6 Essential Tips for First-Time Founders: Maximize Your Success

Discover essential advice for first-time founders from an experienced entrepreneur with 3 startups and 4 successful exits. Learn the importance of taking the plunge, balancing a job, wearing many hats, valuing data, and prioritizing your time. Tip #6 is crucial for your success!

6 Essential Tips for First-Time Founders: Maximize Your Success
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Jul 15, 2024 11:44 AM
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Personal Opinion on Becoming a Founder

Here's my personal opinion, with a background of 3 'proper' startups founded and 4 products/businesses sold. Most important is #6.
This advice is tailored for people thinking about becoming a founder for the first time.

1. Take the Plunge

  • The biggest differentiator between founders and non-founders is simply that we take the plunge (and we do it again and again).
  • Not being afraid to put yourself out there and what you make on the line.
  • Being open to critique is a hard thing, but it's vital to being a founder.
  • So just start. Try to launch something in the next month or two.

2. Start Small

  • This doesn't mean you have to quit your job to 'start something'.
  • I would always advise people to build a small side product in their spare time and try to get some initial traction.
  • Only once you have some proof of demand or that you're solving a real problem, can you think about quitting your job.

3. Wear Many Hats

  • You need to be able to and be comfortable wearing many hats.
  • Being able to think about the business, commercials/finance, product, marketing, etc. is crucial in the early stages.
  • The best founders are comfortable with all these domains and are great at most of them, even if they have little background in them.

4. Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

  • "Strong Opinions, Weakly Held" (not my quote).
  • Being able to put your ego and sunk costs aside when you learn something new and being able to change direction is very very important.
  • Too many founders and startups just keep on going, dying the slow death.

5. Use Data for Decision-Making

  • The best founders/teams I've worked with respect data as a vital signal in any decision-making.
  • It can never be the only signal (lots of issues with interpreting data).
  • But soooo many startups barely use data or just pay it lip service.
  • I can't tell you how many times I thought a big new feature was going to be well-received and move the needle. But the data is unemotional and tells you the cold reality, like "only 5% of users tried this feature in 30 days, and the users that tried it had the same retention and those that didn't".

6. Value Your Time

  • Place an enormous value on your own time.
  • Time is without a doubt your most precious and constrained resource.
  • If you waste it in the early stages, your chances of success will be very low.
  • The best founders ruthlessly prioritise their time — shedding unnecessary tasks/chats/meetings/random coffees.
  • They're hyper-focused on what they need to do with their time and what the company is using its collective time building.

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Written by

Alex Rainey
Alex Rainey

Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.