My 100 Learnings in Tech (Part 1/4)

I have been lucky to work with amazing people in different tech startups and companies over the past 10 years of my life. This year, I have set a goal to share 100 learnings of my short life in tech so far hoping it can be useful to other existing and aspiring founders and startups people. It’s also a reminder to myself and a way of reflection.

I have been documenting these 25 points over the past month and every few months, I will share another 25 till I complete the 100 before the end of the year.

Want to challenge any of the points or share your feedback? That’s even better so that we can enrich the conversation more and more.

1- Building a product is easy, building a business is extremely hard!

2- Being wrong might hurt you a bit but being slow will definitely kill you!

3- Want to be the smartest person in the room? Ask the simplest questions!

4- when experts are wrong, it's often because they are experts on an earlier version of the world or because they are too confident of their expertise.

5- You != your startup. The startup is a business you are starting that can fail or succeed. You are much more than that.

6- Always have a plan! A daily plan, a weekly plan, a monthly/quarterly/yearly plan. No worries if you deviate but you can’t see a deviation if you don’t have a target.

7- People management is more about “people” and less about “management”.

8- A founder without a mentor (of some sort) can rarely succeed.

9- The highest degree of competency is knowing what you don’t know. Stay humble.

10- Disagree, respect and commit.

11- You can join a startup if you are passionate about the problem, will learn from the team and you believe in the viability of the business. You must join a startup if it has the 3, you could join a startup if it has 2 and you never want to join a startup that has none!

12- Find weekly spots to reflect, strategise and meditate. This has priceless outcomes.

13- Entrepreneurs are not celebrities. If you want to become a celebrity, there are much easier ways to do it.

14- Constructive and honest feedback is the key to succeed in any career. Surround yourself with those who consistently challenge you to be better.

15- Ideas are open source, execution is proprietary. Focus on execution.

16- Invest in building your network. Your startup success is affected heavily by the depth of your network and the weight of its nodes and edges.

17- People change if they believe in the need for change. Invest more time telling people why to change than how to change.

18- Unconscious incompetence is the deadliest disease for people and startups.

19- Think about profitability from year 2. Postpone it to year 3 if you have the luxury but not after. Most of what you spend and do before thinking about profitability is a business waste but done right, it can grow the team knowledge and pave the road to a clear success afterwards.

20- Old school partnerships is still the easiest way to grow. Unsexy it sounds but more effective than 90% of the ‘modern’ ways to grow.

21- Hire people who are better than you or who can learn from you and then become better at what they do.

22- As a startup founder, you must be t-edged (especially the CEO). The bigger the width, the better paired with an ‘acceptable’ depth.

23- Empathy is key to running a company. Empathy towards users, customers, partners, your team, your investors and your co-founder. Without empathy, it’s almost impossible to run a successful company and lead a happy life.

24- Having discipline as a founder is not a choice. If you don’t have discipline, better learn it or do something else.

25- Be a challenger and an honest mirror to yourself. Don’t fool yourself or actively search for ways to confirm you are always right. With the number of decisions you are making and how fast you move, you will be wrong a lot.