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Rushikesh Kirtikar · 

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Have worked for bringing innovations in education 6mo

Why do so many startups fail?

Back in 2012, I was participating in a competition of young startups and entrepreneurs who were presenting their ideas before a panel. There was this very enthusiastic and smart guy amongst us who seemed very excited and confident about his product. He had made a shoe which could charge your mobile battery. It produced electricity using the pressure created below your feet while walking. A mobile battery could be fitted near the foot sole which then you can later put in your phone.

Image only for reference.

It was truly a remarkable product for that time especially for people like travellers, trekkers, salesman, etc. who wouldn't find a power source often and needed to charge their phones. He had all the estimates ready of how much market it would capture and how many people it would impact. Most importantly he claimed that there is no competition for his product as it is the only of its kind in the market. He was truly impressive in his presentation and undoubtedly won the competition and a lot of praise from the judges. It was clear that the guy had put a lot of hard work on his product.

Today it is 2022 and it wouldn't take us much thought to realise why the product is useless. Most people use smartphones today which do not have replaceable batteries. That was not the case so much in 2012. Secondly, power banks have now captured the market which addresses the problem with charging phones having limited power sources. Plus the battery capacity has also been increasing.

So where did the guy fail?

In Entrepreneurship, it is generally said that one should not fall in love with the solution. But rather with the problem. Or else you would be overwhelmed by your solution and miss out other ways of looking at the problem.

So when the above guy believed that there was no competition for his product, he believed that his solution is the only solution available. He could not imagine that the problem can be solved in other ways or his solution will become redundant due to external factors. So technically a power bank manufacturer, or any mobile battery manufacturers attempting to increase its power capacity, were his potential competitors even when the products were different.

So while it is good to love your idea and your solution, a startup might fail if the ‘problem’ is not the first love. A love for the solution might close your mind, but loving the problem might just open it up.

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Juan Felipe Campos

Founder/CEO @ NomadApp, Plug & Play Silicon Valley5y When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I started taking notes of the lessons learned from every encounter and mentor. I’ve come some way since moving; I graduated from 2 Silicon Valley accelerators, hit over $1MM in sales with one of my startups, became a mentor at the Google Launchpad Manos Accelerator and learned how to surround myself with great people.

I kept all these lessons on a notepad and will share them here for the first time.

These are the 23 lessons I learned from living in Silicon Valley for one year:

1. On becoming successful:

We are totally a result of our behaviors. Fall in love with behaviors that turn into positive results. Don’t just fall in love with the results. That goes for finances, fitness, health, and much more.

There is admiration, inspiration, and envy. Take your passive admiration and turn it into inspiration. Take your negative envy and turn it into inspiration. You’re so close to feeling a positive force, just anchor it to inspiration if you want to go anywhere.

Just become buddies with people that ALREADY go to the gym/wake up early/make good money. Don't try to convince your fat buddy to start going to the gym with you. It’s much harder to pull that off.

If you think people at the gym are vain and shallow... How can you ever hope to become like them? If you think millionaires are greedy and heartless, how can you ever hope to learn from and replicate their behaviors? You can't become what you resent.

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.” - @EckhartTolle

What would the smarter, healthier version of yourself be doing right now? Why aren't you doing it?

Leaders don't have followers. Leaders create other leaders.

2. On advisors:

Most give opinions, not personal experience; and that’s ok, just be conscious of this. They haven’t necessarily done before what they’re telling you to do.

Be picky with your advisors, they are your coaches. You are the quarterback.

Most mentors will teach you how to be like them, the best ones will teach you how to be the best version of yourself.

Advisors should help you focus and take stuff out from your todo list, not just find more things to add on. Whenever they say “update your pitch deck”, ask “Okay, should I do that instead of developing my app?” Tasks need to be taken out in order for new ones to be brought in.

Be careful, most advisors advice the startup and not the entrepreneur. They will give you the right advice for your startup at the wrong time for your life. Work with people that will help you navigate your whole package (children, spouse, debt, etc.)

3. On fund raising:

Get to a point in your career where you can just call up your friends to fund your new idea.

You can’t build a bonfire with nothing but a match. You need lots of sticks and gasoline. Your teams represents the sticks. VC money should be the gasoline on your already working fire; make sure you don’t see VC money as the match or the sticks. It’s meant to amplify what already works.

Make sure you have real product-market fit, not product-VC fit. Nobody wants to be in a failed startup even if it raised funds. Make sure yours fits the market instead of just getting the quick VC check.

4. On the current VC landscape:

VC's don't play into the big bubble. They play into small bubbles like AI, ML, AR, VR, etc.

They invest in Twitter only because it looks good on their portfolio for the long term.

They make most of their money when the next VC invests, not when the company goes IPO or gets acquired. Those trophies are for the late stage VC investors, not the early stage guys.

Some investors literally invest in Patent portfolios just because it means that they can sue somebody if they want to. Everybody is suable by somebody else by the current rules.

5. On Silicon Valley:

There is no success border patrol in Silicon Valley. Show up! It’s yours too. These opportunities are not reserved for people better than you. They are reserved for those brave enough to demand their attention.

6. On product-market fit:

You almost can't be too niche. You can DEFINITELY be too broad. Most startups are too broad.

7. On humility:

The advantage you had yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything wrong, but as long as your competitors catch the wave and do it RIGHT, you can lose out and fail.

You should get excited about the accomplishments of others, not intimidated. It means you can do it too.

8. On viral campaigns:

People only share things that make THEM look good; not things that make YOU look good.

One great piece of content can change your career! You control how often you go at bat with great content. If you're GOOD enough, put out content every single day. You will inevitably rise to the top. Think what would happen if a 14 year old girl with Beyonce's voice put out a Facebook Live video every day. Within a year she would be signed. You control how often people are exposed to you content. If you think you've got what it takes, PLAY THE DISTRIBUTION GAME. Have consistency on your side.

9. On social media engagement:

It's easy to treat people as a collective instead of as individuals when you are presented with opportunities at scale. Make the effort to thank every compliment, answer every tweet. People see it. It matters.

10. On self awareness:

Don't think other entrepreneurs don’t have bad times. You’re only seeing their highlight reel.

11. On time management:

Time is the only finite source. You can always get more of everything else, but not time. Your time is running out.

Entrepreneurs get help for resources that we can recover like money and human resources. Why don’t we get “accountants” or “coaches” for our only limited source in life? Figure this out. Get into an accelerator, get mentors, onboard advisors, etc. Whatever it is; fix it. This matters.

Compound interest also applies to work-life balance. If you work really hard at the beginning of your career and you just get more done and work harder, then there is a compound effect. The earlier you start, the more you get to enjoy the benefits of it.

12. On making perfect deals:

What you want should be the same thing that everyone else in that deal wants. Example: Don't enter your customers into a raffle to win an iPad as a reward to download your app. You want app downloads, your users want an iPad. This is not a good deal.

Make deals where you win no matter what happens. Even if you don’t win, fix your attitude so you still win. You always have to win. Everything is a dot in your story to success. You’re perfect in this moment; you’re just not finished yet.

13. On benefits to users:

Figure out how to have such good product/market fit that your clients are rewarded by getting MORE of your product and they LOVE it. You shouldn’t have to rely on external incentives.

Find out what your users want. Some can be incentivized with a verified badge or a free download. Understand your audience intimately; this will help you make better decisions.

14. On having too many features:

Most entrepreneurs want it ALL from day one. Platforms are crowded with buggy features. It’s hard to market an app that makes no money and has 0 fanatics on day one.

Key to success is focus: have the 1 or 2 things that your app does and your customers want; make them great and grow with your audience as you launch more features.

15. On perfection paralysis:

Perfection is overrated. Learn from Facebook and, “Move fast and break things.”

16. On being “right” about a trend:

You can't break out unless the platform itself is breaking out. Bet on the platform that's growing. When the tide rises, all boats rise with it.

17. On getting funded:

We always hear, "It's all about the team", and we think that it means the team has to be down to earth and likeable. It does not. It means the team has to show a proven record of success and commitment to the relentless pursuit of excellence. Nobody gets this badge overnight, it’s like being an athlete or a professional musician. People won’t see you have “it” unless you’ve been pruning yourself through years and years of discipline.

18. On networking:

We always hear: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." If you come from a humble background, you’ll take offence to this and think that you can’t know big people since you don’t have that built-in network. Get that chip off your shoulder. Build a network of people that you love being around and bring tons of value into your life.

19. On hiring:

Entrepreneurs hear, “The team is everything” and they think they have to go out and be really picky about who they hire. Instead, they should be worried about becoming the right people to work for. You can only attract all time greats if you're an all time great. It's not just about being picky. It's about being someone worth working for.

Don't hire your friends. Go waaaaay out of your way to hire the best in the world. You won't be able to recruit them until you're the best yourself.

When recruiting, you should pitch the talent, not them pitch you. If they are pitching you, then you're hiring the low hanging fruit. Work hard for your talent. Find yourself in a position where you are pitching every person you hire because you recognize that they could work anywhere else.

Hire quickly, fire quickly. The #1 greatest mistake any great founder makes is waiting too long to fire bad people.

Don't just hire people who are passionate about your goal; hire people who are actually good at what they do, too. You can't build a school by hiring only teachers. You need architects and engineers too. Your employees don't have to be passionate about your company for the same reasons you are as long as you both want the same result.

20. On building a personal brand:

Struggling to build a personal brand? Your problem is that you're too complex. Are you the witty brand, the strong motivational brand, the intellectual brand? You can't grow quickly when you're trying to be too many things. Just pick something and stick to it long enough for people to recognize you. If you have too many passions, STILL just pick one thing and then change to the next thing once you have an audience.

21. On learning from previous generations:

Your grandparents are theoretically better at social media than you are. They are the ones that invented the handshake, the ones that invented baking you a cake when your grandmother died, the ones that invented the baker's dozen, and asking you questions when you walked into the store. The internet and social media have made it easier and given you an excuse to be less human instead of amplifying and scaling your humanity. The more "Jetsons" that we become, the more the “Flinstones” will win.

Facebook audience research is something old people would have done. Testing the market. Oldest trick in the book. Don’t ignore it, ask people if they like your stuff.

Great founders are like great farmers, they look for 10% growth every week. They look for the boring things and not the things that get televised. For you, this means hard work, getting clients, billing, delivering a great product. Do this instead of focusing all your time on fund raising, getting rockstar advisors, growing your social media followers, etc.

22. On burning out:

I was told that you get burnt out from working too hard and what I found in my own experience is that burnout actually comes from failing and things not working. Momentum is really energizing; the lack of momentum is super draining. I find that I have infinite energy to work on things that are working, and almost none to work on things that I either find uninteresting or that are not working. So when you look at successful people and you wonder how they get so much done; it's really all about momentum. Momentum is really energizing, and lack of momentum is really not energizing.

23. On building a support system:

Be careful, you may think that you have a support system when in reality what you really have is people that hold you down. Those people don't want you to be better than them. It can even be your spouse. They are scared of losing you and losing who you are.

There are dozens of individuals who I wish I could thank for loving me into who I am today. This is my own lesson over the last year:

It’s easy to overlook the sacrifices and effort needed to bring you to where you are in life.

It’s a gift.

Show us all what you do with it.

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"In the beginning, it’s easy. The founder(s) do everything. There are only a few people, so it’s easy to coordinate who does what. Inevitably, the CEO takes on a lot of the finances, legal and other operational tasks, but they probably also have a hand in shaping the product and touching sales and marketing and maybe they are even involved in technical aspects of the business.

Suddenly the CEO is spread too thin and needs the team to take things off their plate. The team might be happy to do that, but everyone has learned to come to the CEO for at least a light touch on most things.

Even in a small team, a learned dependency can appear. There’s one person who seems to know all the answers and own all the relationships. That person tries to unload tasks, but work is so intertwined, it’s hard. The person assigned the task doesn’t have all the information they need to complete it, so they go back to the leader for more information and it ends up being more work than if the leader had just done it themselves in the first place."

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What do mediocre employees do that the best employees don't do?

My list of what mediocre employees do:

Unable to hit deadlines. This is different than missing a few, with a proper heads-up.

Get angry when they fall behind. Instead of quietly stepping up and just getting it done.

Refuse to own a quantitative KPI or goal. They don’t want to own a number.

Don’t raise their hand when they need help. They just hide it. Often even to themselves.

Always “very busy”. The best employees always find a way to help, to take a little more on to help the team.

Argue with bosses and other leaders in public. The boss isn’t always right. But understanding someone has to make the call on tough decisions is important.

Need folks to do all their work for them. More an issue with mediocre managers. They are often unwilling to do any actual work themselves.

Hire mediocre folks under them. It’s true. This is the worst part.

Hire folks that just do what they are told. Instead of folks that are great.

Blame others. It’s never their fault.

Gossip. A little is OK, but mediocre employees often become toxic ones, spending too much time on office-related gossip.

Threatened by a new great hire. Again, a little of this is OK. But great employees embrace all great hires. Even when there is overlap with their role and patch.

Lie. Mediocre employees lie. They just lie. They claim they got the project done, but didn’t. They claim they held the date, but didn’t actually do it. They claim they hit the plan, but they didn’t. The lie sort of works a little, at first, if they are in a position of trust. But then they have to lie more.

A related vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUXuCmQ-pNY

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Jason M. Lemkin

SaaStr & SaaStr Fund; ceo/co-founder @ Adobe Sign / EchoSign

4h ago

What are the most important lessons you've learned in your career?

My list:

Slow down big decisions, speed up the rest. I’m not the first to say this, but boy it’s correct.

Wait and find a truly great co-founder. I’ve done so, so much better when I had a great co-founder. But when I’ve had one that wasn’t as committed … that led to mediocre outcomes. At best. And a lot of pain. No matter how smart they were.

Make your first customers wildly successful. They teach you how to make the next 10, 50, 100 wildly successful, too. Your first customers are your future. You will get more just like them.

Power laws are real. If your startup is worth $20m today, it can be worth $100m in a few years, and maybe, $1000m a few years after that. Value, brands and revenue compound.

Don’t worry as much about the competition. They can maim you, but they rarely can kill you. Especially if you are growing at even a half-decent rate.

Go all-in. If you don’t commit 100%, you’ll never maximize the success.

A great team is a family. Few things are more special than having a great team at a start-up. Family members will leave and go on to other great thiings. But you’ll be a family for decades.

A great journey makes you relevant. If you sell your startup, you’ll see that no matter how much money you make, you start to feel … less relevant afterwards. Not everyone, but most of us as founders. A great journey gives you purpose and relevance.

90% transparency is about right. You can’t share every single issue, every drama. That’s too much. But about 90% transparency is good. The team can take it, and will appreciate it. Don’t share everything. But hide less.

Time is the ally of the committed. If you are willing to work not just harder, but for longer than the rest — you probably won’t fail. You won’t let the tough times, that terrible year, kill you. You’ll push on. And you’ll stay in the game long enough for those power laws to finally kick in.

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Is innovation a solo act, the product of the lone genius? How do successful entrepreneurs make use of networks to help take their ideas forward?

Mark Alan Effinger

, Founded 18 Companies. 1 Inc 500. 6 Profitable Company Sales.

Answered April 17

Yes, and absolutely not. And the second part could easily be a second question.

True innovation might be considered separate from invention. It often looks like improvements or “fixes” to an existing product or service.

My rule of thumb on raw invention is this: When you receive that “aha” moment in your head, and frantically scribble it down to record your “genius invention”, know this: 10,000 other people are doing the very same thing. They’re reading the same material. Watching the same TV. Visiting the same websites. Being nagged by the same retargeted ads. Sharing similar water cooler conversations. Visiting similar forums, FB pages. Scrolling through the same tweets. But only about 100 will actually begin crafting the details of the idea. And rarely will more than 10–20 actually begin to take real action. Creating a prototype. Looking for existing products. Finding creative solutions and materials to apply to the invention. In reality, only a handful will have the skills, connections, experience and drive to take the raw idea and build a business around it. All these issues are opportunities to those who will execute on the idea. Who won’t quit when the opportunity continues to prod them at 4am.

Pioneering raw invention into newly emerging markets is expensive, time consuming, and mostly unprofitable. You need resources to fund staying power, so you can eventually carve out your niche. Then you need to master the marketing message through constant, incremental message refinement. It’s a process. It takes time, clarity, passion, integrity and often, and small handful of really smart, capable people. I’ve done both (Raw Invention and Innovation). Both have worked for me. Created profitable businesses. And made a difference - a marked improvement - in our customers’ lives. But, as my good friend Matt Gallant proclaims: “First in Class. Or Best in Class”. (That guy does not compromise).

In contrast, Innovation happens more often when a problem has already been solved, and a market exists. But an element of the existing product or technology could benefit from a real improvement. Something that would reignite the market. Would propel it forward in some meaningful way. And could do so profitably.

Innovation takes a unique eye. Often it manifests as a result of frustration when using an existing solution. I think this is one of the best examples I can think of to illustrate this point:

So no, innovation and invention almost ALWAYS rely on “standing on the shoulders of giants” who’ve come before us. Geniuses who risked life and limb (and often, spouse and bank account) in order to bring something to market that really makes an impact.

EXAMPLE: In 1998, I was moderating a Venture Capital conference (I was the very fortunate dork entrepreneur who was lucky enough to partner with the guy who helped Phil Knight fund Nike (then went on to funding Avia, Fabricland, FlIR Systems, and more than 100 other startups).

(Jacques Nichols - the Godfather of Venture Capital in the PNW - and I making sure Baby Jesus gets his next round of funding). My very fortunate Network Effect in the flesh. I had energy, enthusiasm, and the experiences of launching and selling companies. But most of my education was made on the streets and in garage labs. Not in the Stanford Quad. After the event, I was speaking with John Hummer (former B-Ball player, and co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners). John was very kind to spend time with me after we left the stage. In the middle of our dialogue, I asked him about how he helps his startups decide on their exit strategy. John said something like “the path to the exit is rarely clear during the first few rounds of investment.” All I heard was ExitPath. Since this was the time when dot-com domains were $70 each, and 1–2 word domains could be worth gold to the right buyer. And for a guy like me who made his money on each company exit (liquidity event), that name caused me to stop, say my thanks, run to my hotel room and score the domain. It was a spark, “invented” by network effects. Inspired by a dude much smarter than me. But timing was perfect. I’ve never sold the domain. But it’s made me over $1,000,000 since 2000.

Innovation is everywhere. She’s just waiting for you to come play in her sandbox. You just need to be ready. Willing. Risk tolerant. Inquisitive. And understand that you’re very likely not the only one thinking along these lines. So action. Experimentation. Exploration. Research. Those be the food that fuels the Muse.

Let me know if this ramble was helpful. I’m gonna’ blame any tangential rabbit holes I took you down to it being Saturday morning. And I have yet to take my handful of supplements.

Or my dog. I’m blaming it on my dog. So there.

Best of success in both your Raw, awesome inventions. And your badass innovations. Go make ’em happen. I’ll be right here, waiting to celebrate with you.

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What are some hiring tips for early-stage startups?

My top list:

Hire an internal recruiter as soon as you are making 1 new hire a month. It’s worth the expense to make the process much more efficient.

Do as much PR as you can. Potential hires will find it, at least on Google, at least once they have some interest. Do any podcast than will have you. Put together a YouTube channel. Get even third-tier PR. Write some terrific blog pieces.

Spend 20% of your time recruiting, period. No one spends as much time here as they think. You have to spend 20%+ of your time recruiting, or you’ll never get there.

Force yourself to interview at least 20 candidates for each open position. This will stop you from settling too quickly.

Find the best 2–3 advisors / mentors you can and give them some options (and/or cash) and ask for help. The best ones will often at least be able to find you one strong hire over the next 12 months.

Don’t underhire. A stretch hire is one thing. But hiring someone too junior that can’t really do the job doesn’t save you money. It costs you money.

Find an effective filter for the inbounds. Ask folks to tell you why they’d like to join, or do a video application, or perhaps a quick simple programming question. There are pros and cons to all of these. But you need some filter for the inbounds.

Try alumni job boards at the schools you went to. Sometimes, the affinity with someone that graduated a few years back creates a connection.

Reach out to folks that have worked at startups in your space a stage or two ahead. If nothing else, they’re often more receptive to cold emails.

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Oh man this is one of the toughest parts of scaling.

I remember Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, and I discussed this at one of the SaaStr Annuals, when he lost his VP of Engineering. He had no back-up and thought that was it. We’ve all lived it. I still live it myself!

It’s one of the biggest risks not just in the early days, but really just as you scale. Until you get to at least 50 employees, there’s rarely a second layer of management, a Plan B, a back-up for each role.

All I can tell you is this:

First, if you hire great VPs, it partially takes care of itself. Great VPs attract great directors and great ICs. A Great VP almost always hires at least 1 great person under her than can take over. So always listen and learn, and err on the side of promoting the best you have.

Second, the rest of the team rallies — if you have a good team. This isn’t a perfect answer, but if you have a good team, they get it. They know they have to step up. They fill the gap as best they can.

Third, it’s better if the mediocre leave in the end. The best ones tend to stay longer, and it’s the mediocre that leave faster. You may fear the hole in the org chart if someone mediocre leaves. But in the end, you’ll see that it would have been even better if the mediocre had left earlier. It’s time to get on with finding someone great.

The “my top person gets hit by a bus risk” almost never ends until you have a deep bench of management. Maybe not even entirely then.

But the #1 key to solving it is hiring truly Great VPs. They attract the best talent under them. And it’s that talent that mitigates the risk.

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The ugly truth about nice girls:

Ever bump into a girl that has the sweetest personality that’s genuine to the core. That rare breed that doesn’t have an underlined evil thought but has a true love for people? The girl that we rarely come across anymore? Know the type I’m talking about?

Yeah, that girl.

The saddest fact about nice girls is she isn’t taken seriously.

We live in a world that doesn’t believe sincerity when they see it. They assume this girl is fake or is over dramatized. “She is trying to hard” they think, or “can’t be real.”

and also,

She is viewed as childish.

why?

Because the world doesn’t seem to realize that their are two different kinds of innocence.

One is like a baby who doesn’t know the evil of the world, the other is one of choice. Many, not all, nice girls have chosen to not take part in the defilement that the rest of us live in. The sad truth is that we bash them for it. We view one who wants to live in beauty because of the hope and love they have for mankind and we want to destroy it because we cannot relate.

Thus, another reason we view them as fake.

“surely this cannot be real”. We cannot believe that anyone so perfect could exist. In truth they aren’t perfect, we just don’t relate.

so nice girls have trouble being understood.

another sad truth is they are swiftly abused and are often a target to predators. They want to see the positive and potential in all and thus are taken advantage of. They do not want to hurt your feelings and therefore many narcissistic poo heads decide to nest on them.

The final mentioned is that they have trouble at work. Not because of in-capability, but because when no one takes them seriously it’s harder for them to use that natural people skill as a leader.

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Netflix has a very opinionated conception of talent. Most large tech companies have a somewhat similar approach to recruiting, evaluating and promoting folks, but Netflix has a markedly different philosophy, and having only senior engineers is just one aspect of it.

In a typical large tech company, there are entry-level engineers who are motivated by the perspective of being promoted and earn more money. The longer they stay, the more equity they vest, so tenure is also rewarded. The company must dedicate resources to help these engineers grow, have intern programs etc. But eventually, most of these engineers leave to get more money at another big tech company.

At Netflix, there is just one level (“senior”). Everyone is making “top of market” for their role. Netflix is constantly researching the compensation for similar roles and constantly updating their own compensation grid so that everyone is always going to make at least that and that it’s never possible to leave for more money. Compensation is all salary, no equity, so that tenure is not rewarded per se. Employees can get stock at a preferred price if they want to. There are no raises outside of the market afaik, so if say the top backend senior engineer outside of Netflix is paid 400k this year but was paid 390k last year, all Netflix backend engineers get a 10k bump. However, if an employee doesn’t perform, they are fired (with severance). Netflix doesn’t have to dedicate resources to grow engineers to the senior level, they don’t hire out of school and don’t have an intern program.

All of this is second hand as I never worked for Netflix. but the TL;DR is that the single level of engineer doesn’t make sense if taken in isolation from the general Netflix HR philosophy.