Some Notes on Entrepreneurship
4 min readFeb 1, 2021
- Team Building: Build a world-class team, align the core values and have the end in mind (define Exit scenario). Define who brings what to the table and make it cross-functional.
- Vision and Culture: Clearly defined visions and goals are necessary to be successful. Every great company needs a fitting culture that often is the result of a clear vision statement, as you can´t hit a target you can’t see.
- Idea Scouting: This is an on-going process — use the SISP Principle (Search in Solution of a Problem). There are no bad ideas and this a great exercise to gain market knowledge as well as get a better feeling for markets. Copycat approach makes reduces the risks of uncertainty.
- Networking: Talk to a LOT of investors, founders, VC‘s etc. Be open-minded and tell them what your plans are, as someone knows someone else that could be of help. Do not hide your idea. Talk about it. Nobody will steal it, as there is a 95% probability that it‘s a stupid idea.
- Equity-split: Be generous to people that have skin in the game and can help/ have drive. Do not underestimate abilities of other people and look for hungriness (e.g. strong desire to be successful). Entry valuations are key and will have an immense impact on the bottom-line. It is better to have 10% of something that is worth 800m than 40% of something that is worth nothing.
- Research: Once you have set-up these things and have found the right model, make sure to know literally everything about the market/problem/ customer.
- Customer Interviews: After understanding the market, draft some customer/ user profiles. Work that out in every detail. Find them through social media platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit etc. Reach out to them and interview them. Try to go as off-topic as possible. Customer interviews are more about learning than validating. Listen more than you talk. Read between the lines. The customer does not know what he wants, but he cannot hide what he needs.
- Launch: Start asap and launch as early as you can. Launch is not an one time event, but an on-going process (Product development cycle x Product dev interviews with early adopters). If you are not embarrassed by your first MVP, you are launching too late. Define minimum criteria for success for the business model to be validated. Keep in mind that paying customers are better than prospective customers. You know traction when you have it. Also, that holds true for product-market fit.
- Failure: Fail fast, fail often. The more often you fail, the better you will get. If you want to be successful then double your failure rate. If you’re scared to fail, do not start a business. Tough times never last, but tough people do — History never talks about quitters.
- Focus: To be successful and too launch at rocket speed, ruthless focus is necessary. Don’t let others distract you. Cut off toxic people that doubt you and your dreams. Read books and avoid news.
- Personal Growth: As an entrepreneur you are growing as a personality in direct proportion to your company. Sometimes, the company outgrows the founders after a couple of months (e.g. very capital-intensive businesses that require a high headcount and blitzscaling). You should put your ego aside and decide what is the best for the company. This is a very tough decision, but you have to stay objective.
- Growth: Whereas some companies need blitz-scaling to succeed (e.g. Airbnb, Paypal), some do not — so don’t force it. Chances that you crash your business are really high. Growth is the result of a great product and not it´s precursor.
- Finance: Be very thrifty with your cash resources and flip every penny twice. Poor cash management kills a lot of companies. Make sure that you have at least 12–16 months of runway for your venture, as your job is to build a great product and not fundraising/ investor reporting.
- Advisors & Mentors: Having a personal mentor, someone who is already there where you want to be and can guide you, is a short-cut to success. Better so, if you can organize and build a board of advisors for your venture that you can outreach to whenever you need help.
- Venture Capital: 9/10 of the current most successful companies are VC-backed. VC´s are bringing in network, expertise, capital and branding. Nowadays, it´s almost impossible to IPO a fully bootstrapped business. Getting funded by a top-notch VC is very competitive and almost only possible through an intro from someone else to these guys. Build a relationship with these investors beforehand, talk about your plans and always try to do them a favor first. One day you will come back to them.
- Y Combinator: The American seed money startup accelerator is known as the spearhead of all these startup programs. If you get funded by YC — great, keep going. If you get rejected — great, keep going.
