a product the market doesn't want. Building an MVP is a popular to mitigate this risk. But this rarely works in practice. It simply shifts the cause of startup failure. Instead of building the wrong product, startups build the wrong MVP. Building MVP's is still a desirable best practice. But first, it's critical to mitigate the risk of building the wrong MVP. The best approach to mitigate this risk is to generate demand before building your MVP. This can be both hard and uncomfortable. Founders often have a fixed mindset about demand generation. They believe they need a product to convince potential buyers. If you need a product to convince potential buyers, it's a sign of a poor market.

Beyond the usual steps (idea validation, marketing, etc.), I find combining passion with team building crucial. Start with a problem you deeply care about – this fuels the fire when things get tough. Then, assemble a diverse and complementary team – people who fill your skill gaps and share your drive. This combo of passion and a well-rounded team has been key to success in my experience. While the rest are important, tackle these first. Remember, a burning desire to solve a problem with the right team by your side is a powerful foundation for any startup.

Most of the time, startup founders start building a solution that is looking for a problem. Don't be that person. It is absolutely crucial to not get excited and validate your idea first. Be your own critic, be ruthless about your business and once you feel you have done your homework diligently, then start your own thing. There are other important factors to consider as well but the validation is the most important aspect.

One of the biggest mistake people do is take their idea to friends for feedback and most times the feedback is not very honest as they dont want to hurt your feeling. This happened to me also personally and this makes the thesis and assumption on how you started on the idea incorrect, leading you to either pivot.

When embarking on a business venture, it's essential to have a clear vision or recognize that the solution you're offering has the potential to address multiple issues. If you're aware of a significant opportunity to assist numerous individuals, begin reverse engineering your path to success. Determine how many problems you must resolve to generate sufficient revenue for (X). Once you've established this, iterate until you've established a fully operational business and can assemble a strong team.

Do you actually need a co founder or are you getting one because everyone says you need one. What do you need the co founder for? Are you willing to give up the amount of equity they need. Do you have the network that can help you if you don't have the co-founder.

Choosing co-founders is can be a life or death decision for a startup. Avoid a "move fast and break things" approach. Here's 4 things to consider; Values/morals/ethics. Do you have a shared definitions for; hard work, embracing difficult conversations, treating others fairly, the value of money vs relationships, A growth mindset, etc Passion for the vision and your impact. You need missionaries, not mercenaries. Startups are a marathon, not a sprint. You need to shoot for the stars, not the treetops. Complementary personality traits. Diverse perspectives and passions help tackle the full range of challenges startups must face. Complementary skill sets. Find ways to work together, ideally under pressure, before fully committing.

The choice of a co-founder can determine the fate of a company. It's crucial to partner with someone who shares the ultimate vision and core beliefs of the company. While it's acceptable for them to have different ideas for company growth, it's essential to find someone who complements your skills and perspectives without being identical. This diversity ensures different viewpoints are available for business growth.

In startups, communication is at the forefront. The methods of your co-founders can be the difference in how effective your design and implementation will be. Compatible skills and values are the first step. However, you also want co-founders who will be graceful in challenges that you will undoubtedly face -- not only being able to handle challenges but thriving in them. Executing their responsibilities and communicating with composure and clarity will be the glue that binds you as co-founders and the team as a while together. Discuss their challenges in previous projects & get into the nitty gritty of their motivations under pressure. Winners are attractive co-founders for their competency, but ensure that you fight for it the same way.

Imagine people who you will spend more time with every single day.. more than your family, friends and the outcome of this partnership will impact how your rest of the life would be. That is how important finding the right co-founders is.

The joint experience and expertise of all the founding team should be important factor in decising the product and industry you want to build in. Trying to build in a new sector and without previous experience or related skillset leads to a lot of time and money being used for aspects that could have been used for scaling the company etc.

Keep the company as lean as possible until you have a strong minimum viable product and gather feedback from the market. At the earliest stages, a startup should only deploy capital as a function of positive reinforcement from the market - to the extent possible. Build product that is simple and strikes at the very core of your value proposition. Build, review value proposition, get customer feedback, repeat. Having someone on the team that understands the modern methodologies in Agile will keep you from overbuilding, failing to get enough feedback and reinforcement, or just building feature factories that don't tie to a clear value proposition.

Ideal customer persona (ICP) is a very important aspect of the market. You may never get it laser targeted, or get right the first few times. However, without at least having a basic idea, if your marketing becomes very wide, then you will not be able to target the right customer. In addition, your messaging will be diluted.

Many founders wait for the perfect product to be build or built on stealth without marketing. This is #1 mistake as they need to start talking and sharing your ideas, about what you are building even before an MVP because that enables you to understand how people percive it, for you to incorporate the learnings in your product.

In my experience as a founder and a board advisor, all of the founding members HAVE to be aligned on the mission and stay the course until you need to pivot. Pivoting is common in the start up world and that is where not having the right people together in the first place, could cause turmoil, and in my case, the death of one start up. The ability to change as a group of people will be tested multiple times. Don’t be Edwards J. Smith. After that, hiring the right people is so important… and they need to be aligned on whatever mission is current.

Your marketing should be close to zero until you have a product-market-fit. If you identified a really great problem and you know who your ideal customer is, you should be able to muscle up early wins without marketing support or a large sales team. Only begin marketing once you have product-market-fit and then create a budget together with measurement and feedback. Don't ramp up spend on programs and channels that aren't delivering ROI. It is rare for a founding team to have a marketing guru. It's OK to get outside help to get this right. This does not mean you need to hire a CMO right away, but find someone at Manager or Director level who is ambitious, knows your space, knows your customer, and is passionate about your product.

Raising funds - and from whom - is something to be thoughtfully considered. Investor relationships are like marriages: they need trust, open communication, love, passion, and respect to thrive. Trust and transparency is essential because an investor is entrusting a founder with their money, and the founder is entrusting the investor with their idea. Open communication is critical. The good should be celebrated, and when things start to go bad, the investor should be there to support the founder. Love and passion for the actual product/idea are what binds the relationship. The founder's passion will fuel the growth, while the investor's love and respect provides accountability and backing.

Know how the money will be best spent to maximize impact. Beware of the endless flow of coaches and consultants who may be great, but may not be what you need in the sequence needed. We all.want to believe that one person or thing is what we need to make it all happen and yet....It is like 100 of those little things that convert dreams to reality. Beware of constant renewal fees that add up monthly. Be hyper vigilant on vetting who it is that you want to be involved with. If things feel odd they probably are. Do not take a deal if it involves someone getting gross income before everything else happens. Make sure have an end goal and focus on that through the mountains and valleys of entrepreneurship. YOU'RE WORTH IT!

Depending your product and sector, the first investment raise should be from angel investors because they would give you the room to learn, improve and pivot without getting too much in your business operations. I personally would not advice for friends and family round but I know lots do it and it works fine. Seed and beyond should be from VC's who are experts in your sector because that stage you are looking at not just money but also the expertise to grown.

Define the screening criteria to accept or reject the product. I believe in building a product to fix or improve business critical application has more success rate. If the product/ solution you build only adding a marginal / small significance to one or few industry verticals, you will have rough time in selling. If it’s a tech product, having a tech founder or co- founder is important, else you will have a rough time outsourcing every small thing. Just my 2 cents. After all what matters most is determination and self confidence. I’m not a big fan of raising funds. Sad to see fund raising becoming #1 priority among young founders.

This is often a matter of personal circumstance and taste. Some businesses lend themselves to bootstrapping and some founders have ample resources to self-fund larger projects. Often, bootstrapping is the best way to keep co-founders very focused on efficiency and staying lean. However, raising capital from professional investors can tap more capital and bring experience and connections to the table. If you choose to raise outside capital, start with angel investors prior to seeking institutional capital. Angel investors can help vet and validate your idea and early product and GTM motions. They are usually also well equipped to help inexperienced teams navigate fund raising.

One thing is critical to understand when starting a startup. That is the importance of Product-Market Fit (PMF). Failing to seek or achieve Product Market Fit usually has fatal consequences. Not reaching PMF means scaling is expensive. Maybe too expensive to be viable. Or, it needlessly limits your ability to scale social or financial impact. Not reaching PMF also invites competition. It's very hard to compete with a startup that has achieved PMF. PMF offers a startup a competitive moat. Failure to achieve PMF invites competitive copycats. They iterate on your business model and achieve PMF. They will then go viral. They will then take your market share. And they will then enjoy a competitive moat. Think blackberry v iPhone.