7 + 3 Lessons From Failed Startups
Great Inc post on lessons from a failed startup include:
1. Consider the entire experience
2. Raise money when you can not when you need too
3. Don't give away equity too soon or too fast
Read the other 4 from the Inc post: https://www.inc.com/yoram-solomon/7-lessons-you-should-learn-from-my-failed-startup.html
I'd add three of my own lessons from my "failed startup":
1. Don't think in terms of success and failure, win and lose. Think about impact, learning, and potential. Startups require a more nuanced sense of win/lose.
2. Don't hire your friends even if they are the right people because you are probably blind to faults, issues, or other "round peg in square hole" problems with friends.
3. Create any startup in collaboration with customers. Don't do the "mad inventor" thing and go off and think you've created a better mousetrap. You won't. Instead, collaborate and build on what you learn from real customers facing immediate problems.
Crowdfunding Is Marketing Now
Scooped a post yesterday about #Startups using Contests and Games to sidestep traditional PR. Sidestepping is necessary because "traditional PR" lies in tatters on the ground. Crowdfunding isn't crowdfunding.
I had a good friend complain that it would take him as long to crowdfund as to raise money for his startup with VC. I didn't think of it at the time, but the correct comeback is, "Don't think in OR think in AND".
We tend to zero sum everything. Don't think of crowdfunding as zero sum, you do it INSTEAD of something else. Think of crowdfunding as an AND. You create crowdfunding AND you distribute a press release AND you create a social campaign AND so on.
What I love about the Pebble Watch crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter is not that they were able to raise $11M, though that is pretty cool. I love the way Pebble used OPP (Other People Platforms) to solve every startup problem from distribution to celebrity endorsements.
Crowdfunding your marketing forces a level of creativity it may not achieve without the exercise of crowddfunding, so don't think of crowdfunding as crowdfunding think of it as one of the very important tactical "AND" moves in your marketing plan.