Conceptual cookbook for start-up (value of doing)

Think about what you can do to make other’s life easier

Research shows that a single person is happy if he makes other people happy. Making money is not strong enough reason, because when get hard, you will find out that there is plenty other ways where you can earn more than in start-up, and quit.

But if your reason is to do something right, you will not quit so easy. Elon Musk used to say that it doesn’t matter if it is hard, expensive, or no probable to succeed, if it is right and must be done to improve humanity, do it.

Write a story

Before written word, knowledge was shared via spoken stories. You can do the same, or write it down. It is good to have a starting point. Something structured, where you present yourself the idea.

Did you have experience, that you solved some problem, just by talking to someone, or by writing it down in e-mail to ask for help, and then throw e-mail because you found the solution?

By speaking, and writing we organize our thoughts. Maybe is a good thing to have a starting point, something that is product of organized thoughts.

But I think more freely and creative, structuring makes me slower and boxed in words. OK, use spoken words, but pretend that you present to someone, and then it will stick in your mind.

Just start

Fear is the biggest enemy of human being. It is triggered by unknown, variable, without pattern. It can be easily avoided, you just do need to do nothing, wait for perfect circumstances, wait forever.

All before is not important as start executing. You can be completely wrong in all previous steps, but will find out when start executing. But I am not sure, if it is right. You will not know it until you start doing real things.

Only ensure reasonable losses i.e. some pilot project, if completely wrong, that don’t lose too much money. But without this step you can’t get pass. You won’t know so important details, and won’t face any problem until get into it.

Expect to be wrong

It is reasonable to expect that some actions will be with good consequences, some with bad. On average, keep going, and repeat the steps.

To conclude, help to some person, organize thoughts, start doing and have attitude that being wrong meaning getting feedback.

One of ingredient of start-up to succeed (know how to build a product)

I wondered, if you have two start-ups, building the same product, which one would you rate as more promising. What criteria would you use to separate them? 

My thoughts are on founder's knowledge to build a product from scratch by itself. 

I used to see start-up being very promising, with great idea, founder was high caliber manager and sales person, starting funding was good, and which failed after a five years. Business started well, capital was raised very fast, revenue grew rapidly, clients were interested to come, new product prototypes were often presented. 

 

Profit was not seemed to be important in these early days. 

And then came the days after the early days, prototypes were great, but customers expected to see, as promised, more quality and more features. There were no responses from the start-up. 

Employees at start-up tried, but faced with problems in execution and didn't succeed, so asked for helping hand, but leader who started the wheels, wasn't the tech guy, who can build the product. He knew all around the product: its future functionalities and capabilities, but not in technical detail how to build it to become so featured and enhanced. 

Start-up is all about the product. 

In very early days of start-up, person with the highest level of energy, motivation, failure and stress resistance is the founder, and it could not be expected from employee to have such capabilities and solve the hardest problems, the founder is the one. 

If founder lack knowledge on how to build a product from scratch, the start-up is weak, and rate of failure is for sure higher. 

To conclude, being founder, manager or sales person in early start-up is not enough, the one should know how to build a product, and then he might succeed.