Why startup?
During my discussions with various entrepreneurs / investors during last couple of weeks, one of the things that came out was this question - why do you want to do a startup? When I did my first startup, I really did not have much idea of what I was getting into. But there was a rush, energy and feeling of being innovative and creative. At last I get to do what I really want to do ... it did not last long, my aspirations / passion somewhere got squeezed between stakeholder requirements ... be it the investor, developers, partners etc ... I soon gave up When I did my second startup, I wanted to run away from my then employer. I did get the freedom of picking up my technical stack, experimenting with the cloud etc but soon found myself constrained. If I just need to build a product to a certain spec then how is it different for working for any other IT company? In both the situations, I think I found myself in a startup for the sake of being in a startup, which was wrong. What is most valuable to me is to be creative and innovative. I do wish to make usable products for a customer but do want to dictate my features and my way of doing things on it. The product needs to have my "flavor" to it ... Working (trying) as a single founder I learnt that if you are a technical guy, there is often an urge to build it and do it for yourself. I think one needs to have a lot of discipline - especially if you are a single founder - you don't build for yourself, you always build for your customer. Your sales team are your ears on the ground and unless your product does not drive their effort, you might end up developing to your sales team specifications. You need to have the ability to filter out the meaningful features from customer's feedback, add your flavor to it and update your product. Lessons Learned:
- Don't be in a startup for the sake of being in a startup
- Figure out what you really wish to achieve and go for that higher goal
- Don't get carried away by what I want or what I can do with xyz technology - build for your customer
- Build a product that drives your sales team not vice-versa