I launched a startup a year ago, here are 10 Things I Learned

On November 11, 2020, ByteChek was launched to the public. We were building ByteChek in stealth mode from March 2020 until November and decided that Veteran’s Day would be a great day to launch the company as it is a special day for my family and I. My Father served in the Marine Corps for 20 years and retired in 2008. He is my role model and someone I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for and the reason I served in the US Army for six years. So Veteran’s Day is special and became even more special because of this journey I started.?

Happy Veteran’s Day to all those that have served, thank you for your service and sacrifice to this country.

This has been an incredible journey and I learned so much. I hope that these ten lessons help a future entrepreneur learn from my mistakes and achieve great success:

1. The most important thing for a founder is their mental health. Starting a company is daily mental warfare. You have to intentionally protect your mental health and focus on staying present. You will have days that are simultaneously the best and worst days of your startup's life and you can’t deal with this without investing the time to go to therapy, meditate, take breaks and talk about your mental health struggles. I publicly took a break earlier this year and am grateful I had the self awareness to know that I wasn’t ok. If you stop reading now, you already read the most important lesson for any entrepreneur.?
2. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” - Redi Hoffman. This quote by Reid Hoffman was up in my office every day while we were building ByteChek throughout 2020 and on November 11 last year, I launched a product that I was immensely embarrassed of. I cringe when I see it today but it was such a great decision. I made so many assumptions that were just flat out false and I didn’t know they were false until our first customer told us. We were lucky and our first customer recorded their raw reaction to the platform when they first logged in. This was a painful 30 minutes for me personally because they were calling my baby ugly lol. However, this video was immensely valuable to ByteChek because we received feedback that could have taken months to get otherwise. I am so glad I followed Reid’s advice and launched the product when we did. You can’t get feedback on a PowerPoint deck. Take the “Minimum” in Minimum Viable Product seriously.?
3. Value your people. The people that bet on you and your startup in the early days are angels sent from above. Cherish them, value them and tell them how much you appreciate them regularly. In the early days, roles don’t matter so this is not specific to any one role. Working at a startup in the early days takes a perfect mix of grit, scrappiness and raw intelligence. Don’t take the responsibility of leading, supporting and working with your team lightly.?
4. Nothing is done until the money is wired. I am learning this lesson daily. We went through some wild times over the last year and I learned a painful lesson that no deal is complete until the money is wired. Don’t let your foot off the gas, weird things can and do happen. Remember, Murphy always shows up at the worst times.?
5. Talk to your early customers, frequently. Your customers will tell you everything you need to know in order to grow and reach the next level. Why did they buy from you? That’s your value proposition and marketing message. What features do they wish your product had? That’s your roadmap. Learn how they are using your product, answer support questions and join customer support calls. All founders should be deeply involved in customer support during the early stages, it’s the best way to get customer feedback and learn what you should prioritize on your roadmap.?
6. Avoid the comparison game. Every founder I talk to says the same thing, “we’re in a crowded market.” I imagine whatever your startup is, there are competitors or a bigger old company that is the market leader. If you’re solving an important problem for customers then competition is inevitable. In today’s market, well funded competition is almost a guarantee. It’s easy to get caught up in the funding announcements, product releases or other marketing efforts but try to focus on your startup. I’ve fallen into this trap and I realized a few things. We’re running our own race. It is important to be aware of our competition but don’t obsess over them and definitely don’t waste time comparing our journey, product or team to theirs. I’ve decided to focus on our people and our customers. They are the most important assets and will be the key to our success, not our competitors.?
7. Don’t be afraid to pivot. Speed is so important for startups. We learned the importance of pivoting over the last year. From trying out different frameworks to trying to sell the product directly to CPA firms, and more lessons learned through failures. One thing I learned through the failures is that you have to be prepared to pivot and pivot quickly. In the early stages of a startup, days feel like weeks, weeks feel like months, and months feel like years. Don’t waste time ignoring the data and banging your head against the wall because you're emotionally tied to an idea. You won’t learn what works in an Excel spreadsheet or on a PowerPoint Deck. You have to learn from the data and then make a decision, fast. We test everything at ByteChek and let the data guide our decisions when it comes to marketing, sales, product updates, etc.
8. Raising venture capital is really hard. Expect to spend at least 50% of your time raising money. The process is long, grueling and you get a lot of “No’s”. It’s tough at times because you see all the articles about how much capital is flowing, other companies raising huge rounds and you’re slugging away getting no after no. I learned that the constant rejections is a part of the fundraising process and you need to look at the rejections as teaching lessons. These lessons are preparing you for that first term sheet and future rounds. It’s all practice and treat it as such. I learned how important it is to track, plan and treat your funding round like a project. Involve others on your team to help you track and regularly update everyone on the progress. It kept me focused and made sure I spent the necessary time planning, following up and completing the necessary documents investors request. It’s supposed to be hard, remember this paragraph when you’re raising. Whatever you do, don’t quit.?
9. Content marketing works. Last summer I realized that we were going to need to get the word out about ByteChek with little to no budget. The internet told me that content marketing was the way to do this but I didn’t know anything about content marketing. I started as a Marketing major at Florida State University but that didn’t last long. So I did what I often do when I don’t know something, I took a course. Hubspot has this free academy where you can get certifications and I took their content marketing certification course. This course literally gave me the blueprint for our content marketing strategy at ByteChek. It was such a valuable certification and I can confirm that it works. Content marketing is the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve been able to build a strong brand and strong brand awareness despite a limited budget and limited resources. Your customers want to be educated and the SaaS companies that are winning are not just selling products, they are media companies. ByteChek has started the steps towards building ourselves into a media company (wink) and it all started with content marketing. Invest the time to learn about content marketing and then execute the strategy. It’s a long game but it pays off.?
10. Celebrate every win, big or small. ?You have to celebrate everything. Don’t wait for the big win. Signed a new customer? Celebrate. We created a culture where we constantly recognize others and highlight our wins. It feels good to give and get praise and you should make it a regular part of your day to day culture. There are going to be inevitable long and tough days so enjoy the wins when you get them and tell people when they are doing a great job.?

We have some exciting things in the works that we will be sharing soon. This has been a year I will always remember and I am extremely excited for the future of ByteChek. I hope this article is helpful to an aspiring or current entrepreneur.

Protect your mental health and don’t quit. #TMC