

Advice to First-Time Founders - relaunched
http://firstround.com/article/Heres-the-Advice-I-Give-All-of-Our-First-Time-Founders

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toumhi
Good stuff about having a North Star, something that gets you up in the
morning, why you're doing this in the first place.

I've worked on too many projects that were very tactical just because it
sounded like a good niche opportunity at the time.

When time comes to doing the boring and difficult work (and it always does)
you don't want not to be passionate about what you do. I know it sounds like a
cliché, but it's true.

When you run a website for making gift certificate templates and you frankly
don't give a damn about it, it's hard to get up in the morning and keep
writing these articles, reaching out to small business bloggers or the million
things you need to do to promote a website.

So choose your North Star wisely.

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kordless
> Even if it's a $100 million business, if the company is not growing things
> will stall. People will start to leave. It'll be over.

I think it's time we (the people actually spending the sweat equity) start
considering alternatives to these unreasonable expectations we blow up our
companies to make them worth BILLIONS. That's an impossible task for all
startups to accomplish and making it seem that it's possible is not good
advice, IMHO.

Besides, people leave when they are ready to go, even in a successful startup.
If you look at older companies, the founding teams left long ago because they
got bored or rich, or both.

