Just after quitting my first job, We started a digital marketing agency(We were a small team of three)and I joined as a co-founder (It sounds very cool na).
The satisfaction of creating something from nothing is different. During that time I was able to feel it.
Similarly, we started working constantly on it day and night, just like other startups.
From creating websites to pitching clients, meeting in the conference room all day and setting the vision of your company. Everything was going so perfectly. We had clients, some digital assets and a good team.
The best thing was that our team had both experience and passion. This is a important aspect of a startup.
But two months after its launch, one of our co-founders left the company. Due to so many conflicts between us. By the end of march covid also hit us badly because many of our clients were local.
By the end of June we were hardly able to manage our own expenses. Also my vision with the company is not aligning so at last I left that company to go into full time freelancing.
Maybe it seems like a very short interval of time but in those 6 months I learned more than what I learned in college and at my job.
Getting to the point, I will give you some tips that can help you along the way.
1. Having a good team is more important than having a great idea in building a successful startup.
2. Focus on the impact you want to bring to society with your startup (money motivation will fade away very fast).
3. Don’t get overly focused on being a CEO. It doesn’t matter where you are when you’re starting a business, you have to work your ass off to achieve success, so always focus on the work first. Because position brings Ego and ego will going to kill your startup.
4. Don’t believe in words, believe in action. Many person will claim they know that much but at the time of execution they will just make excuses.
5. Start living in present it does not matter what you did in past.
6. The cashflow is extremely important so always have a plan as to how you’re going to get clients on a regular basis. The method could be anything.
7. Sales are the backbone of a startup, so it is vital to invest in the sales team right from the start.
8. Good communication and presentation skills are essential. On our previous team no one was either a good communicator or good presenter, so we lost a lot of international clients.
9. Meetings shouldn’t be too frequent. Meetings are just a waste of time what i believe. The maximum time you spent there, and the ROI is nothing. So beware of spending too many hours in the conference room.
10. Don’t juggle multiple things away at once, or you will fail miserably. Focus on one thing at a time.
