Ben Yoskovitz is a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously he founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). He is a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach him at byosko at gmail dot com. Ben shares his thoughts & lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff @ Instigatorblog These are a few of his thoughts on startups.
- Startups need to find their “one thing” to focus on. It provides (at least some) clarity on how to proceed and helps shape what’s to come.
- When you successfully delight users it’s magical. They love you, you love them, birds chirp beautiful music and the clouds literally part in the sky…
- The more I think about startups and entrepreneurs, the more I think that one of the leading causes of startup failure is lying. Not lying to other people, but lying to oneself.
- Instead of innovating, a startup that relies exclusively on a single platform often finds itself reacting to the platform’s changes, fixing code that stops working, changing tactics, etc.
- When looking at your startup or deciding whether to launch a startup, ask yourself, “Is the competition Good Enough?”
- Ideas are just the starting point — everything that comes after the lightbulb goes off in your head is really what matters.
- Startups don’t win because they have the best ideas when they start.
- The root of many startup deaths is indecision, especially for first-time entrepreneurs and CEOs
- If you don’t have a tight, structured approach to budgeting and financial control you’re in for a lot of trouble.
- Startups are founded by people that make the leap before anyone else.
- Focus, focus, focus.
- Whether you use customer development or Lean Startup, you have to have answers for the leaps you’re making.
- When pitching investors, don’t bash the competition.
- The “new” business founder is someone that gets technology and can build products.
- Be prepared emotionally for the ups and downs of the Lean Startup process because of how challenging it is to the pace of building your startup.
- Writing things down is critical.
- When raising early seed money, the requirements and demands from investors will be lower.
- Be careful. Riding a mega-trend isn’t the same as solving a real problem.
- Startups need to find the acutely painful problem that customers suffer from and target that with a laser beam.
- One way to compensate for a lack of domain knowledge is to hire someone from the field in question.
