7 + 3 Lessons From Failed Startups
Great Inc post on lessons from a failed startup include:
1. Consider the entire experience
2. Raise money when you can not when you need too
3. Don't give away equity too soon or too fast
Read the other 4 from the Inc post: https://www.inc.com/yoram-solomon/7-lessons-you-should-learn-from-my-failed-startup.html
I'd add three of my own lessons from my "failed startup":
1. Don't think in terms of success and failure, win and lose. Think about impact, learning, and potential. Startups require a more nuanced sense of win/lose.
2. Don't hire your friends even if they are the right people because you are probably blind to faults, issues, or other "round peg in square hole" problems with friends.
3. Create any startup in collaboration with customers. Don't do the "mad inventor" thing and go off and think you've created a better mousetrap. You won't. Instead, collaborate and build on what you learn from real customers facing immediate problems.
I lifted Eric Ries' Lean Startup book cover on purpose. Today I realized that what a #startup actually IS has changed a lot. Lisa Gansky hinted at these changes in her book Meshing It, but creating http://www.curecancerstarter.org is making the need to design conversations and collaborate with existing scaled partners a clear WINNER for any startup.
GOOGLE is the reason. Google's system now rewards existing trusted site almost to the exclusion of everyone else. Startups don't have the TIME needed to create the TRUST required so find a partner and hop on their back... at least for a little bit while you are through the now very brutal MVP (minimal viable product) phase.