Seven Lessons From Startup Failure To Help Your Next Startup S | 🦄 Unicorn Mafia Startup
Seven Lessons From Startup Failure To Help Your Next Startup Succeed. Part 2
4. Increase the time you spend talking to customers.
Most new founders start companies after having an idea. I believe this is why most companies fail. Your own ideas are far less valuable than ideas from prospective customers.
I built my early companies from my own ideas, but my ideas were always wrong. Some were incredibly wrong and nothing worked. Others were slightly wrong and needed to be tweaked before becoming viable.
Years later, I sidelined my ego and realized that success came faster when I had as many customer conversations as possible before investing time or money into the product. Identifying patterns in what customers say — from problems to budgets and anything in between — can be invaluable.
5. Maintain high standards.
If my team is falling short of its quarterly goals, on more than one occasion I’ve been asked to lower them. Early in my career I agreed, and everybody felt better. Then the next quarter came, and we were short on our goals again, and the same thing was proposed.
In basketball, if you’re great at hitting the rim, would the coach change your goal to hitting the rim? No! They’d coach you to help you make the shots. If your team is missing their targets, it’s supposed to be disappointing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t feel motivated to improve. Don’t lower your goals to meet your low performance. Raise your performance standards, and keep your goals high.
6. Do less, but better.
Early in my career, my teams would get excited when we’d build something great, so we’d opt to build way more. What we didn’t have in these cases was discipline. We didn’t realize that what made us great at developing one product was that we were only developing one product. Our focus was a core part of our success, and we lost it.
As an entrepreneur, it can be tough to commit to only one thing because by doing so, you’re decommitting from everything else. However, that level of disciplined focus is almost always required to be great. When you choose to do less, but better, your customers and investors witness your focus on solving one problem better than anyone can. It reveals the depths of your ability to think deeply and win bigger.
7. Learn to say no.
As you begin to publicly succeed, huge opportunities — such as investments and acquisitions — begin coming your way. These are easy to latch onto. As your team buys into these possibilities, they’ll start living in a headspace where they have already happened.
However, some deals just don’t close, through no fault of your own. It can be soul crushing to go from thinking it’s done to hearing it won’t happen. If you allow yourself to think this way, you’re inviting issues. Remember, opportunities came your way in part because of your ability to focus. Altering that focus will lead to different results.
