🦄 Unicorn Mafia Startup

2021-10-24 12:42:54 Here's what you need to know (and avoid) when it comes to company growth:

(from a former ycombinator partner who failed a bunch of companies and sold one for $1 billion)

1. Don't over-rely on press as your primary distribution strategy.

There are very rare cases of companies that manage to hack the press by forcing reporters to write about them over and over again.

This is rarely a replicable and more importantly, sustainable, method of effective distribution.

User acquisition strategy needs to go way beyond just having a few great stories lined up on TechCrunch

The way to achieve this is to make your product 'intrinsically viral'

aka: build something so dope that people will be forced to share it with their friends

Tesla's cars are a great example of physical products that have intrinsic virality built into them, without relying on extensive advertising campaigns

They self-drive their own marketing

2. If you haven't figured out initial growth for your company, the last thing you should do is hire a marketing specialist

I see this a lot in technical founders who have just raised a huge round and have no idea what to do with it (cont.)

If you don't have PMF, but force-feed marketing anyway you will run into two outcomes.

Your entire business fails; or you succeed in *spite* of your hires. While one is marginally better, both are far from ideal.

3. Growth masks all problems

Whether its a morale, management, or recruiting problem - it boils down to having a 'growth problem.'

(cont.)

During high-growth periods, these problems are masked. This can be helpful because it won't impede your ability to recruit people or be productive.

However,

4. Growth never lasts forever

Low-growth periods are inevitable, and these tend to be the times when those masked problems become very apparent.

Two implications here:

(i). Do whatever you can to keep growing - super important.

If you can just get *some* growth going, you will find that other problems tend to work themselves out (at least temporarily).

This needs to happen as a baseline for your startup to even be functional.

(ii). Do not accumulate too much debt in the areas that are masked by growth - as soon as growth slows down, these problems will become serious.

It is crucial that you are able to handle them without being so overwhelmed that growth completely stalls and you go into free-fall.

Proactively monitor and tackle pressing issues during high-growth periods, instead of scrambling to put out fires while the ship slowly sinks.

https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1434230120777011202 Open / Comment

2021-10-24 09:26:36 Channel photo updated Open / Comment

2021-10-23 13:24:03 Types Of Startup Metrics

I run a startup, which means that aside from creating the product, I also have to measure its growth. Being a visual thinker, I compiled for myself a list of startup metrics that every founder has to know. Open / Comment

2021-10-22 14:56:01 Open / Comment

2021-10-22 14:56:01 How to Raise Money For Your Startup [Infographic]

Over the last three years I have seen over a thousand startups in their early stages. I witnessed many of them go from an idea to funding within several months. I have also seen some of them fundraising for years and not getting anywhere.

Few More Tips How To Raise Money

When it comes to funding, there is one thing that can increase your chance of getting funded astronomically – traction. Yet, founders often struggle to get traction and hope that investor money will help them get it. This problem can be solved if you start lean, test your product and and gather meaningful feedback from your customers.

Use that feedback to modify your product. After you get traction, you are certain to get interest from investors. How much traction? Compare yourself to your competitors at the moment they got funding and use that as a benchmark.

Preventing people from raising money successfully, the other myth is that you can raise money before you build anything. Even if you are not an engineer, you can build a prototype of your product. You can do it in WordPress, another content management system (CMS), you can learn to code the basics. If you do not go out of your way to build your own product, why should other people risk in joining you?

Finally, when you are going to raise money, have the investors feel good about what you are going to spend their money on – not marketing, not development, not business development, but scaling. Open / Comment

2021-10-21 12:26:41 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. Open / Comment

2021-10-21 12:26:36 Seven Lessons From Startup Failure To Help Your Next Startup Succeed. Part 1

1. Set expectations with co-founders.

I’ve had a few companies go through hard times due to a co-founder losing interest, secretly taking other gigs or, in one case, ghosting completely and leaving the country. These were painful. A co-founder relationship is like a marriage. You’ll be partners in one of the most stressful, rewarding, terrifying, confusing journeys you’ve ever been on. Choose your partners wisely.

If you’re friends, have a discussion about how this will likely change the fabric of your friendship. If you just met, take time to get to know one another. Talk about your motivations, working styles, expectations and decision-making processes. Define success metrics and areas of focus.

Work together on a trial period. Don’t rush to issue stock from day one because that makes it messy if you opt to part ways. Set yourselves up with a standard four-year vesting schedule and a one-year cliff. Investors will love this.

2. Research before taking risks.

Founders embrace risk more than most. However, there’s a difference between personal risks and imposing risk on your company. To reduce risk, many founders raise venture capital. If you’re planning on doing this, invest in research.

When raising money for a prior company, a sticking point we ran into was the size of our total addressable market. After digging in, it was a real issue, and we had to pivot as a result. The churn risk of target customers also altered our ability to scale, which we hadn’t factored into our financial models. Had we done all this sooner, the fundraising process would have been faster.

3. Have honest retrospectives.

Founders are usually perpetually optimistic. This can sometimes prevent them from recognizing problems. In one of my prior roles, the founders had a policy to never distribute bad news to the team or investors in order to “not scare anybody unnecessarily.” This prevented dozens of smart people from being able to help solve problems.

As problems occur, be transparent about them with your team. Discuss what they could lead to and what the stakes are, and prioritize accordingly. Celebrate what worked, but don’t gloss over failures to salvage your self-esteem.

Revisit the scientific method. What’s the objective? What are the variables? What’s your hypothesis? What happens if it’s validated or invalidated? These answers help you build a process for improvement and reduce fears around sharing problems. Open / Comment

2021-10-20 08:39:25 Why Do Most Startups Fail?

Startups fail because their founders often lack a sense of self awareness

People that quit their jobs to become founders are called "dreamers"--or uncontrollable creative types. People who choose to work for startups are seen as having a higher threshold for internal chaos. Despite the fact that the dream to build a startup has never been stronger (or more socially acceptable), the truth is, most people still see the whole undertaking as a house of cards.

According to Forbes, 90% of startups fail.

But startups don't fail because they're startups. They fail because of the founders.

We talk about startup issues as if it's the company's problem. Startups themselves are risky.

But a startup is nothing more than a small room full of people, all working on an idea. If something goes wrong, it's not the room's fault. Those four walls didn't make a bad hire, or spend too much money, too quickly. The people inside them did.

Which is why, when we talk about startup failure rates, we should be talking about people more than we talk about the business nature of an idea in the making.

Most startups that fail, fail because the founders lack the self awareness to do the following:

The worst mistake of all, however, is that most startup founders get stuck on their original idea and refuse to pivot.

I do a fair amount of consulting for entrepreneurs and brands on their messaging.

One thing I run into, over and over again, is that people tend to want me to validate the ideas they already have, rather than me tell them what I genuinely think.

This isn't an isolated problem.

In most cases, startups fail because the founders get so stuck on their original idea, they want to do everything in their power to prove it can work. Even worse, startups that raise money tend to spend a good portion of those funds on marketing and PR--which means spreading the message of something you aren't even sure works yet.

What happens then is the founders feel married to the original idea. If you spend $2M on a marketing campaign, only to realize half-way through your product has some major flaws and you need to pivot, you're going to have to admit (to the world you've just advertised to) that you're changing the direction of the company.

Many founders see this as a blow to their ego and would rather try to make the original broken idea work, than admit they didn't have it all figured out and keep pivoting in a better direction.

Startups fail because founders get stuck in their egos.
That's the truth

Founders fail because they want to believe they have it all figured out, even when they don't.

Founders fail because they want to be seen as the smartest person in the room--and not seen as the student.

Founders fail because they can't admit when they're wrong.

Founders fail themselves, long before they fail their startup. And yet, it's "startups" that are seen as risky. It's "startups" that are seen as having low success rates.

What's risky is following a founder that has never led a team before, has no track record for success, and has nothing but a vague idea and a little bit of runway.

And you should be able to spot that from a mile away. Open / Comment

2021-09-05 18:52:04 Vicuna Corp
Industry: Ed Tech SAAS

Startup description:
Vicuna houses our flagship product, Scholaebot. Scholaebot is a light-weight content generation engine that is designed to be seamlessly integrated with your platform of choice to deliver updated and customised educational content with minimal effort on end-user.

Location: Singapore
Website: https://vicuna.sg Open / Comment

2021-09-02 09:40:36 threej
Industry:SAAS

Startup description:
We are an Indian based startup which offer SAAS and other web services. Our current service includes : Twitter jobs board - Get latest jobs from twitter. Twitter accounts directory - Follow twitter accounts based on your niche. Telegram Directory - Find best telegram channels and groups. YouTube Directory.

What pain does your startup solve?
We aim to solve the problem of finding quality contents on the internet and specifically on the social media platforms. Because it is difficult to find great contents and content creators to follow on the social media platforms according to our niche, so we decide to create our own solution for this problem.

What do you do for your startup to succeed?
To improve our service we will take account of users feedback and start implementing those features as per their recommendations.
Also in near future we are planning to implement the freemium structure to our startup and offer the premium services to paid users.

Location: India
Website: https://threej.in Open / Comment