10 Lessons Learned From Working With 85-Plus Startups

By Firat Parlak

culled from:.forbes.com
After working with more than 85 startups, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes for a startup to thrive. I’ve worked with notable brands like Thought Catalog, NY Tech Meetup, Clubs.com, DateMySchool, Udemy, Skift and Wanderfly, which was acquired by TripAdvisor. Here are 10 of the most important lessons I’ve gleaned in the process:
1. Ideas don’t necessarily translate into a good product. Anyone can produce a great idea, but being able to actually make that vision a reality is a different story. Imagining something in your head doesn’t necessarily mean you can execute it. Knowing this will allow you to clear your head and focus on what’s most important.
2. Harmony trumps talent and experience. Putting a bunch of people with impressive résumés together can seem great on the surface, but if they can’t get along, your startup will not succeed. A team of superstars that don’t know how to work together will always be trumped by a mediocre team that understands teamwork. It’s easy to identify which companies have this team synergy by observing their interactions and how prompt they are in responding to me. Building a successful product requires a team working together as one unit to achieve the greater goal. Anything that interrupts this harmony is a poison that will spread if not stopped.
3. Focusing on too many features early on can kill your startup. I’ll often notice entrepreneurs trying to bunch too many features together in one product. In an age when an overabundance of noise pollutes the Internet, it’s important to pinpoint the exact problem you’re trying to solve and be clear on why your product is the solution to that problem. Getting too “feature happy” not only shows an unclear direction in vision, but also makes it 10 times harder to create a quality product. You’ll save a lot of time, resources and headaches perfecting one feature and then appropriately expanding as you grow. Can you imagine the mess Facebook would be in if they chose to launch with all the features they have available today?
4. Ego is damaging; lack of empathy is even worse. Everyone knows the dangers of having an ego, but not enough people stress the importance of empathy when building a startup. Having the ability to put yourself in others’ shoes not only results in a more harmonious team, but also lets your mind explore what your customers want and allows you to build it for them. If you’re too stubborn to listen, you’ll have a hard time building products people want.
5. It’s more difficult than you think. According to the Wall Street Journal, 3 out of 4 startups fail. This goes to show that even if you build a quality team and do everything right, you are not immune to failure. If you’re going to make the entrepreneur leap, you need to have the mental toughness to face failure while also being ready to quickly pick yourself back up to try again.

6. You can’t win if you don’t play. During a 500 Startups Demo Day, I cornered Dave McClure and presented him with Dog Amigo, my startup idea at the time. He wasn’t fond of my idea, but really loved my designs. It was then that I realized I needed to pivot and do something that played closer to my strengths — instead of creating products, I should be designing apps that help make others’ products beautiful. It was also to my favor that I noticed there was a growing demand for good UI/UX design. Did I get shot down? Yes, but I gained valuable knowledge since I then discovered my true calling. Keep your mind open and you might find what you’re actually meant to do.

7. Design is more important than you think. I often feel that people don’t put enough emphasis on design when developing an MVP and beyond. Features and user experience are important, but quality design is a large part of the user experience. Good design makes things easier to digest. Almost every successful business, from the startup to the corporate level, has had beautiful design, whether it’s Airbnb or Apple. Design is an investment. It’s the face of your product. You can have amazing technology, but if the design isn’t there, it’s not going to work.
8. Traction is the most important metric. You can spend all the money you want to try and gain users, but traction is defined by whether your product can grow organically. If people aren’t going crazy over it, you need to look at other options in perfecting your product. Remember: Traction is probably the MOST important metric in predicting whether your startup will make it or not; anything else is more than likely a facade.
9. Build with the idea that you could possibly pivot one day. While failing is bad, failing while being unable to use anything you’ve built for something else is even worse. Fab is the perfect example of this – it started in 2011 as a dating site for gay men, but has pivoted into a traditional e-commerce site. Because they prepared early on for these things, they’ve been able to freely shift their focus without many headaches.

10. How you pitch your startup is a reflection of your final product. A successful pitch deck involves being able to organize all the key points that make your startup Awesome (pun intended) and package it in a way that not only looks clean, but is easy to understand. This is crucial, because if you can’t put together a pitch deck that’s beautiful and user-friendly, how can any investor trust that you’ll be able to do it with your MVP?