What I learned so far about starting a company, mostly from founders’ talks.
Getting started
- You need to get to the point where you say fuck it: nothing is truly stopping you. Get the AWS startup credits (practically infinite), get a plan with smth behind it.
- Vlaio and KBC Start it can help at the very beginning, same for hub.brussels.
- Places: WAT (beta). The other ones are random ppl helping you start, not ex-founders. Founder first!
The product and the clients
- Feel the product yourself, be the backend if you have to. Product delight is the actual skill underneath this: logic gets it working, delight gets it kept.
- Don’t give it away for free. Give an early bird discount so they’re really into it, and add “but please tell us what you need, we’ll make it for you.”
- Set expectations with clients and communicate.
- Have observability set up for the project, so you see what actually happens.
The team
- Trust your team and complementary ppl. Smbd needs to sell it, not only build it.
- Know who you have in the team, and who you don’t.
- Hell yes or hell no for hiring.
- The best ppl have a hunger, they’ve moved around. You need enough time to get to know someone.
- It’s going to be hard, but trust the team.
Money
- Get a bunch of users, only then go to VCs.
- VCs don’t know anything about how to make a product.
Second startup talk, the real advice
- Most startups never really start, and nobody is looking for the product.
- You need to put something into it, speak with everyone and get a bunch of ppl in. If you’re the only technical person, everybody will talk to you.
- Recorded the rest, todo analyze and add it here
Open question
What do startups need? Besides advice and a place to work, what would help them? question