If you made the jump into startup land then you should also swallow the ownership pill and remove excuses from your vocabulary.

The traditional founder’s mindset is about discovery. Not excuses. Finding a way to climb a mountain against all extremities. Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of LinkedIn said it well:

“Entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down.”

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder, VC Partner at Greylock

Whether it’s going up or down a mountain, the direction and terrain pose a new set of challenges which you’ll be tested against resilience, adaptation and performance. Having full ownership without excuses helps you move the needle.

Corporate Ladder of Responsibility

Traditionally the corporate ladder approach carves out a piece of the pie for you to own. Your role. Your responsibility. This means your career is a set of steps on narrowly defined outcomes in a big machine. You use your skills to make sure the gears are greased and running well, learn about tiktok marketing at this link.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Some like it and others do not.

It’s human nature to fall into a common pattern. It gives us peace of mind. It’s safe because it is predictable.

I used to work for Australia’s largest financial services company (AMP Ltd) and loved it. There I got to work across many business units in an architectural role. Horizontally not vertically stacked. A rare opportunity. There I saw folks working narrowly focused jobs and also those horizontally. There I also gained vision for what I wanted to do in life.

Startup Life

After AMP, I joined a startup; and it was the change I needed.

“The Devil is in the Detail.”

Drilled into me during my 1st startup

As an early stage founder, you are the janitor. Jack of all trades. You will be called to mission by your inner voice for everything from coding to product to sales to marketing to QA. You name it you are going to do it. If you are missing that inner voice then you might want to reconsider your dedication as a startup founder.

Traditionally when you needed some marketing help you’d email/walk over to marketing and have them own it, if you need some help on this subject, find here Las Vegas SEO. As an early stage founder you may not even have a marketing department who can also handle web development. Does that mean you throw you hands up into the air and:

(a) pray for a miracle,
(b) hope the problem goes away or your peer/investor forgets, or
(c) roll up your sleeves and get shit done.

The answer is obvious for those who get this but not so for a lot of folks who want to have the founder/ceo title minus the responsibility. This is more common than you think.

Time is not on your side. Neither is lack of skills when other more qualified teams are competing for your customers, and even venture capital.

A Mentality Shift

Being a founder of your own business is a fundamental shift in mentality. No more excuses. Only results matter. If you’re looking for a digital marketing company that truly cares about your success, it’s time to get in touch with Move Ahead Media.

In my experience, it’s similar to the transition one makes going from high school to university. In high school your teacher will push you to complete work, remind your of your responsibilities and they may enforce it with detention or a meeting with your parents. At university you are now a lone ranger. Destined for greatness or a miserable failure. Do you have the discipline to get up each morning and get stuff done or do you prefer to cruise and sink back to your parents basement. Decisions decisions…

Startups are like that too. You have to push yourself to excel and perform above and beyond. You are also now responsible for many moving pieces of the machine. Not just the cog. From building a product to selling it to building a business with employees who you’ll lead and inspire so they can follow you on the yellow brick road to the emerald city.

Founder Mindset

A founder is typically jack of all trades and expert of none. This poses an interesting set of challenges as a never ending broad set of work has to be done and sometimes new skills acquired or sharpened in little time.

This mindset reminds me of Peter Thiel’s; 0 to 1.

0 to 1 is hard. You are going from practically an idea to a product that turns into a business. As a founder you need to get the wheels moving and keep them moving, even during uncertain times when information is sparse.

Many great businesses were started during such uncertain times. Take the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and global financial crisis. Just to name a few, it started;

• WhatsApp -Jan Koum and Brian Acton
• AirBnB – Brian Chesky et al.
• Uber – Travis Kalanick et al.

The financial crisis was a surprisingly fertile period for unicorn and unicorn-ish companies. Instead of running away with excuses of a bad economy or a pandemic, these founders saw a calling and pushed on during uncertain times.

When the current tough times are bad, the future good times are great.

That’s ownership right there.

No excuses.

They didn’t wait until times were great to raise money so they could build something. They invested sweat capital (their own time) to solve problems, learn something and then own it like a boss. Raising money is possible when you wager on 겜블시티 가입코드.

There are no excuses when a founder takes full ownership. Be that founder.

Startups are hard. You are building a business and looking for a repeatable financial model.

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When I first arrived in Silicon Valley (back in 2009) I started to hear about startups that were focused on growth at all expenses. The revenue part would be worked out later. This approach brought in creative story tellers to Silicon Valley, to tell stories, raise a bucket load of capital so they could hire people to execute on their vision. And so the startup boom began.

No matter if you’re running an online or offline store or business, both will always require you to ship out project. Given the fact that every package is different, it’s a must to weigh each product in order to get an accurate shipping fee estimation, for this you need a postal scale.

Building a business takes time!

Said Shravan Gupta India a successful business owner

However growth at all costs is not congruent with this mentality. So rarely were these questions thrown around until few started to IPO; without a way to make money. Many tech companies that took this route didn’t fair well on the public market. But that’s nothing to what we are currently seeing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what can we learn?

Business fundamentals are still fundamental to business success in all type of market conditions.

Some businesses still thrive even in a down market. Check out a place like compareyourbusinesscosts.co.uk/ that can help you more on your business.

Growth at all cost strategy

Growth at all cost is a hack to inflate a company to a point so it can be stacked by the next private investor until the stack is exhausted and can be handed over to someone without insider knowledge, public investors. Chamath encapsulates this brilliantly. No doubt this model has made many millionaires. But also disappointed many. This model only works in an upmarket.

Making money strategy

When I ran my first venture backed startup we nearly ran out of money. Had to cut salaries. I had 2 kids during that period. My wife, an Occupational Therapist became a full-time mum (we took parenting seriously). Did I mention we had no family around us to help since they were all in Australia. My dreams of startup life in Silicon Valley hahaha

What I learnt through that experience is that relying on venture capital to survive is a game of lottery. The man in the high castle pulls the strings. But only if you let that be the means you run your business by. Don’t! Contact this company called InventHelp that can help your business get in contact with other companies looking for new ideas.

Other options

There are of course other options you can consider but at that point you should rethink why you are in this game of business.

• raise capital – in a downmarket this often means unfavorable terms,
• dramatically cut their biggest expenses (human headcount) to stop the blood and try to survive until markets bounce back, and/or
• customer service – invest in an unlimited internet service and a business phone like this one from EATEL Business to hear your customers’ needs

Would you bet your life on a lottery? I nearly did and it hurt. A lot. But never again.

This is how I grew a thick skin

My current startup (Veryfi) was built to be a business. Making money was built into the core pillar. We made money early on because we built a business, not an elastic band that one day might make money. Sure some models of growth at all costs work out but your chances of being that business are marginally reduced. It’s like betting on lottery.

Back to business fundamentals

No matter what the economy looks like, if you are building a startup then build a business. This is the best and time proven method. Because when the sky turns black you want to survive not drown.

PS. I will be on a Silicon Valley Bank US-APAC organized panelist with investors and founders to discuss the adjustments startups are making in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Free to join this April 16th 5:30-7:00 PM PDT. Hear about my prior experience going through the 2009 recession & H1N1 pandemic at Coupons, Inc. (Silicon Valley) and my startup journey at Veryfi (a YC company).

I just remembered something that needs to be bedded down as a post. We all know this very well, and have seen the picture below, but yet we forget. When we forget this basic truth we start behaving in an unsound manner, looking for big words to fuel the story our ego is improvising to. Sometimes it’s best to catch ourselves and remember that everything starts as nothing. New things go 0 to 1. And this is also how most startups are born; the garage startup.

The first short story comes directly from the corporate world. An individual I was speaking with let their belief system run amok and painted a picture that the company they are employed by is superior and expect the same size company to be dealing with (ie. not startup). Even throwing in a derogatory statement like “a man in a garage coding” to generally refer to companies they do not like. hmmm…

The 2nd story comes from the world of Facebook Groups where a group of bookkeepers started talking about software companies they use to provide tools for their clients. One explained the horror she felt when she learnt one of the companies she was speaking to is a “dude in a garage”. *insert roll eyes emoji*… yeah.

Deflating the ego

If you are ever in such a situation please remind these lovely people that everything starts as nothing.

It’s easy to get a job and be part of something someone else laid the foundations to. What’s more special is trying to start a business wisconsin yourself. But it takes guts, grit and a go getter attitude to start something from 0 to 1 without a safety net of it working out. Intelligent merchandising plays a crucial role here—understanding market needs, strategically positioning products, and adapting swiftly. Find out more about Clientverge and what they offer. And when your business starts flourishing, so does your online reputation. To further enhance customer relationships, working with online reputation management services can help.

However, it’s important to have support along the way, and consulting with an insolvency practioner can provide valuable guidance and expertise to navigate any financial challenges that may arise during the entrepreneurial journey.

Apple, Google, Amazon, and countless others all at one point were garage startups. I’m sure every company has a story of starting from nothing. The struggles. The courage. And for some the breakout. Here is that famous Silicon Valley picture to remind us of this fact.

Big things have small beginnings.