Everyone has a dream to attain the three-day work week. Be your own boss, work on your own time, start your own business. The world of the startup business, however, is a hard one to take and just because you have a great idea doesn't mean you don't need to put in the hard work to get it off the ground.
Here, we follow the world's biggest question-and-answer site, Quora, for expert advice on what it really takes to run a startup, even after failure.
Some entrepreneurs shared their experiences in running their own businesses and also the things they wish they knew after their first failed startups. These are in response to the posted question, "What are your biggest lessons as a founder from a startup failure?"
"Focus on building something you can sell, not something you think people probably want. Don't get distracted by all the things that feel like progress but are not progress. Measure progress in terms of revenue. If you are loving what you do but aren't making any money, what you have is a hobby, not a business. Focus early on sales and discovering what your market will pay for." - Mary Haskett, Serial Entrepreneur
"Don't have equal equity among founders, one person needs to have majority. If there's two of you, do a 51/49 split. This is so you don't get stuck arguing what color your logo should be.
Find a pain in a market, think up of solutions and presell before you build something. The only way to validate your product is if people are actually paying you. Otherwise you'll build something that nobody will want and you'll waste your time and drive it to the ground.
Only look for investors when you're ready to scale up and can't do so without capital funding." - Angelo Cordon, Co-founder of A Vivid Visual
"Build a prototype that provides value to customers, get it in front of customers, get their feedback, act on the feedback, lather rinse, repeat.
Don't jump from one idea to another. The cool word for this is pivot. Don't pivot every time you change your underwear. At the same time, understand that feedback from customers may require you to pivot. Know when to pivot and when not to. Floundering startups either pivot too much or don't pivot at all when it is absolutely necessary." - Wallace B. McClure
"Don't make funding a priority until you absolutely need it. A lot of small startups start chasing investors way too early in the process. Not only is this a huge waste of time, it's also going to make you seriously depressed and will make you start questioning everything you're doing.
Investors rarely care about a good idea, good implementation, or a sound business. Most (not all, but most) are still way too into pattern matching - if you look like the successful startup founders they've seen before, they'll fund you; if you don't, they won't, even if you have a solid product with a functioning business plan that's generating revenue.
What do successful startup founders look like? Well, mainly they lead successful startups. So wait until you either have some major accomplishments or milestones down that you can brag about, or wait until the VCs start coming to you." - Alexandre Mouravskiy
