I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven't done the work that has built the foundation to support it.
Part of the magic of a startup is the fear of death. You have only so much money in the bank, and if you don't get to the right milestone before you run out, then the company goes under - it's over.
The challenge in a startup is you hit a lot of turbulence, and you want people who understand that it's just turbulence and not a crisis.
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.
For a lot of people, one of the reasons they don't like to work for founders of startups is that they can be sensitive and protective around what they've built. You have an emotional attachment to the early marketing and technology materials, and you don't want to hear that anything's wrong with them.
The answers to all a startup's challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.
The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
It's very important as a startup to get early press because, although it may not be a large number of people, having a 'Fast Company' story - some of those people that read it are going to be your next employees and hires, your next investors.
I will be the first to say, when I started, I was the worst on the runway ever. I feel like I try to keep learning every time I step off a runway; I try to get better with each one. I hope that I'm getting better as I go - it takes a few seasons to get your Karlie Kloss walk on.
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.
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