6 Lessons I Learned as an Entrepreneur

Today Gogobot, the company I co-founded with Ori Zaltzman, celebrates five years of being in business. In that time, we have helped more than 43MM people discover amazing places to stay, eat and play around the world. The company is growing: we just passed five million postcards and photos on the site, we now have over one million reviews on Gogobot and we closed $20 million in Series C funding just under a year ago. While we’ve flourished, our journey has not always been easy. We learned a lot of lessons along the way that I thought might be useful to other entrepreneurs:

· Let Your Users Challenge Your Assumptions — When you’re inside a company, there may be a lot of things that seem obvious to you, but not to the people who use your product. This is why it is critical to focus time on listening to your users and learning from them. There are lots of ways to listen: direct dialogue, analyzing usage data, conducing surveys and focus groups are all powerful tools. Always challenge your assumptions, and don’t be afraid to let your users (or the data they generate) challenge your assumptions too. This is not to discount the importance of instinct. As a product leader, you have to trust your gut, but you also have to validate gut feelings with data and feedback. Ask yourself, “How will we know this is working? What can we measure to understand whether the feature is providing value?” When we started, we saw Gogobot purely as a travel planning resource. However, when we decided to redesign our mobile app last year, we noticed something interesting about how our members were using Gogobot on mobile that changed the trajectory of our company. We found that 90% of mobile searches were to find places in the users’ current location. Our mobile members were primarily searching Gogobot “in the now” — researching, booking and navigating a destination either immediately or with only about 24 hours’ advance notice. This behavior completely spun the notion of what we thought Gogobot should be (a planning tool) on its head. Members were telling us, through their activity in the app, not just that they needed a great place to stay, but that they’re in Maui now and they want to know which beach they should go to this morning, or they’re in the mood for coffee not too far from their usual spot and want to know what cafes they ought to check out. That was very different behavior from what we were seeing at the time on the desktop service, where researching hotels and destinations was more common. It was a fork in the road where we could have gone one of two ways. We could have easily looked at that data and said, “Hey, these members just don’t know how to use the app,” or we could embrace the fact that our members were relying on Gogobot for more than just vacation planning. By letting our members challenge our assumptions, and acting on that feedback, we were able to unlock a whole new path for growth.

· Great Teams Build Great Companies — Focus on people. Find people who are not just brilliant, but passionate about your mission and your culture and do what it takes to retain them. Give them the space to be creative and take ownership of the mission. Inspired thinking comes from really caring about the product — wanting to make it better so they can use it in their own lives. You’ll never get inspired thinking from someone who is just there for a paycheck. If you do hire someone who is not the right fit, solve for it quickly. Bad fits can be toxic, especially in a close-knit environment. At a small company, you have to have a team that comes from diverse backgrounds, but likes working together. Over years we’ve had people who were great at what they do, but not the right fit for our culture. Don’t spend too much time trying to make the wrong person fit where they don’t. Make a decision and move on.

· Tomorrow Won’t Look Like Today — The tech space is constantly evolving. Things change radically overnight and that can create either amazing opportunities or pose massive threats to your business. Always look for ways you can grow and take advantage of market shifts. Ask your team how your business will continue to grow if the force that is driving your growth goes away. When Gogobot first came out the gates, there was a whole generation of VC-backed startups that were solely reliant on Facebook as their growth channel. While we took advantage of Facebook as a viral growth engine, we also knew we couldn’t be dependent on one company for Gogobot’s growth. When Facebook changed direction with its platform, an entire generation of companies were caught off guard and wiped off the map. We were able to not only stay afloat, but thrive, because Gogobot had understood the changing nature of technology and developed other growth channels.

· Don’t Just Disrupt an Industry, Disrupt Yourself — Maintain a passion for innovation even if it means disrupting your own product or vision. Great companies never stop iterating. You can’t be content with simply solving the one problem you set out after because the landscape is constantly shifting. Embrace new technologies and spend time with them. Virtual reality, wearables and smart cars will be changing the way people interact with information in the same way mobile did 5 years ago. Spend time thinking about how people will adopt those technologies and how you might need to disrupt yourself in order to accommodate those changes.

· Get Out of Your Own Way — Running a startup can be consuming. It can be easy to neglect everything else in your life and focus solely on the business, but that’s not good from a mental health perspective. As a dad, I knew I wanted to know my kids and to be an active part of their lives. You have to diversify your portfolio. The best business ideas don’t come to me when I’m standing at a white board. I usually come upon product ideas when I’m not expecting them, like when I’m camping with my kids, traveling with my wife or swimming in the pool before work. As an entrepreneur, you have to work incredibly hard, make no mistake about it. There’s always something I could be doing or working on. But if you work non-stop, you aren’t shifting gears. I find that it’s often when you shift gears that you’re able to get those sparks of creativity. Don’t be afraid to push yourself out of your work routine and engage other aspects of your life. There is always more work, but sometimes it’s stepping out of the work environment that helps you think about the big picture.

· Be Passionate, Not Greedy — Start a business you’re truly passionate about, not one where you think you can make a quick buck. When you are starting a company, you have to put your entire heart and soul into a business. Its often a long road. At times, it can be all consuming. If you start a business you are not passionate about, just for the sake of making money, it’s extremely easy to get burnt out. If you’re truly passionate about what you’re building, starting a business can be an incredibly fulfilling journey.

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and if you enjoyed this post, please click the thumbs up icon above and let me know.

Travis Katz is the CEO and co-founder of Gogobot. Travis is a passionate globetrotter who has been to a zillion countries (actually, 60 and counting). Prior to founding Gogobot, Travis served as managing director at MySpace International. During his tenure, he launched the brand in 30 countries and grew the user base to nearly 70 million unique visitors. Before MySpace, Travis co-founded Fox Interactive Media, News Corp’s digital arm. He spent several years in the high-tech and economic development sector working at McKinsey & Co and the World Bank, respectively. Travis has a BA from Stanford and a MBA from Wharton.