Blog 3.1 - Lesson #1 about year 1 of Start-up
Blog Caveat
? This isn’t going to include the obvious ‘lessons’ that aren’t really lessons because they’re inherently known and understood to be fact: "It’s hard" "takes a lot of work" "requires a lot of patience" "a little bit of luck" "it ain’t always pretty" etc...etc.
? After writing the list with full explanations and getting to 3,000 words, I’ve come to the conclusion that ain’t nobody got time for that! So due to the limitations of the style of blog LinkedIn allows I’ll release the details of each 1-day at a time. #Cliffhanger
? Comments and questions are greatly appreciated. Let’s start a conversation.
Lesson #1 about year 1 of Start-up
1. It really helps when your product serves the needs/interests of your friend group
Issue this alleviates: When starting a business, you will alienate yourself from your friends, social life, and all parts of you that existed before.
What happened for us: Well, we were a couple of 25-year old, sports playing, beer drinking, nerdy enough, gamers. So getting into the eSports industry meant we were directly catering to not only our interests, but to those of our friends and social circles as well.
Why this was important: As we all know, getting anyone to support something new is always a challenge because in the beginning the only people who will take you seriously (kind of) and listen to you are those closest to you! We were able to convince our friends and our personal network to come out and support our endeavours. They provided emotional support with encouragement, strategic support with feedback/brainstorming, physical support by showing up, and business credibility by having REAL LIVE PEOPLE at our events. Which is a nice pre-cursor into our 2nd thing we learned in year 1…
Lessons 2 - 10
2. How you portray yourself to your market is more important than the reality
3. You need to be cocky enough to believe you will be the 1% that is successful
4. Think as big as possible
5. Identifying and asking someone to be your mentor is the most invaluable relationship
6. Don’t be afraid to take a step back and pivot
7. It’s okay to take up a job when you realize you need money to keep you going
8. It’s really hard to motivate people without paying them
9. Talk to your parents about what you’re doing
10. Every platform is super important to be on, even LinkedIn for the eSports industry
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