6 Rules for every technical founder to succeed in a startup

For many technical founders, selling is not in their DNA, building something useful is what drives them. Once the product is built and goes online, they hope users would sign up and eventually it would take off. This rarely happens, apart from a very few exceptions.

Rule 1: It’s never too early to start marketing

Don’t wait until you have a finished product, it’s almost never possible to have both, a finished product and customers at the same time. Take what ever that you have in hand, a demo / prototype that is presentable and start seeing customers. Sign them up and notify them on the progress of your app. This helps you build your customer base and also helps bring awareness about your product. Some of these initial customers you have seen would likely be ready when you launch your product.

This continuous cycle of seeing customers and receiving constant feedback on your product would help you stay focused and build only what is really needed.

Paul Graham of Y Combinator always suggests that an ideal combination of expertise in startup founders is both marketing and technical. He goes further to say that, startups that see customers and sell even before their product is ready have rarely failed, than startups that keep waiting until their product is ready for release.

Rule 2: 50% Marketing and 50% development

There are many startups despite building useful products have failed, mainly because they haven't put in the required effort into marketing their product or service. Most technical founders fail to realize that, for a product to succeed it needs the same amount of effort in both development and marketing. Make sure you spend 50% of time into marketing and 50% into development to avoid the trap of failure. Mark my word, founders who follow this time allocation religiously are very likely to build a useful product and succeed.

Rule 3: See users from day 1

Developing any product is hard and requires huge amount of effort. I’ve always enjoyed working with the latest technologies, and wanted those to be implemented in our app. But more often I realized that those features were not really needed. Despite trying to build a minimum viable product, I’ve always ended up building more than what is required, there by wasting precious time and energy.

I’ve always wanted to have a completed product before I saw customers and I kept working hard on it. It was a huge mistake, and I realized it the hard way. From then on, I promised myself that I will see at least one potential user per day.

Going and seeing users early on would help you focus your energy on building only what is required. You are very likely to bring your product to the market twice as fast or even faster if you just do this. Seeing your target users would also test your belief on your product. If there are any changes or improvements, you are likely to implement them early on. This would also help you recruit customers and build a base of potential users when you are ready to launch your product or service. These potential customers, could become your core group of users from which you could build on.

Rule 4: Meet customers daily

I understand that, seeing a user/customer on a daily basis is a little too ambitious for startups while building a product, but this will help you build a useful product that people love and avoid building something that may not be used. Majority of the startups fail because they build something that is not useful or don’t go around marketing the product that they built.

There will be days when you may want to work on your product than seeing customers, this day could turn into a week or a month. In that time you may also loose touch with your customers. Working on your product continuously, may seem to speed up your product roll-out, but in my experience I have always realized that seeing a customer and listening to them was equally important. Most of the time, I came back with a renewed sense of clarity and purpose.

Rule 5: Make money

Every sales person understands the importance of making money, but many technical founders don’t. This is not some thing that drives them. Technical founders have to realize that, making money helps them do what they love.

As a technical founder I had always thought that building something cool was really great. Both myself and my co-founder, both being technical we built many cool stuff but hardly made any money building them. We had always thought that, if we build something useful users will automatically come and keep using it. But this is not always true.

You will not survive long without making money, therefore prepare 2 or 3 different ways that you can make money. Don’t compare yourself with Google or Facebook and say that we will make money through advertising. This works for a very few companies and it’s too long into the future and you may not survive for that long.

Rule 6: Don’t give up

Building a startup is like a marathon and you need to sustain the hardships that come up during this journey. The simplest way, to not give up is to stay engaged with your product by either building new features or refining existing ones. Another key aspect is to stay connected with your customers by updating them with the progress and seeking feedback.

When things are not going to plan (which happens all the time), its easy to get demotivated and distracted. When you think this is happening, acknowledge it to yourself and seek inspiration either by reading books or listening to stories about the hardships in building a startup. If you have a mentor, it would be great to have a conversation and discuss it with them. If you have a co-founder this will help you immensely, as the other co-founder/s may have a positive outlook while you at a low point.

During this time period, avoid blaming yourself instead focus on the learning's that you have had and remind yourself of your purpose. You are likely to come back feeling that these sacrifices are necessary to achieve a bigger objective.

Wishing you all the best in your startup journey.