Best Tips & Advices For Startup Founders From Powerful People to Achieve Success WikiWalls

Struggling with your startup? I know it sucks but one day it will pay off if you don’t stop moving. After spending a lot of time with my own startup and reading hundred of articles I have collected lot of amazing helpful and motivational tips that every startup Founder should read and follow.

Table of Contents

Do Ideas Matter?

The first step is to have an idea that can survive and bring some good results. All ideas are good, we can’t say any idea is bad as we can’t think like the Founders who is creating it. Founders are the one who sees the vision so never evaluate any startup on the basis of the idea. It may become-day big company. Still, there are some things you should take care of while you start working.

It’s not about good ideas or bad ideas: it’s about ideas that make people talk.

Evaluating the idea:

First think about idea that is it was possible before?, If yes then why someone havent did it before, if not then find the reason and if you can beat the reason then do it.
Share the idea with everyone to get honest feedback, no one is going to steal your idea, if someone copied your idea then its mean there is something really amazing in your idea and you can continue with it and join that team or ask that one to join you. + No one can work the way you can work on your idea.

Should you work on it?

Is it the thing you can spend your next 20 years with?
Find the reason “why to not work on your idea” and you will get more detail thinking.
Is it something really you are passionate about?

Pitching Your idea

Pitching is very important part of startup life. Every time you share your startup with someone, you actually pitch them. Good pitches can lead you to million dollars funding while bad pitches can bring you down. Here are some suggestions while you are pitching in any meeting, conference or to the investor.

Tell a story.
Add Humor to it.
Keep it short, simple & easy to understood.
Personalize your pitch according to the audience.

Elevator Pitch (60 sec – verbal)

You should always have your elevator pitch ready to pitch it to anyone. Average founders get funding after pitching more than 300 times.

Problem: One big problem you are solving
Solution: One statement clear solution
Target Market: A market you are addressing.
Competition: Direct & indirect, think about what advantages your solution offers over the competition.
Team: Right Team, what is good for your team, that can lead you to success.
Financial summary: Business Model, Expenses, and Funding required.
Milestones: What you have achieved and what you have planned.

Product Advice

“Do any users love your product so much they spontaneously tell other people to use it?” Until that’s a “yes”, founders are generally better off focusing on this instead of a growth target.

The bigger the problem you solve, the more the money you make.
Pick one problem your company focus and stay with it.
Do something new, instead of old things. If you copy someone you will compete with others and won’t do something. Play Monopoly, create monopoly instead of multiply.
Building a startup requires 100% of your time, money and network
Solve the small problem of the big market.
Always start with a micro niche.
Put yourself into the shoes of your customers to understand their needs.
Contact the people in morning, it’s the best time.
Technology helps you scale so focus on groundbreaking tech.
You have to make startup your wife and other works your Girl Friend.
Need money, don’t be ashamed, ask your friends, family and VCs.
You cant make a successful thing that people dont need, you need to focus on thing people like the most.
Build viable products and then check market and customer reaction.
Have a female in your startup, they will introduce you to new perspective you usually can’t go.

Startup Life

Validating the product idea with customers – Do people want what you have to offer?
Understanding the importance of co-founders, partners, and team members – Have you surrounded yourself with people you share your mission and values?
How and when to be aggressive – Do you have what it takes to pick up the phone and dial customers?
Recognizing that fundraising is time-consuming – Do you have a more reliable means of funding, even if it’s limited?
Keeping your eyes on the financials – How will you make money?
Sustaining a long-term vision – Have you clearly established the milestones you want your company to achieve?
Raising too much – Is your product refined enough to invest considerable money into?
Building a unique product – Does your product focus on too small of an audience?
Remembering to continue building the business – Even if you’re the company is already successful, how do plan to acquire more users and increase awareness?
Finding the right investors – Do your investors share your company’s mission and values?
Work Hard or Smart: Trying to do something the same way over and over again can be counted a hard work. But stop for a moment. Think. Do I need to do this repeatedly, mind-numbingly? Is there a better way – a smarter way where I can achieve the same result with less effort? Every such problem of hard work has a unique but smart solution. Find out.

Some Important Financial Advice

Let’s assume that you and your team are smart and hardworking and addressing a reasonable market. This is a good assumption most of the time. Then the principle reason a startup fails is because it runs out of money. Sounds like a “dualism,” but it’s not. As long as you have money, you’re still in the game. When you’re out, you’re out. So the thing to do is ABC: always be cheap. Unlike life, money buys living time when it comes to startups.”

“Stay lean. It’s not going to be fun, but keep your startup as small as possible. Keep the team as small as possible, lower the business’s budgets and maybe even consider cutting your own wage as the founder. This is definitely not the time to “look” like success — your work must speak for itself. Efficiency and turning a profit is the only way to look safe to investors.”

“My philosophy was to get as far as possible with a small seed round. To do this, I thought keeping my day job would allow me to spend the money wisely on product or marketing actions“. Wrong. Quit your job (if you can), and get down to business. Period. You need to be dedicated to your project, meet people, talk about it, code and hack this sh*t out of it. At the end of the day, I was doing both things wrong: my day job, and my startup.

Why do Startups fail?

Startups fail when they are not solving a market problem. You may not be solving a large enough problem that we could universally serve with a scalable solution. You may have great technology, great data, great reputation, great expertise, great advisors, etc. but what if you didn’t have was technology or business model that solved a pain point in a scalable way.

Advice From Top Leaders

Meet everyone you can and follow up with them.
Only take the advice of people who have been successful at what you want to do.
Stretch outside your comfort zone.
Life means to live with freedom, so be ready to face all the challenges with fun.
Handshaking and eye contact show everything about Founders, so make sure you practice it hundred times before you do business with serious people.
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

Motivation For You

Realize that you can do something 10 times bigger, 10 times better, 10 times faster.
Always Be Postive.
Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.” — Bryant McGill;
No one will believe in you unless you do.
You’ll get everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.

Hope these tips may help you in your startup life. Most of these points come from Startup leaders and Founder whom I follow and read. I have just collected the important points for my personal notes but then I thought to share it with others too. Let me know if these were helpful to you. Also, share if you have something important.