Starting My Company. Mistake 1.

Believing that someone will agree to become your co-founder.

When I was planning and already making the first steps of building 356labs, I knew that I need a co-founder. A designer. A senior, senior designer.

I told myself: “That’s easy! I know the right person. We are friends and there’s no way she won’t join me!”.

I called her and we talked. Turned out she not only didn’t want to join. She was not even interested in graphic design anymore because she wanted and already started working in a tattoo shop and now that was “her life”!

Hm…! That’s kinda not what I expected and what I was completely sure in. Now I needed to think and search for another “will do it for sure” person and in the meantime I was losing time. I needed someone to design various things for the web site (yes, I started the company based on the Lean startup methodology, but still — there were things that needed to be designed) and I needed it as quickly as possible.

So, my lesson for you here is really simple — in case you decide to start a company with someone — make sure that this person/people actually want to do that too. You may think they will want to join, but is that really the case? Communicate early and find out.

For those of you who already have companies — what was your first ever mistake? Let us know in the comments…