Mistakes Startup Founders Make

Sometimes the passion and push for speed to market can result in avoidable mistakes.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Founders are nothing if not passionate. In fact, one of the main indicators of success that seed investors look for when considering investment in a startup is the obsession of the founder and how committed they are to their idea. However, sometimes that passion and push for speed to market can result in avoidable mistakes.

Based on the success of my last Medium piece on this topic, I wanted to share a few more pointers. After nearly a decade of defining and launching new products and services across several industries, here are a few avoidable, and sometimes fatal, mistakes that I’ve noticed are common when bringing new offerings to market.

Building something you want instead of what your target audience wants.

This trap is the easiest to fall into when you are trying to build and define your first product, or when you are trying to recover a product that hasn’t been doing well. With little to no money to spend on market research and a desperate need for speed to market, many founders and early employees decide to use their own experience and intuition to define what to build or how to modify a product. This can help to an…