
Ask HN: What should first-time entreprenuers know that they probably don't? - onlyrealcuzzo
For anyone who wants to start a business, what are the most important things they should know that isn&#x27;t common knowledge?
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HHalvi
Here are the things i learn't the hard way:

Say no to Hammer and find your Nail(s): When you think like a hammer
everything is a nail, startups are rarely that (especially early on). Nails
are the actual problems you want to solve and Hammers are the one trick pony's
that might help you solve them. To put this into context: You can do a AI
startup that can solve Cancer, Credit Card Frauds and more but you need to
find a problem you want to solve and not the solution first.

Talk to your customers: You will always see that your product, service is
being used in ways you never thought about before. Stay grounded and you will
soon have better ways of growing your startup (and or increasing retention).

Decide a north Star: This should help you measure if your product/startup is
going in the right direction. A north star is often a proxy for the health of
your product/startup so don't go for MAU's and DAU's but rather something that
is actionable + contextually related to your offerings.

Not everyone makes it (quickly): Most startups fail due to small but
significant things. Trying to do things too quickly is one of the most surest
way to die. Media paints a rosy picture of how founders did a lot of
superhuman tasks and that is the exception and not the rule. What makes any
superhuman founder super are: Patience, Hustle and persistence.

Enjoy the process: Don't just do 120 hours a week and expect to get rewarded
with a couple of million dollars in the next 6,12,18 yada yada months. Start a
startup, it is like raising a baby, you need to go through the motions of
raising a child, also not every child is the same, also don't have orphan
child's (Products that are neglected and or have no parents/product owners).
Good luck!

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ian0
\- As a founder, after you are up and running, be prepared to spend lots of
time on tricky, time consuming and seemingly "non-core" jobs. Eg legal,
fundraising, HR, accountancy, tax, compliance. Because these are actually
important things for you to understand when running a business. And regardless
of whether your a "startup" or not, your still a business - just like all the
rest. Ignoring this side of things will lead to a world of pain.

\- Related to the above, you will learn more useful information about running
a business from a person who runs traditional business, not other startup
founders or blog posts. It's well worth chatting to some. Sure there are
differences (eg fundraising, spending) but the basic operations remain the
same.

\- This is often said, but I think people gloss over it. If you are doing it
for the money, then you are not very good at financial management. Do it only
if you enjoy serious challenge, want to build something huge and need some big
guns (VCs) to help you achieve it.

\- If you are setting up a B2B business you should ideally have a few _years_
salary saved. These things take time.

\- Overestimate costs and underestimate profits when budgeting, where
possible. It's great to have more money than you planned - it can be
catastrophic to have less.

------
tmaly
This is for technical people, find a market first. If one does not exist, you
are fighting a bigger uphill battle.

------
aregsarkissian
Ask yourself WHY the real live person you have identified to sell your product
to would want to use your product. Then find out if that is really true by
directly telling them this is WHY they should use it and monitoring their real
response of either paying you to use it or not. If they don't then you need to
find out why and adjust.

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leff_f
The things what you want are not the things that make you successful.

------
allendoerfer
They should be certain about their priorities in life. They should be aware,
that starting a business can have side effects on your family, your health and
your significant other and can put you in exceptional situations, you cannot
plan everyone's reactions to ahead of time. You are all-in and should at least
be aware, what's at stake ahead of time. Everyone knows, that most startups
fail. What's less commonly known is that lost money could be the least of your
problems.

------
mindcrime
I think most of the important stuff _is_ common knowledge, at least in the
sense that it's been _said_. The new entrepreneur may have even _heard_ the
stuff, but I'd say the real issue is that you don't truly internalize and
understand a lot of things until you experience them.

IOW, "entrepreneurship is a contact sport" so to speak. You can read all the
books, watch all the videos, etc. (and yes, please do, there's good stuff
there) but until you go out and try to apply it, a lot of it won't truly sink
in.

For example... it's been said plenty of times that "Nobody else cares about
your startup" (or some close variation of that). You can read that and nod
your head and say "uh, huh". And then you start talking to investors,
reporters, prospective co-founders, prospective customers, advisors, etc.,
etc. And once you're met with a collective shrug and "meh" response from all
of those people, despite the fact that you _know_ that your thing is _THE
GREATEST NEW THING EVER_ , you'll truly understand the "nobody else cares"
thing. After all, all of those people have their own ideas, passions, dreams,
aspirations, distractions, etc., to deal with. When you think about it in
hindsight, it's not hard to understand why people aren't usually going to be
super interested in your baby from day one.

Anyway, that's just one example of what I mean. That tidbit is "out there" but
reading it isn't the same as living it.

This is one reason why "just get started" is good advice. Yes, learn what you
can, whether it's from reading, watching videos, consulting live mentors /
advisors (SCORE[1] is good for this, BTW), but the sooner you start playing
"with pads on" (to use a football analogy) the sooner your real learning will
start.

Similar note about what somebody famous (pg? Horowitz? Andressen? I forget...)
said about "the most important part of being an entrepreneur is managing your
own internal mental state". You can read that, but you probably won't fully
appreciate it until you're deep in the pit of despair, just on the verge of
giving up, asking yourself why you even bothered to start in the first place,
and then something turns your way, your mood improves and you realize "shit,
if I'd quit then like I almost did, it would have been completely stupid". Go
through a few of those cycles and you really start to understand that the
single biggest thing you have to do is manage your own emotions and not get
too low, or too high, such that it derails your progress.

I say you have to just start, and then make it a point to say "the first 2, or
3, or 5, or 10 times that I'm tempted to quit, I'm going to push through and
_not_ give up, and see what happens". But, easier said than done.

[1]: [https://www.score.org/](https://www.score.org/)

