Startup stories are always smoother in the telling than they are in reality. A startup is not one, but a series of 'Aha!' moments, and some which seem like 'Aha!' moments but turn out not to be.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Working on a startup is a balancing act: being crazy enough to believe your idea can take off but not crazy enough to miss the signs when it's clearly not going to.
The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can't quite imagine if you've spent your whole career in a corporation.
Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting 'good enough decision making' and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model.
All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them.
It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.
Like having a child, running a startup is the sort of experience that's hard to imagine unless you've done it yourself.
Not all startups are alike. One of the key ways they differ is in the relationship between a startup's new product and its market.
The most important thing in startups is getting a product to market, as imperfect as it may be, and then iterating on it and continually making it better. A first rev of a site that has a few typos may not be perfect, but it was the start of something that I deeply believed in.
Startups are often very undercapitalised, but I found that to be very beneficial because it forces you not to throw money at problems. Instead, you learn all the nuts and bolts of what you're doing and become an expert.
The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.