Startup advice

Some lessons I learned while building General Folders

It’s been quite the journey building General Folders so far. I learned things I wish I had before starting the company. I also learned things at past jobs that proved helpful with company building. Below is a list of these lessons. I hope that you find them useful on your journey!

Build a team. Hire co-founders, but for the right reasons. Two can be better than one, but you can’t rush building the first team.

People first. Technology second.
— Biz Stone

Be genuinely passionate. The secret to hiring great people is to be knowledgeable and passionate about the product and business. Passion is contagious, and expertise is hard to fake. The same holds true for sales: don’t underestimate the impact of stoke on selling a product.

Define the MVP. A startup has limited resources, so the scope of the first version matters. Customers expect quality products regardless of the size and stage of a company. Determine the minimum amount of product required to get 1) customer buy-in and 2) relevant feedback.

From here.

As it turns out, this is an exercise that a company repeats over and over. There’s never an infinite budget for any product. Further, it’s rarely a good idea to build in a vacuum.

The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.
—Aaron Levie

Talk to customers. Nothing benefits a company more than customer feedback. Never lose sight of it. Feedback saves products and companies from veering off the tracks into irrelevance.

You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.
—Aaron Levie

Embrace change. Don’t get obsessed with a certain decision or plan. If product reception is anything but stellar, update your strategy.

Follow the crowd. Tried and true practices are popular for a reason. It pays to follow the crowd if you know the time and place to apply a technique.

Business is very situational. Rules of thumb are good, but they have to be applied to the right situation. Sometimes the old maxim that you should stick to the knitting is correct, but sometimes it’s wrong. And a senior leader’s job is to figure out: Which situation are you in?
— Jeff Bezos

Follow trends. Don’t ignore market trends. Following trends makes you more likely to get noticed, talked about, and funded.

Hire an accountant. While it pays to follow trends, plan for the dry season. New trends always give way to newer trends — it’s funny how that works.

Stand out. While following trends can be rewarding, sometimes it pays to focus on what you uniquely believe to be true. You can’t expect a significant return without taking on a risk nobody else wants to take.

Most of the big breakthrough technologies/companies seem crazy at first: PCs, the internet, Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, 140 characters.. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, ‘I don’t get it, I don’t understand it. I think it’s too weird, I think it’s too unusual.’
— Marc Andreessen

If you’re waiting for encouragement from others, you’re doing it wrong. By the time people think an idea is good, it’s probably too late.
—Aaron Levie

Hustle. Aside from being a function of big risk, a big return is also the result of hard work. There are no shortcuts.

There is no royal road to geometry.
— Euclid

Make the call. There is no single way to run a successful company, and there are endless decisions to make with incomplete information. Indecision is a decision. Make the call. Use every decision as an experiment to learn more about your business.

Action produces information. You got to put a lot of shots on goal to get one to eventually work.
— Brian Armstrong

Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.
— Drew Houston

There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
— Ben Horowitz

Move fast. Faster is better, but only when the goal is to serve customers and tend to their needs. Rushing for PR purposes comes at the expense of quality, which eventually tarnishes the brand.

My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.
— Marc Andreessen

Don’t get ahead of yourself. Company building is not about glamorous headlines, outlandish predictions, or visionary speeches. It’s about building a great team, a person at a time. It’s about listening to every customer. It’s about making the product better every day.

More here.

Be humble. In every scenario, assume you don’t have all the answers. This becomes even more important as you grow the employee and customer base and take on more responsibilities.

Keep learning. Evolve to become the type of leader that the company needs at each stage in its journey. Can you hire yourself every day?

Ask for help. Ask for things and get help. The startup community is more generous, welcoming, and helpful than expected.

Believe in yourself. Be kind, especially to yourself. Self-confidence is the only thing you have going for you for a long time.

Keep going. People (mainly yourself) will tell you that what you’re doing is not enough and that if it were to work, it would have. They will tell you to give up. Don’t. Stay on the path. Opportunities will come around.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
— Babe Ruth

Keep focused. Don’t compare your startup to other startups. Don’t read into startup news. You can’t judge deals from the outside. Building a great company takes more than an idea, money, or even early deals. Focus on your customers. Focus on making the product better every day.

I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way.
— Reed Hastings

Seize the day. You might not have achieved all the milestones, but you’ll never be this young ever again.

What are some of your experiences from working at startups? I’d love to hear from you!