Startup 101 (The 12 Commandments) by Javnyuy Joybert

Fundamentals of Business Start Up – Ref: StartupSchool

1. Fully understand customers’ problems and ensure the product/service meets their needs (Ease their pain).

2. Launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. But be careful not to launch a terrible product that can destroy your reputation forever

3. Take time to calculate your startup and be as lean as possible. Be ok to beg. Do not use money on what you can beg. Stop building with pride.

4. Be careful not to expand too fast, you might make terrible mistakes that will cause you to crash. Expand with clear metrics

5. Practice “90/10 solution”:
That is, look for a way in which you can accomplish 90% of what you want with only 10% of the work/effort/time/money.

6. Do not go after public hyping too early. Focus on getting traction, building strong systems and making sales

7. Do not run away from problems. At the startup level you are in the business of fixing things consistently. Especially when there is no clear blueprint to follow.

8. Do not focus your energy to fight competition. That is suicide. Focus on creating your unique value base on gaps identified in the market. It turns out that spending any time worrying about your competitors is nearly always a very bad idea.

9. Be careful about co-founders (partners). The relationships with your cofounders matter more than you think and open, honest communications between founders makes future debacles much less likely.

10. Spending too much time on the wrong things can condemn the startup to an early death. Be careful what you spend your time on.

11. Pay attention to government regulations in your sector. Be highly informed and have clear plans to meet up. Do not ignore. Visit the government office in charge if necessary

12. Be careful about dating. As a startup entrepreneur, you cannot just date any “yeye” person. Date someone who has the mind of building for the future, someone who can contribute, someone who believe in you or who can even just give you peace of mind and encourage you.

Javnyuy Joybert
Mr Remarkable
www.joybert.com