If you are a startup raising funding, it’s good to have a few key principles you can rely on.
Being an entrepreneur and scaling a business is a hard, but it’s supposed to be.
You need a complete team to start a business – someone building it and someone selling it. It isn’t a team if everyone is building it and no one is selling it.
You’ve got to be all-in. Part-timers need not apply. But remember that sweat equity is table stakes – not valuation metrics.
Startups often assume investors want big revenue, but what investors really want is predictable and repeatable revenue. In an early stage company, the revenue is never large. However, if it’s predictable based on recurring revenue, repeat revenue or known lead generation funnels, then you have a growth story to tell the investor.
Build and test your funnel so you know it works. That way you can tell a growth story instead of telling the ‘we’re a unicorn’ story – which nobody believes.
Don’t expect funding to solve all your problems. Funding should be an enabler that accelerates what you already have going.
You’ve heard the saying- if you build it they will come. But things work differently in the startup world. Sell it first, build it second. If you can’t sell it in the first place, there’s no need to build it in the second place. Many startups over-spend on their tech and then then have trouble finding buyers. A better strategy is to sell it and then build out what the customer wants.