As some readers may know, I worked started a company back in 2018 called WeAchieve. We built a habit tracking platform with a social twist to it and long story short: we didn’t really get anywhere. We got over 1,000 users, but only a chunk were active and few were willing to pay for what we had built.
That said, it is not an experience that I’d give up, and we learned a lot while building it. Aside from the technical skills I developed by being a part-time full-stack developer for almost two years, there is a confidence that comes with knowing that you can build something from the ground up.
But today I’d rather focus on the humility that comes with being an entrepreneur who fails (at least the first time).
So here are five lessons learned the hard way:
#1 - Build Something Someone will Pay For
This one may have you saying “No Shit, Sherlock!” but bear with me.
Getting someone to pay real money for something is hard. As a result, many startup plans hitch on having some free offering as a hook and plans sooner or later to monetize that by getting someone to pay for the product.
But your plans to get payment should be scrutinized even before you go about building the free attention-getting device or product. Because ultimately, outside of the few moonshots that work, almost all companies will live or die by their ability to get real revenue from real people.
The easiest way to answer this question is this: someone already pays for what I am offering. You still have to battle incumbency (and this isn’t easy either - we’ll get to that), but you know there is real money there.
The next best way to answer this is doing the absolute minimum you can to get to a paying pilot customer. This does take you toward building out a product or service, but you need to do it. If you are building a B2B product this could involve selling a consulting arrangement or a cooperative development phase, that’s fine. The main point is you need someone aside from yourself putting real money on this thing.
Note what I didn’t mention: survey data. Humans are notorious for saying that they will spend money/time/attention on something… and then never doing it. Treat any survey (especially of friends or family) with a grain of salt.
#2 - The Market is more efficient than you think it is
Whether you are entering an existing market or trying to create a new one, it’s important to note that this: the free market is pretty darn good at finding efficient answers.
This becomes a case of Chesterton’s Fence ultimately: you may think that the market (the fence) is stupid and inefficient, but you can’t go and disrupt the market until you know exactly how it evolved and why it is the way it is.
Here’s the thing: with almost any idea, I can bet you a substantial sum of money that it’s been tried before. When we built WeAchieve, we discovered a veritable graveyard of habit tracking and goal setting tools. We saw as flaws in the predominant offerings out there, but it took us time to uncover the graveyard and realize that those flaws we spotted weren’t a big issue and in some cases weren’t even flaws at all.
The point is this: don’t underestimate your market. There are people who have been engrossed in your market for decades (no matter what it is), and they’ve likely thought about your idea or even tried it.
A better answer here is that you know why something has failed in the past, or why it actually hasn’t been tried yet. E.g. my idea hasn’t really been tried because it takes a long time and very specific knowledge for it to work, or ChatGPT technology hasn’t been imbedded in X yet because it is too new.
#3 - Make strong connections, you’ll need them
No matter if you are creating a business yourself or doing it with a small team, starting a company is an isolating experience. To some degree, people “don’t get it.” Sure, they’ll be polite and they’ll tell you that your idea “is great” or “could totally work,” but you and I both know that many of them are just saying that to be polite. The maniacal focus you probably have as an entrepreneur is interesting-but-weird to the general population.
So purely from a social and mental standpoint, making strong connections (often with other founders or other people in the space) is helpful. But beyond that, you are going to need ideas, expertise, and favors from all over if you really want your business to succeed.
Precisely no one on the planet comes loaded with the accounting, legal, strategic, design, management, and technical skills needed to make a business a success. And even if they did: they still only have 168 hours in a week.
So build a network - likely you should track it somewhere (I’d do it in Notion) and tag people with their skills and backgrounds such that you can use it to brainstorm when you inevitably need help. Even if they aren’t the right person, they probably know someone who can help.
#4 - Keep your product hyper-focused
This was advice that I was excited to ignore when I started WeAchieve. Focused product? No! The problem is that everyone is too focused - we need to build a general app to win.
Generally speaking: someone saying the above is an idiot. In my defense, an app like Notion is proof positive that generalized “do-it-all” products can win… but they are exceptionally rare.
For 99.9% of you: your product will succeed if it’s hyper-focused on a specific pain point at least until the point of getting non-trivial revenue from solving that pain point. And hey, feel free to brainstorm and daydream about expanding into solving B, C, D, and E.
But you have to start specific, as much as I hate to say it. It’s not the elegant solution that I’d prefer, but for the vast majority of cases it’s the right answer. You can generalize your product (and rebuild it if necessary) after you have revenue to support such a redesign.
#5 - No one knows what’ll work
Those first four points may seem like a long way of dissuading potential entrepreneurs. And they should be seen as words of caution. But I am a fan of entrepreneurship, so let’s end on a positive note: no one knows what’ll work.
That’s a positive, because if you go shopping around for VC or angel funding or do any pitch competitions, you’ll hear a litany of reasons why your idea won’t work or is too risky for them. Keep in mind their perspective: they are seeing tens to hundreds of ideas out there and they have to apply quick heuristics that are fairly discriminatory toward anything that might not work.
But don’t let that stop you! The simple fact is this: VCs and any prognosticators are wrong all the time. No one knows the future because the future is impossible to predict. Industry trends may be somewhat predictable, but even then there are countless counter examples of sure things missing or unlikely successes.
One of your jobs as an entrepreneur is to be relentlessly optimistic about your idea and your approach. Whether customers, partners, or employees, you will need to sell them on your vision. So make sure you have that vision of where the world needs to go and why, and once you do, go and tell people about it!
So those are my first five lessons in entrepreneurship. For any founders or would-be founders in the audience: I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!
So please leave a comment below. I’ll likely do at least one follow-up to this post as I have at least five more lessons that seem worth sharing.