10 most common mistakes startups

How to avoid mistakes by founding your startup? There is one method: look and learn from others! Here are the 10 most common mistakes founding founders, which we collected based on the information found in the Quora social question and answer service.

Stop self-deception

If you are not honest with yourself, then you simply are not able to make informed decisions that really serve the good of your company. You will hide behind excuses and convince yourself with stories that will explain why you need to keep doing all the other things on your list. You cannot believe all your stories. You need a healthy portion of skepticism (not to be confused with self-doubt or lack of faith in yourself) in order to make real progress. ”
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Entrepreneurship as a fashion trend

If you start an entrepreneurial activity not because it is your vocation, but for some strange incomprehensible reasons (for example, a friend is engaged in business — and I want to), then sooner or later you will fly out of this business.

Finance sing romances

This happens much more often than you might think: money tends to run out, even despite income and profit. So be on the alert.

Intellectual property

It is very important to protect your intellectual property, including patents, trademarks and copyrights. If your competitors register a patent for your intellectual property, then, as a young company, you are unlikely to stay afloat.

Do not tighten with micromanagement

Leave your workers alone and let them do their work. As good as they can. Give them the right to make a mistake. Help them, but do not interfere with their workflow.

Do not hire anyone at work

A team is the most important part of a startup, and only one inappropriate person can send your entire team to the net, with philosophy and the startup itself. Choose people carefully, based on their intelligence, skills and aspirations - do not dwell on those who "seem to be suitable." Wrong decisions can turn into death for a growing company. If you made a mistake - as soon as possible say goodbye to such an employee.

Do not delay with sales

Do not try to endow your product with a million functions at first. Hone a couple of available "chips" and send it to the shelves - users will point out to you the shortcomings and what they need. The main thing is just to listen to feedback. A minimally viable product is what a green startup should strive for. Trying to build everything at once, you will spend too much resources and time, and it is likely that your work will disappear in vain.

Misunderstanding of the importance of cash flow

You should be able to predict cash flow so that your startup has a chance of survival, because it is much more important than profit.

Listen to your customers

Your customers should adore your product. If this is not the case, then you have a big problem. You need to find out the reason for their coldness. This can be done by listening to the needs of customers and satisfying them.

No perfection in the world

Never trust your reports, who tell you that everything is fine. Nothing is ever in order. Something is sure to work incorrectly or not at all. This is not always a bad factor. Disruptive - yes, but not necessarily bad. This usually means we grow.

To this list, Quora would like to add a couple of important non-obvious mistakes that startups very often make:

Discard third-party financing

In one of the articles by Paul Graham , which was previously published on Megamind, he spoke about the danger of attracting capital from investors. This is explained by the fact that, having received the first and even the second rounds of financing, you may be a fiasco if your product is not attractive enough for customers. Hoping for the next "saving" investment of investors, you can be cruelly deceived, because it is likely that your project will already lose interest for them because of its insolvency.

Do not expand too early.

A large team creates the impression of a successful startup. But do not deceive yourself - this should be a consequence of success, but not its cause. So do not rush into the pool with your head, hiring new workers. For a young company, this may mean not just additional expenses of finance and time for staff training, but also death, because the money runs out much faster than we can imagine.