Top mistakes you should avoid as an entrepreneur

No one said it was easy. If it was easy, everybody would have done it. But it’s not.

Being an entrepreneur is one of the most challenging things you would experience in your life. But if you are not into challenges maybe entrepreneurship it’s not suitable for you.

Step 1: Realize that you will face failures during this process, it’s completely normal.

Step 2: Use these mistakes as a map in your journey. Make your mistakes beneficial lessons.

What do you learn from your mistakes?

Short memory is limited and mistakes tend to fade over time, having less and less consequence in future action. That’s why we need to write them down and find how we could avoid the same mistakes in the future.

Step 3: Learn from the mistakes others did before you.

“In my experience, each failure contains the seeds for your next success. If you are willing to learn from it.” -Paul Allen

Top mistakes you should avoid in the early stages.

Product-market fit

You come up with a brilliant idea and share it with some friends. You are very excited to see your idea come true but you ignore something really important. Here is the trap! Some entrepreneurs fall in love with their idea too hard, making it too hard to notice its flaws.. Of course, you should be passionate about your product ideas, but founders who are too emotionally invested often ignore the warning flags.

Is this product idea something that people need?

What does it mean? You have to make sure that your product idea can satisfy the market place. Your product should meet their demands, their desires, and their expectations. Don’t forget your customers!

If your product fails, it’s not the customers’ fault.

Working alone

Individuals can’t create a big business, only a good team can. If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you should learn how to cooperate with others. Once you select your team members you need to influence them with your brand vision. A valuable team could produce more and achieve better results than an individual. Let’s take a look at the biggest companies in the world, all of which are working with big teams.

Expecting success quickly

Unfortunately, most people who start a business usually have high expectations. Success is not an overnight procedure. It takes time to reach your greatest goals. You have to be patient and work with consistency in order to beat the top.

Does Bill Gates succeed within one year of hard work? He didn't.

Products take too long to launch

You have your product idea. But it takes time to build all the features. You can plan and research forever to develop your ideal product. But the key is to go out there, your potential customers will give you real feedback.

Simplify your product and show your customers your minimum valuable product to give them the idea of what it is. Be careful a bad product can ruin your reputation!

Lacking the ability to pivot

When it comes to the market, every entrepreneur will say that nothing goes as planned. Customer needs are unpredictable. Consequently, the ability to pivot is part of the game.

Even Airbnb started as a provider of housing solutions focus around conferences but soon they realized that it wasn’t sustainable. So opened it up to travelers looking for a cheaper place to stay and an authentic local experience. Today Airbnb is worth $4.2 billion.

Founders faced the failure and tried to make a fundamental shift in their business model, based on customer learnings.

Like Paul Graham said, “Starting startups is just like everything else. The biggest mistake you can make is not to try hard enough.”