Ask HN: What should first-time entreprenuers know that they probably don't?
For anyone who wants to start a business, what are the most important things they should know that isn't common knowledge?
Say no to Hammer and find your Nail(s): When you think like a hammer everything is a nail, startups are rarely that (especially early on). Nails are the actual problems you want to solve and Hammers are the one trick pony's that might help you solve them. To put this into context: You can do a AI startup that can solve Cancer, Credit Card Frauds and more but you need to find a problem you want to solve and not the solution first.
Talk to your customers: You will always see that your product, service is being used in ways you never thought about before. Stay grounded and you will soon have better ways of growing your startup (and or increasing retention).
Decide a north Star: This should help you measure if your product/startup is going in the right direction. A north star is often a proxy for the health of your product/startup so don't go for MAU's and DAU's but rather something that is actionable + contextually related to your offerings.
Not everyone makes it (quickly): Most startups fail due to small but significant things. Trying to do things too quickly is one of the most surest way to die. Media paints a rosy picture of how founders did a lot of superhuman tasks and that is the exception and not the rule. What makes any superhuman founder super are: Patience, Hustle and persistence.
Enjoy the process: Don't just do 120 hours a week and expect to get rewarded with a couple of million dollars in the next 6,12,18 yada yada months. Start a startup, it is like raising a baby, you need to go through the motions of raising a child, also not every child is the same, also don't have orphan child's (Products that are neglected and or have no parents/product owners). Good luck!
- Related to the above, you will learn more useful information about running a business from a person who runs traditional business, not other startup founders or blog posts. It's well worth chatting to some. Sure there are differences (eg fundraising, spending) but the basic operations remain the same.
- This is often said, but I think people gloss over it. If you are doing it for the money, then you are not very good at financial management. Do it only if you enjoy serious challenge, want to build something huge and need some big guns (VCs) to help you achieve it.
- If you are setting up a B2B business you should ideally have a few years salary saved. These things take time.
- Overestimate costs and underestimate profits when budgeting, where possible. It's great to have more money than you planned - it can be catastrophic to have less.
IOW, "entrepreneurship is a contact sport" so to speak. You can read all the books, watch all the videos, etc. (and yes, please do, there's good stuff there) but until you go out and try to apply it, a lot of it won't truly sink in.
For example... it's been said plenty of times that "Nobody else cares about your startup" (or some close variation of that). You can read that and nod your head and say "uh, huh". And then you start talking to investors, reporters, prospective co-founders, prospective customers, advisors, etc., etc. And once you're met with a collective shrug and "meh" response from all of those people, despite the fact that you know that your thing is THE GREATEST NEW THING EVER, you'll truly understand the "nobody else cares" thing. After all, all of those people have their own ideas, passions, dreams, aspirations, distractions, etc., to deal with. When you think about it in hindsight, it's not hard to understand why people aren't usually going to be super interested in your baby from day one.
Anyway, that's just one example of what I mean. That tidbit is "out there" but reading it isn't the same as living it.
This is one reason why "just get started" is good advice. Yes, learn what you can, whether it's from reading, watching videos, consulting live mentors / advisors (SCORE[1] is good for this, BTW), but the sooner you start playing "with pads on" (to use a football analogy) the sooner your real learning will start.
Similar note about what somebody famous (pg? Horowitz? Andressen? I forget...) said about "the most important part of being an entrepreneur is managing your own internal mental state". You can read that, but you probably won't fully appreciate it until you're deep in the pit of despair, just on the verge of giving up, asking yourself why you even bothered to start in the first place, and then something turns your way, your mood improves and you realize "shit, if I'd quit then like I almost did, it would have been completely stupid". Go through a few of those cycles and you really start to understand that the single biggest thing you have to do is manage your own emotions and not get too low, or too high, such that it derails your progress.
I say you have to just start, and then make it a point to say "the first 2, or 3, or 5, or 10 times that I'm tempted to quit, I'm going to push through and not give up, and see what happens". But, easier said than done.