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.
As we are proving with our startup http://www.curagami.com content marketing is HOT for #startups. Hot because as budgets increase tools are needed to help publishers and merchants. Here are just a few areas of opportunity:
* Content curation tools to help bring content in, shape it and publish it back out.
* BI Tools to know what is working and why.
* BI Tools that help see into the octopus of attribution.
* Customer experience tools - using personas and archetypes to increase relevance & that helps generate social shares and customer satisfaction.
* Loyalty and gamification tools.
Just a few startup needs in content publishing / ecommerce.