Ten things I have learned from failing miserably at building startups… Part — 1

You all must know this thing, the easiest part of creating a startup is actually building it, the hard part is make someone to give a shit about it…

I write this for those who are starting with a first project or are in the middle of one.

I speak from experience, I’ve been building things the last few years, and while I haven’t made the big shot yet I’ve been learning a lot about the process.

I could say I don’t live at silicon valley or any other fancy place to be an entrepreneur or other excuses, but to be realistic, nobody cares what your limitations are, that’s does not mean your limitations are not there, that just mean that nobody cares…

It’s simple, when I go to a restaurant and order a burger I don’t think about the hard life that the owner of the restaurant may be facing, and nobody does that, and it works in both sense.

The toughest part on failing is at least for me, all the hard work you and the people that supports have put on the thing and then everything just does not works.

But we are not here to cry and regret about how we fail, that’s not for us.

So, the first thing I learned from all this valley of tears is:

1. - Do the homework

If you call yourself an entrepreneur or whatever fancy title you want to give to yourself, then you need to understand that unless you have tons of money to undertake then you will need to do the must of the hard work by yourself, that includes all those tasks we don’t like to do, personally I don’t like to sales, I hate to have to talk to people, and etc. I am a programmer I love my desk, my chair, my laptop, my earphones, and my miserable loneliness, that’s what I prefer, but as I we said before nobody gives a shit about what I like to do or not. so have to do all the things I don’t like or I don’t want to do anyway besides I have to do all this things as good as if I love it.

At the beginning of my entrepreneurship I wanted everything fast, the things does not works that way, there are no shortcuts to success, you have to get all the work done first.

Do you need feedback from user prospects? Then find these people and get in touch with them.

Do you need to create better looking content to stand out from the crowd? Then create that content or find someone who can help you, we live in the tutorial era, you can learn everything from internet, just skip this weekend Netflix night and dedicate it to learn what you need to get the work done, surely you will suck at it but if you need the things to be done and have no budget then what is the option?

You need a mindset of “I can do this shit” to learn what it takes if you cannot pay to someone to do it for you.

So the first thing I have learned in summary:

Do all it takes to get what your startup needs to grow.

2.- Don’t fool yourself, the most probably is that your “idea” is not the new Facebook

I have been there, you have this great new idea, but trust me, as soon as you understand your idea is only that an idea the better.

The only thing that proves your idea is good is the market, if the market is paying for a working idea then you were right, you had a good idea in between your eyebrows, but before it happens you will have to build the shit out, and until that happens you are only guessing. Of course you must to validate the market by consulting and prospecting customers or users, but to be honest this only gives you a part of the whole, is until your MVP is out and being used that you will know how it really sucks.

It doesn’t mean you will throw your startup idea and sit to cry in a corner, but you must understand that doesn’t matter if you think you have the best business idea in history, the must probably is that is not and this will help you to build your product outside your ego and focus on what market really needs or wants.

A good thing to do is to find negative feedback, as much as you can, in the last months I’ve been pitching for mentors and is really tough to hear that your idea sucks, that your business plan sucks, even I’ve been told I should change everything, but all this is necessary to grow, you have to make your skin thick in order to withstand all criticism and more important, to learn from those who have more experience than you.

In summary:

Do not put yourself or your idea on a pedestal, look for negative feedback and learn to look for flaws in your project. Be your toughest critic.

3.- Do not wait a year to fail

As I told I’ve been failing a lot, and at my first tries I used to wait to much to launch, always had irrational fears about launching the product, about the technology, about the model, about the approach I was doing, but trust me, does not matter how long you wait to heal all those stupid fears, the probability of failing still being really high.

So if the most probably is that you are going to fail anyway then don’t wait for months, just launch your MVP and start attracting users or customers they will tell you if your fears were real or you just were making a storm on a glass of water.

Your customers will tell you the truth, at least about what they think about your product.

So this point is easy:

Just don’t wait forever, is better to learn on the go from real life problems and from real customers.

4.- What works for ones does not work for others

I love to read a lot, and I love to learn about other people doing awesome stuff but that does not mean I have to do what they do in order to succeed, of course there are a lot of useful advises from successful people but we all are different, with our own contexts, our own possibilities, skills, etc. So we cannot think that if we plan our day exactly like Elon Musk does we are going to succeed, think that way is stupid. Instead of imitating what others do I rather try to find my own flow, the way the things works for me.

Find your own way to do the things does not mean you can be a mess at work for example, you still need discipline and hard work but maybe the things does not work for you in schedules of five minutes, maybe you are a night person, or you prefer to work two hours and rest one, I don’t know, whatever that works for you is fine always you reach your goals.

Another important thing on this point is to not compare yourself with others, we tend to compare ourselves with other people usually negatively, and that will make you miserable, also compare with others is the principle to blame others for our mistakes. Your best point of reference should be yourself in order to find a way to improve yourself day by day.

In summary:

Is good to take advises, but always do your own thing, you will not succeed only by imitation.

5.- Work on things that you are willing to bleed

Working on a startup or any enterprise if you are serious about it involves a lot of hard work, frustration and stress as part of the process and the fact that you really like the project and all its parts helps tolerate the hardest parts.

I must tell you that it is also likely that at first you do not earn anything from your startup, at least for the first six months, so you’d better love what you do.

On top of that, many of us choose to build startup because we seek to follow our passion, if so, then why should we work on something we do not like?

So this is some of the things I have learned in the last couple of years and I hope it help you in some way.

See you the next time.

If you have any question you can reach me at: https://twitter.com/luis_acervantes