
What constitutes a startup mistake?  - prakash
http://blog.simeonov.com/2010/01/05/startup-mistakes/
======
swombat
I don't think the point of this article is quite warranted. What looks to you
like something you could only have figured out in hindsight may well look
obvious to someone more experienced. Let's take a couple of examples:

 _Yes, getting the founding teams right is hard. I agree there are issues with
single founders and there are plenty of issues in quickly-assembled founding
teams. No, co-founders who’ve known each other for a decade are not a recipe
for success either. I’m not sure one can label the general challenges people
have with founding team formation a mistake. How much of that is really in the
control of the lead founder at the time of making a founding team formation
decision?_

Fights between founders can definitely be avoided. In my case, if I'd read the
article which I later wrote on the topic
([http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-
friend...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html))
it would have saved me a very costly mistake. There are many ways for people
to fall out, but with enough experience, I would think that a savvy
entrepreneur should be able to render them much less likely and much less
harmful.

 _Another example of determination that’s typically made ex-post. Just think
about all the startups that got caught by the crash in 2008 with too little
cash on hand. Had there been no crash, they may have done just fine. Should
they be blamed for not seeing the crash? In good times, some of the companies
whose CEOs always want plenty of money in the bank are blamed for raising too
much money. In 2008 they were geniuses._

That's also not a fair comment. As far as I understand it, raising large
amounts of money isn't a "here's a bunch of money, do what you want with it"
kind of deal. If you raise $10m, you're damn well expected to put that $10m to
work in the near future. I'd be surprised if any VC let you keep that money
hanging around for more than 1-2 years tops (except, of course, if a recession
suddenly hits). Certainly, during the good times, they'll want you to spend it
- on growth, mainly, I believe.

So raising too much money is fairly predictable ahead of time: if you don't
have solid, worthwhile plans for how you'll spend that money, raising too much
money will force you to make up plans for how to spend it, and hire people to
implement those plans. Hiring more people than you need will slow you down,
and potentially cripple you, so that you wouldn't be able to implement the
thing that you _did_ need to focus on (and which perhaps only required 1/10th
of the people that you hired).

So, on the whole, it seems to me that this article makes an interesting but
flawed point. Experience turns hindsight into foresight.

------
johnl
They are all issues that distract you from your appointed goal, to build a
company from scratch. You start spending your time getting back on track and
not going forward and your are done for.

