Things you’ll learn the hard way after starting a company
When I first started my company over a year ago, we had a great idea (or so we thought), a great team (not even close) and a fail-proof business plan (which ended up failing miserably). I always thought the hardest parts of building a company would mostly revolve around building great products, making sure customers buy them and keeping a constant stream of revenue flowing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
When you start building a company you quickly learn that the social climate within the company matters just as much as the product or service you’re offering. All it takes is one person to bring down the efficiency of the entire team, one toxic person to bring down everyone’s morale or one slow worker to keep everyone else waiting. I would’ve never thought in a million years that I would be in a position where I would have to solve other people’s personal problems in order to get my company back on track.
This is just one among a long list of things that I didn’t think would matter as much or wouldn’t be as hard to work on during my time as an entrepreneur. This post is dedicated to informing the reader about some of the mistakes I made while starting out, so you don’t end up doing the same.
Hiring
The price of a bad hire cannot be understated. Early on in the company when we didn’t have a lot of money, we just assumed that we’d hire people in the middle of the market till we had enough cash flowing to get really good people, and we had assumed that the ‘okay’ hires would catch up to the really good hires by then. Looking back now, I couldn’t have been more wrong. People are complicated — they have different motives, aspirations, work-ethics, goals and it is very hard to find people who are on the same wave-length as you.
Just because you hire someone really good doesn’t mean that they’re going to be as dedicated to put in the time to help you build your company, and just because someone is okay at something now doesn’t mean they cannot be amazing at it in the future. There is a lot of nuance that I missed while starting out, and one bad hire can sometimes make or break your company. What you should be aiming for is not just building a team of the most capable people, but rather people who are capable and who believe in your vision and ideas, who are genuinely interested in helping you build your company all while growing their own skills and careers in the process. Knowing what I know now, I would pick a great-attitude over skill any-day.
Talent + Culture fit + long term potential = A HR Nightmare
Company Culture
Now that you have great hires, the next hard part is keeping them. If the people in your company feel under-appreciated, feel like they don’t have room to grow or simply don’t enjoy their work environment, they are very likely to quit the second something better comes along.
You need to put in a lot of effort into ensuring that everyone in your company have a great degree of freedom with the way they approach work, feel comfortable expressing their ideas, not be afraid to stand up for what they feel is right, and have enough room to stay creative. Getting this balance right is very tricky and takes a lot of trial and error.
Your company policies should be flexible enough to give everyone a sense of freedom while not skimping out on their responsibilities. In my experience, most people prefer working at a place with more freedom over a place that’s more restrictive with greater benefits.
Delegating
When you start your company, there are going to be times when you just know you can do things better yourself, and it makes no sense to delegate it to someone else. The company is your baby, after all.
But you only have 24 hours in a day, and it is impossible for you to be everywhere and do everything. You need to get comfortable delegating work that isn’t vital for you to be involved, even when you know you can do it better. Your company should be built on trust, and if you assign a task to someone capable, you need to have the confidence that they’ll get it done. Otherwise, just hire better.
Finances
Keeping an eye on finances may seem very obvious, but it’s also something that’s very easy to lose control of. Every small expense you make will compound over time, and if you aren’t careful you’ll end up dead in the water.
One thing you should especially keep your eye out for are SaaS tools and services. On the onset, they may seem like a menial amount (Usually somewhere around $10/user). However, as your company scales and as you require more and more tools, the cost can become quite significant, and a lot of the tools may end up being redundant when your team has other tools that already have that original functionality built in.
Hire a really good CA and don’t skimp out on it early on. They’ll end up helping you save a lot of money right from the get-go.
Time Management
If you’re an early-stage founder, it may seem like you have a hundred different things to do and no time to do them.
Prioritization is key here. I’ve met other founders who do a ton of things everyday and yet they feel like they’re going nowhere. The reason is that while they may be doing a lot in terms of number of tasks, the impact those tasks have towards the company’s goals may be very little. The only way this can be combated is through good personal planning and discipline.
Taking care of yourself
You see all other founders around you hustling with 3–4 hours of sleep and no days off but the truth is, this isn’t sustainable at all. Your body will crash and take your company down with it.
Even if you feel like you don’t have time, exercise, watch your mental health and get decent sleep. The loss in efficiency and productivity because of lack of personal care is exponential, and simply isn’t worth it in the long run.
Project Tinker is a Bangalore based startup aimed at helping ideators with the tools they need to build out their amazing ideas. To learn more about what we do and how we do it, visit project-tinker.com
