Over 600,000 companies go out of business every year in the U.S. alone. Infant Entrepreneur Mortality is a massive problem. Here are 10 avoidable mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make repeatedly.
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1. Defining success = funding
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2. Do not know the essential techniques of bootstrapping
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3. Dont understand positioning
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4. Spend money on unimportant things and run out of cash
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5. Hire too many people too soon without validating
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6. Start building a product without validating
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7. Chase investors instead of customers
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8. Network randomly, without focus
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9. Talk to investors too soon, and blow important cartridges
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10. Dont focus on the business model and path to monetization
Avoid them at all costs. You cannot succeed without first surviving. Ive never met an entrepreneur who has built a billion-dollar business without first building a million-dollar one! Do your homework to calibrate your business the way investors would. Whether or not you are raising money, think of yourself as an investor in your own business, and test yourself against these issues.
Do not waste money getting fancy officespace and furniture. Entrepreneurship = (Customers + Revenues + Profits). Financing is optional. Exit is optional. Success is a sustainable profitable business that meets customer needs
About the Author
Sramana Mitra is the founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first and only global virtual incubator/accelerator. Its goal is to help a million entrepreneurs globally reach a million dollars in annual revenue, build a trillion dollars in global GDP, and create 10 million jobs.