18 Months in a VC-Backed Startup: Learning from Mistakes
A lot of people tell you that Universities or MBAs will prepare you for work. Your parents do. Your professors do. They say education will provide you with the skills needed to overcome emerging challenges and do your job.
Well, after 18 months working for a VC-backed venture, I can say that nothing is farther from the truth when it comes to the Startup world.
There is only one rule there: take calculated risks and learn from experience.
And that’s what I have done: I took risks, I experimented, I made many mistakes and I have learned a lot from them. And that’s what I think the most important lessons are:
- Don’t Over-Optimise: at the beginning, your main goal is to refine your Unique Value Proposition. Processes can be crappy and databases can be imperfect, but it doesn’t really matter: there will always be room for improvements. Only one things matters: why a customer should choose your product over others! Focus on it and the rest will follow.
- Conversions Are About Common Sense [that’s my favorite one]: don’t be overwhelmed by data. When you don’t have a precise feedback from your customers, do what it feels right: getting to conversions is often a matter of common sense. Does the customer have all the info it needs to start using your product? Is your product really unique? That’s what really matters. Improving conversion rates by 0.1% by moving a button from left to right is crucial for Amazon, not for a startup in search for product/market fit.
- Hire Everyday: you will always need brilliant people and you should meet them before desperately needing their help. When you are forced to hire quickly you don’t have much time to evaluate alternatives and your bargaining power gets reduced accordingly. Moreover, doing frequent interviews and constantly advertising open positions inhibit competitors and employees to understand that you are in hiring mode.
- Be Inspired By Others: don’t be afraid to copy what others do. Understanding drivers behind others’ behaviours can save you from costly errors. Look at their homepage, at the way they talk to customers and at their marketing channels. Assume rationality in others’ behaviours: if someone was trying to do what you are trying to do now and has discontinued, there must be a reason. Open a dialogue with competitors and potential partners as soon as possible: learn from them, acknowledging that a potential competitor could be a good partner today and vice versa.
- Be Market-Led: lead marketing and product efforts together. Don’t let the product define priorities, but develop features on the basis of concrete customer needs and marketing goals. Every product requires distribution, so test your marketing strategy while you are building it (or even before that). Past choices and existing product shouldn’t define today’s priority: don’t be afraid to kill unused features, so that you can stop related marketing or maintenance activities and focus on the future.
These are my 5 short advice to you. I hope you find them useful and I wish you to make many other mistakes, while learning from them.
Have a good journey,
— Livio (@LivMKk)
