Every entrepreneur knows that most startups fail, but very few of them actually understand why. — I was three years into running a venture-backed tech company that was doing all the things venture-backed tech companies are supposed to be doing. We had a product people loved, we had a rapidly growing user base, and we’d raised a few million dollars worth of investment capital. Sure, we…

Having traction is helpful for raising VC, but it’s not always necessary — Convincing investors to invest in a startup is simple. Or rather, it’s simple on a conceptual level. You really only need to convince them of the following three things: People will pay more for for your product than it’ll cost to produce/sell it; The potential amount of people willing to…

Over-eager entrepreneurs have a tendency to do things before they’re necessary — Entrepreneurs solve problems. That’s basically the core of their job description on both a macro and a micro level. In other words, from a macro perspective, their startups are solving big problems. And, on a day-to-day basis, they’re solving all the annoying little problems they encounter that are preventing their…

You need honest feedback to build a successful startup, but most people won’t give it unless you make them — As conceited as admitting this will seem, I love being praised for my entrepreneurial brilliance. When I show people something I’m building and ask for feedback, I want them to tell me they love what I’ve done and how incredible I am. …

Everyone will warn you against being a solo founder, but it’s not as impossible as you might think — When I was a new founder, I remember experienced people in the entrepreneurial world constantly warning me that I couldn’t be a solo founder. According to them, solo founders couldn’t succeed. For years, this was the advice I believed, too. When I got more experienced and began advising entrepreneurs, I…

Judging success in entrepreneurship is harder than most founders think — Every entrepreneur I’ve met struggles to accurately judge the progress of whatever they’re currently working on. No matter how much they’ve built or achieved, they always feel like it’s not enough and like it could be so much better. This is a problem because, when you think you aren’t succeeding…

Being the boss isn’t about making friends — I’ll never forget the first time one of my employees yelled at me. I was in a meeting with some of my team and asking about our process for onboarding customers. Maybe the guy was having a bad day, maybe he was tired, or maybe he just hadn’t had his…

Entrepreneurs struggle turning their startups into businesses because they don’t always know how to hire the right people — In the earliest stage of building my first successful startup, I spent a couple years doing all the selling of our product (a B2B SaaS product). However, after enough growth (and some helpful VC funding), I was finally ready to build a sales team. Unfortunately, I had no idea how…

Lots of people become entrepreneurs for the wrong reasons — I’ve been in the startup world long enough to feel comfortable making the following confession: when I first began building companies, I did it because I thought it would make me rich. In retrospect, I realize, for a variety of reasons, that wasn’t a great justification for starting a company…