A year later, I had two startup opportunities that I couldn’t pass up, and ended up becoming the lead designer for a customer relationship management startup called Nutshell, while also cofounding an enterprise search startup in London named Twigkit. We cut our teeth as designers and developers, learned the basics of running a small business, and paid our bills through college.Īfter graduating I took a job in London working as a UX designer for an enterprise content management company. We made websites for local and regional businesses, set them up with our homemade content management system, and charged them monthly for CMS access (SaaS!) and hosting. I began running my first business as a college freshman in Kentucky circa 2004 - an unassuming web agency that I started with my roommate, Andy Fowler. Now that I’ve introduced the series, I suppose I should introduce myself. That’s me pitching at our 500 Startups “demo day”. If it’s something I know anything about, I’ll consider writing a post. What other topics would you like addressed? Leave a comment below.
#Startup panic cheats how to
How To Start a Startup Here’s what I’m hoping to cover in this series: I’m simply here as your peer to talk shop, compare notes, and hopefully save you a bit of time when it comes to the more mundane aspects of starting and running a business.
And my credentials to be dispensing advice are almost non-existent - I haven’t been to business school or had a blockbuster exit - but like you, I’m a tech person doing a startup. You’re the only person who can figure those things out. I’m not going to tell you how to come up with a great startup idea, or how to build a great product, or how to achieve a $100 million exit. Hence my name for this series: The Startup Cheat-Sheet.ĪKA How to Hack Your Way through Silicon Valleyīut I don’t want to oversell these humble back-of-the-napkin tips. Along the way, I’ve leaned heavily on mentors and blog posts and Google searches to fill in my knowledge gaps.īut it would have saved days of my time if I’d had some entrepreneurial cliff notes to consult now and again. As a founder, I’ve had to learn things on the fly that I knew nothing about before (and know “just enough” about now). In other words, you’ll constantly be doing things that you’ve never done before.
You’ll have to raise money, navigate legal contracts, dig into inbound and outbound marketing, track the right metrics, get into an accelerator, run a crowdfunding campaign. You might be a super-smart engineer, ace designer, or distinguished MBA grad, but no matter how fluent you are in your craft, in startup land you will find yourself in uncharted territory daily.
The one thing I’ve learned about starting startups is that they force you to always be learning. You have an awesome idea, you and your cofounders have the tech and design chops to start building it, and you have the guts to leave behind your day jobs to make it happen.