I’ve not updated this blog in a while, but those working on startups should understand how little time we have. But since things are winding down, I’d like to talk about what I’d do differently next time. The great thing about starting a company is that you either succeed or learn a tremendous amount. I’ve gained more diverse skills and lessons in the last five years than what others would have taken decades to learn.

As long as you’re learning from mistakes and applying your wisdom, success is bound to come sooner or later. We did a lot of things right: our founding team worked well together and had enough complimentary skills to launch without hiring, we managed enough revenue such that we always had runway, we had an amazing support network from StartX, and we weren’t afraid to move fast and pivot. But here were 5 things that we could have improved on.

1 - Seek funding earlier

To prove ourselves and get a better valuation, we were waiting for 3-5 customers on hand before going to VCs, but in retrospect we should have begun immediately after the first customer. The fundraising process can take months anyway, so if you’re planning on it might as well get started earlier.

And don’t be afraid to share the pie, you may be giving up a few slices but the pie will grow a lot bigger, a lot faster. Not only are you lowering personal risk, you’re also leveraging the help of your investors, whether it’s their ideas, network, talent, or other resources. Plus, they’ll keep you in check. You’ll need all the help you can get.

2 - Open up market channels BEFORE having a product

It’s never too early to start selling and marketing. Start writing white papers, ebooks, a blog, whatever from day one. Talk to as many potential customers as you can before you even have a finished product. Figure out their true needs, it may not necessarily be the first pain point they think of.

After you have defined a clear objective, set a vision so strong that you have a reason to say no to feature requests that don’t fit (not all your customer feedback are things you should actually implement). A good way to test this is ask your co-founder(s) and employees what they think the company’s vision and goals are; hopefully they all answer the exact same thing!

3 - Don’t try to change user behavior…at least not too much

Find what their current workflow is, and make it easier, cheaper, faster, and/or feature better results. Don’t change the way they do things – people don’t like change. No matter how great your product is, if you change their workflow too much, not only will you have a tough sale, there also won’t be a way to measure improvement. This make proving your value much more difficult - both to your customers and to yourself, not to mention investors as well. Side note, you should have a 10x improvement in at least one area from them to switch from their current solution to yours.

Once everyone’s on your platform, you’ll have the power to drive more drastic changes and have many chances to upsell.

The same thing applies to the selling process. Use a pricing model that’s relevant to your industry, and mimic how your competitors are charging customers. If your customer is used to paying for consultants and already have a budget for it, then going after that purse is much easier than trying to get them to purchase a SaaS solution when they’ve never done it before. Trust me, even though we were successful in pushing this strategy through, dealing with IT, procurement, and legal was a huge waste of time and took more than a year of negotiations.

4 - Hire slow, hire well

Hire only A-players – your first hire is almost as important as a co-founder, they can make or break your company. Average people may be fine once you reach a certain size, but an employee that’s “just average” at an early stage can be absolutely detrimental. This can be harder than you think. If something’s even slightly off during their interview, whether the issue is with culture fit or ability, trust your gut and call it off.

You don’t need to come up with convoluted programming interviews either, studies have found that these don’t necessarily reflect a person’s ability to get the job done. Trial periods also seem to work at some companies. i.e. hire them as an independent contractor first to do a project, and if you like the results, extend a full-time offer.

Finally, don’t be afraid to fire fast. It’s a tough conversation to have but your company’s at stake here.

5 - Find more advisors and manage them better

We’ve encountered good advisors as well as terrible ones. For the ones that we’ve kept around, I wish we managed them a bit better, and used them to their full potential.

An amazing advisor should put action before words, especially if they have shares. Expect specific deliverables from them. For example, have them give you intros to investors or potential customers. If they don’t have the network to help you directly, see if you can leverage their other expertise. If they’re a sales expert, see if you can shadow them on a sales call. And if they’re worth their weight, you should compensate them accordingly.

Those are the main things I would’ve done differently. A lot of this advice I’ve already heard of before; at the time I have brushed it off thinking that their situation was different, that it couldn’t possibly apply to my company. How I wished I had listened. Of course, take all advice with a grain of salt. Those with different experiences feel free to chime in!

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