But some early-stage founders forget to consider additional parts of running a business, like generating revenue, managing people or building the systems required to support growth.
Read MoreOne of the most common mistakes companies make is promoting strong individual contributors into leadership roles without giving them the tools, support or guidance to lead effectively.
Read MoreWhen Randy and I started One Click, we didn’t have a strategy around venture capital.
I was the details to his vision and the operations to his strategy. We were a good team.
There are society-wide expensive problems, including the ones already highlighted, that do not have a similarly sized market opportunity. But that doesn’t mean there is no market opportunity.
I am not suggesting you treat your team members like your children or that you strive to create the same type of attachments you have with your children.
It was courage, rather than confidence, that helped us take that first step in building our business.
Trust between an employer and an employee begins with a clear company mission and strong core values and goals.
Did you notice that we didn’t consider moving our operations to the United States?
A strong support system will include both personal and professional support and can include a lot of people, or a few.
Unfortunately, time doesn’t allow us to go back and do a pure A/B test on how we started our business, but I have a theory on why it worked: timing and execution.
I was extremely proud of my team and what we had accomplished to bring us to the point of acquisition, but I was also distraught and devastated.
We naively assumed we would at least be looped into conversations that were happening about our team and our brands.
A common phrase floating around the startup world is that companies are bought, not sold.
People I meet are often curious about why we decided to sell, the process of selling our business, and what the business looked like after the acquisition.
Here is my kind of silly, kind of fun, but oh-so-true similarities of how raising our baby is like building my company.
Traditionally, customer service has been viewed as a cost center instead of a revenue driver, and it’s hard for companies to allocate funds to activities that aren’t moving the needle.
Major company transitions take time, and I won’t pretend this rollout was quick and painless, but open-book management soon became an integral part of our company culture and was an additional layer of activating our core values, such as, “Act like an owner.”
The constant stream of small bites made the core value tangible and kept it at the top of our team’s mind, while the leadership team’s participation in these activities signaled importance to the rest of the team.
I am a firm believer that every company needs an identifiable north star in the form of a mission, vision or purpose statement.
It isn’t always immediately obvious which ideas and businesses will survive, but I’ve noticed that most successful founding teams have shared characteristics.
I would encourage every entrepreneur to get productive, objective and broad feedback on their idea before spending money.
