10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE FOUNDING MY FIRST STARTUP!
Dedicating this article to Muhammed Hegazy who was not just one of my Co-founders in my first startup, but also my brother, one of my best friends & overall a genuinely decent human being who helped others and always had good intentions.
ربنا يرحمك يا صاحبي
My objective in this article is NOT to tell anyone what to do or how to do it; I’m sharing personal learnings from my experiences in the startup world. (from working in startups, to launching mine, to leading scaleups to landing in venture capital)
Way before I was building startups and consulting with others, I was just another young entrepreneur with a ton of excitement, a huge risk appetite & massive dreams.
Many of those dreams were shattered and some of them were achieved, but what’s for sure is that I LEARNED A LOT AND THIS IS TRULY THE BIGGEST BLESSING IN MY JOURNEY! (besides the beautiful people I met/worked with)
That being said, I’ll NEVER impose any of my learnings on anyone because everyone has to learn from their own experience, but here goes mine!
10 things I wish I knew before I founded my first startup:
1) All in or all out!
I’ve seen this a million times, and it happened to my beloved cofounding team in my first startup too. We all had other corporate jobs and wanted so bad to juggle between both.
My personal experience tells me that startups CAN’T succeed with a “foot out the door strategy”!
If you need extra money to sustain a living, get a part time or a freelance job but don’t take from the 8–10 hours dedicated to building your startup.
If you have co-founders that THINK they can do both, you probably need to rethink if they’re the right people to partner with.
Now, I’ve seen cases where otherwise might have proved successful, but it takes much longer in a game where fast growth is essential especially in the launching phase!
2) It’s MUCH easier to build your startup when you have the right INTENTIONS, PURPOSE & EXPEREINCE!
My generation that graduated from uni in the early 2010s was surrounded by a massive media hype that was promoting creating startups and becoming entrepreneurs. Whoever wasn’t building something was “missing out on their potential”.
“I hate to say this, but whoever said entrepreneurship is for everyone has a special place in hell for misleading many of us & leading us to self-doubt.”
The amount of youth who rushed into building a startup for the wrong reason was ridiculous!
Needless to say, most of them never saw the light. You’re in for a very short-term journey if your rationale behind building a startup is limited to:
- Imitating people from your circles just to get featured on online magazine like them
- Being bored from your corporate job and the BS about “being your own boss”
- Wanting extra money
Intention and purpose is just one side of the story…the other is experience!
I recall creating my first startup right after uni, winning a startup competition, receving a 100K cheque and headlines in many online magazine…but then again we weren’t ready for it.
Actually, after working for a couple of startups, and spending 3 years in a corporate while getting exposed to hundreds of ecosystem players; right now feels the best time to build something I believe in because I actually have more substance.
I’m not saying you have to be 100% ready, there’s no such thing as that! All I’m saying is that the gap of experience and knowledge of an average fresh-grad makes their success odds VERY low!
It is not a bad idea to gain experience at a corporate or preferably a scale up before creating your first startup!
Starting a startup for the wrong reasons, with no prior experience and just depending on the momentum of the adrenaline rush from your dream will most probably take you nowhere!
3) Choosing your Co-Founders is pretty much like choosing a husband/wife!
It’s extremely common for first-time founders to pick their friends or colleagues at work/uni as their founding team. While I can’t say that this is always a bad idea, I can at least guarantee you that it’s the least methodical.
Your main question should always be: Are the partners I’m choosing complimenting my skillset and share a similar vision? Do I trust that they are fully committed and are conscious of the amount of effort and risk they’re going to put on the line?
Passion is not enough! Friendship is not enough! Remember that you can always engage people on different capacities, but once you make someone your co-founder, you’re married!
If you haven’t found the right founders yet, stay put and keep looking.
4) Boot strapping is a mindset. Keep living by it and ignore those who say grow at any cost.
I’ve seen entrepreneurs who won 100K EGP in a competition only to spend them on non-sense and others who raised a pre-seed of 100K USD and be able to survive for 10 months because of wise allocation of funds and a bootstrapping mindset.
Whether you raised a pre-seed fund, collected money from friends, family or fools; just make sure to spend every dollar wisely in the early stages. I remember talking with my co-founders and telling them how we need to spend the fund on our salaries to become full-timers at a time when we didn’t even have our product ready!
Nowadays with the crazy economy we’re in, fund allocation is a no joke and cash flow can and will kill many companies, that’s why we need to keep this mentality!
5) Don’t waste your time joining incubators/startup programs unless…
a. You need funds and they got the money (proper ticket sizes)
b. You need strong mentors and they have the network (not just random people who have inflated titles)
c. You need the knowledge and they provide trainings by previous founders
6) Pull the plug when it’s not working!
I learned this the hard way.
If you and your founders are not able to commit, pull the plug!
If the market doesn’t need your current product, pivot or pull the plug!
Don’t stall on pulling the plug — save your energy & go start your next big thing!
The more you postpone making the right decision, you traumatize yourself to for your future entrepreneurial experiences!
7) Not every mentor will set you on the right track!
My rule is simple, I don’t trust them unless they did it before!
My “mentor” must have a track record in building and growing startups for me to take him/her seriously. Otherwise, you’re going to hear a lot of BS from all these ‘fraud consultants & gurus’.
8) It’s never too early to draft a co-founders agreement.
If I make a dollar from every conversation I have with founders who are fighting on roles, salaries & equity, I’d be a very rich man!
Some really decent startups with amazing trajectories & strong brands are dying from the cancer of “verbal agreements” that weren’t documented and are now an area of conflict for the founders! A simple word document with top level agreements is essential in the beginning and down the road it should be revisited and detailed to save the company from tons of struggles.
9) It is never too early to build a data room!
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure”. But this isn’t the only tip you need when it comes to your data.
a. Track your data points as early as day 1 (even if it’s on excel or done manually)
b. You will use it to assess your performance & create enhancements
c. You will add it to your pitch deck (There’s only a little amount of fund you can get your hands-on without a data room)
d. You will use it as a diagnosis for your mentor (how can they help you blindly?)
e. You will use it to show your team what they achieved and where they are lagging & need to optimize their efforts and results
10) Not everything you read here applies to everyone
Even I don’t trust my learning 100% of the times, so take everything you read here with a pinch of salt!
Best of luck in your startup journey.
