Once in my life, I tried to step down from the engineering role and kick off my own startup. The outcome? Well, I failed - the harsh reality of 90% of all startups.
Yet, I don’t regret it, although it was a hard time until I ran out of cash and realized the idea wasn’t as groundbreaking as it had seemed at the beginning. My price of one year building the company (while working full-time) included burnout, mental health problems, constant lack of energy, relationship issues, and an almost-lost job.
Still, I’m grateful for all the business, management, and life lessons I’ve learned during this period. Looking back now, I understand it’s perhaps the only way to learn these lessons.
NOTE: If you’re curious, my startup was called Imabulary. The idea was simple: you take a photo, the app detects the object in the photo, and generates a flashcard in your native and target languages. Then you could organize these flashcards into sets and take different quizzes on these sets. Find more in our pitch deck.
With that said, let’s dive straight into the first mistake.
1. Didn’t find a co-founder
Why it’s a problem
Managing every part of a new startup alone is exhausting.
Here’s a tiny list of things you’ll have to deal with from day one:
- Tons of customer interviews per day
- Pitching
- Participating in incubators and accelerators
- Writing code
- Talking to partners and investors
- Selling
Another important aspect is that most VCs prefer teams over solo founders since co-founders can diversify risks. They reasonably see solo-founded companies as more likely to fail and as those that can be led in a dictatorial or narrow-minded way.
What to do
The answer is simple! Find a partner or two.
Ideally, your business partner is your friend, classmate, or at least an acquaintance. It’s also important that you both share the same vision and have strong willpower to build a company. But watch out! Sometimes things might get so tough that they can ruin even a close friendship. I’m not saying this situation is 100% unavoidable, but be aware of such a scenario.
NOTE: But what if I don’t have the right person to be my co-founder at the moment? Don’t worry, Y Combinator (one of the largest startup accelerators in the world) created a Co‑Founder Matching Platform. This is the place where you can find a business partner even if you don’t have a business idea yet.
2. Became a CEO instead of CTO
Why it’s a problem
This one comes from the first point. Because I didn’t have a co-founder, I had to become a CEO (Chief Everything Officer).
If you’re passionate about technologies like me, you are going to feel like a fish out of water.
What to do
Same solution: find a co-founder, preferably a non-technical one (such as a product manager or marketer). Once you have a well-matched partner(s), choose a roles that best match your expertise, so everyone’s doing what they truly enjoy.
Watch out! Finding a co-founder(s) doesn’t mean you should stay isolated in your world of algorithms and patterns, avoiding real communication. It must be exactly the opposite. You have to work closely with your business partners and customers to ensure that you don’t build something that no one needs. Still, being a CTO lets you focus on technology more than on other aspects of the company.
3. Extended the team too early
Why it’s a problem
When you hire a skilled engineer, manager, marketer, or whoever else, remember: they came to do THEIR job. Don’t expect them to build YOUR business. Of course, they can give some advice or opinion in certain moments, but in 99% of the time, building the company is on you and your co-founder(s).
The people you hire obviously expect something in return. Even if you hire them for “equity”, in startup terms, that usually means for free, with a subtle hope that this equity will be worth something one day.
What to do
Verba’s founder put it well: don’t hire a full-time team unless you make $1M ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). Until then, try to cover everything with your co-founders or use part-time freelancers if it’s faster or cheaper than if you start delving into the topic by yourself.
4. Scrum is your enemy in the early stages
Why it’s a problem
First of all, I’m not a hater of Scrum. In fact, I use this framework on every project I work on. Scrum works perfectly in companies that already have significant traction: steady revenue, clients, a growing team, investments, and so on. Meanwhile, from my experience, even lightweight Scrum slows early-stage startups without traction more than it helps. Sprint velocity, backlog grooming, and ceremonies introduce overhead that kills iteration speed long before you achieve product-market fit.
I understand that experienced Scrum masters and project managers may disagree, but your goal is to ship the MVP and sell it as quickly as possible, not to deal with all the Scrum hassles. At this stage, you’ll waste your (and worse - your teammates’) invaluable time, rather than gain real benefits from Scrum.
What to do
It’s enough to have 2-3 stand-ups per week with your team so everyone is in the loop. Avoid implementing Scrum until you have clear traction and a full-time team. Try to minimize all the calls, communicate via text, and document everything so you can quickly send a link instead of hopping on a call every time.
5. Customer development is a 1-to-1 interview, not a Google Form
Why it’s a problem
- Diverse and unreliable audience - in the chats, where you probably share your customer development form, there are people with very different interests and experiences. They can be engineers, managers, or just strangers. Most of the time, people who fill out the form won’t belong to your target audience.
- Superficial answers - filling the form is a formal, routine process. The majority of people won’t dive into the details, so the quality of the data you receive is questionable.
- Missing context - you cannot understand the context in which the respondent is answering. You don’t see what issues really concern the user and whether their answer corresponds to the real situation.
What to do
Customer development is a critical topic, especially in early-stage startups. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell you everything in one article. My top three recommendations are:
- Conduct 1-to-1 interviews with people you know who belong to your target audience. It will help you to avoid the problems discussed above.
- Read “The Mom Test” and “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”. They’re often referenced as the Bibles of customer development.
- Join eo Incubator. They provide three amazing workshops that teach you customer development from zero to hero. I’ve conducted them too, and it’s not an ad, but personal, genuine advice.
6. Conducted pre-sale too late
First of all, pre-sale != B2B deals!
In my case, “pre-sale” is the stage when we don’t have a product yet, not even an MVP, but we already try to sell it using targeted ads, landing pages, and Figma mockups. Basically, we say to leads, “Leave us your email, be among the first, collect loyalty bonuses, and help us understand the demand”.
Why it’s a problem
If you start pre-sale too late, you risk missing key information about demand, your audience, and your value proposition. You can still create a product that doesn’t meet the market needs, even though you have the information from customer development interviews. There’s no reason to limit yourself to one source if you can do both. This mix lets you create a more targeted product with a sharper value proposition that solves a narrower problem.
What to do
Conduct pre-sale after the first 15 customer development interviews, not when you’ve almost finished developing the MVP.
NOTE: The number of conducted interviews may vary and depends on how well you understand your target audience and their pain points.
Don’t be afraid that users who signed up on your landing page will forget about it or won’t use the product. Most of them wouldn’t be your customers anyway, especially paying ones.
Also, pre-sale accurately shows whether a real demand exists for your product and if you should move forward or pivot.
Don’t just take my word, here’s how Buffer did pre-sale in 2011.
7. Overbuilt the MVP
Why it’s a problem
Experienced founders would say, “Hah, classic 🚬🗿”.
And indeed, it’s a common pitfall for many startups and their first-timer founders (especially technical!). At Imabulary, we’ve spent a couple of weeks perfecting the quiz instead of shipping and selling.
The truth is, you can’t be sure anyone will buy your product. The fastest way to test it is to try to sell the MVP right away. But how can you make it if you’re fixing that stupid bug or adding “just one more feature”?
What to do
If your product doesn’t solve one precise pain point for your customer, they won’t buy it, no matter how bug-free or feature-packed it is.
In most consumer or productivity apps, users forgive early bugs if the product relieves their pain. Believe me, they will wait while you fix everything. Just don’t make them wait endlessly, of course.
How do you understand whether the MVP needs some functionality or not? If you say “Yes” to the question “Would the application fulfill its purpose if we remove this feature in the MVP?”, then you don’t need this feature.
8. Selected the wrong revenue model
Why it’s a problem
Subscription rules the SaaS world. It remains the dominant and most investor-friendly model. It’s also a predictable and understandable model for customers.
As a first-time founder, you’re better off not reinventing the revenue model until you have market traction. You may think you’ve come up with some cool monetization approach no one has guessed to implement before. But usually, such “innovative” logic makes it harder to calculate unit economics, investors reject you, and worst of all, users don’t pay.
What to do
Start with a simple, proven subscription revenue model. Then add all the other features like credits, tokens, and so on once product-market fit is stable.
You can also read this classic on subscriptions and unit economics by David Skok.
9. Operated from personal accounts
Why it’s a problem
It looks unprofessional when you pitch an investor, ask for $100K and at the end you put “bigmoneyhustla2002@gmail.com” as a contact email you created when you were 12. If you can’t spend $5 on a professional email, then why should an investor trust you with their money?
Additionally, when you register accounts at Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Play Console, AppStore Connect, and so on, you can put the name of your company instead of your first and last names.
Last but not least, it’s more convenient to keep personal and professional lives separate with two different accounts, so emails, calendars, and similar stuff don’t get mixed.
What to do
Once customer development interviews confirm the idea is worth pursuing, buy a domain and sign up for a Google Workspace account. Google isn’t mandatory; you can choose whatever provider you like. I always like to create a “myname@companyname.com” email. For example, I used “olexandr@imabulary.app” when I was building a startup.
10. I wasn’t the customer of my own product
Why it’s a problem
If you’re not tackling a hurdle you’ve personally faced or are facing now, you won’t fully understand your client’s pain. You won’t be able to create a product that solves a real-world problem for you and your users.
That’s why I believe it’s so ridiculous to ask ChatGPT, “Generate me 10 ideas for my next 1-billion-dollar startup”, or to search YouTube for startup ideas.
What to do
You have to be your first customer. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you should center the product on your narcissistic vision, because business doesn’t work like that. No one will buy your product if it’s only for one person. But, at the same time, it’s easier to stay motivated and disciplined if you benefit from your own product. Not only in terms of money, but also in terms of the value the product brings to the world.
NOTE: An yet, if you’re tackling someone else’s pain, make sure to embed yourself deeply in the user’s world - observe, interview, and test relentlessly.
Conclusion
With everything you’ve just read, can I guarantee that now you’ll succeed in your founder’s journey? Nope, unfortunately, I can’t. No one can. Every startup is unique. You can follow some pieces of advice and avoid common pitfalls and mistakes, but your way will be unrepeatable.
As I stated in the intro, 9 out of 10 startups fail, so chances are, you’ll come to nothing as well. But it doesn’t mean you should just accept this data and stop pursuing your dream. Be bold. If an idea keeps you up at night, or you’ve seen an unresolved problem you believe you can tackle, then do it.
Remember, “I’ve tried and I failed” is far better than “I didn’t try because I was too afraid”. At the end of the day, who said you can’t be one out of ten who succeeded?
Summary
- Don’t build alone. Find a co-founder.
- Do what you know how to do best. Don’t become Chief Everything Officer.
- Hire after you have proven traction.
- Don’t implement Scrum at the early stages.
- Talk with customers directly. Don’t use forms for customer development.
- Your early stage should look like this: idea → customer development → pre-sale → MVP → scale.
- Don’t overbuild your MVP. Always ask yourself, “Would the application fulfill its purpose if we remove this feature in the MVP?”.
- Don’t reinvent the
wheelmonetization. Choose a subscription revenue model and build your business model around it. - Create a corporate email to manage a company.
- Try to tackle the real problem you’ve faced before.
Want more?
Check out these 3 reflective articles, where other startup founders (successful and not) share their experience:
- Reflections from my first year as a solo founder and entrepreneur
- Lessons from My Failed Startup
- Reflections on my founder journey
And, of course, don’t forget to give a shot to my previous articles:
As usual, thank you for your time. I would appreciate it if you hit that like button, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!
📰 Read me on the platform of your choice: Substack, DEV.to
Till next time! 👋
Top comments (0)