megabyteHow to Succeed with a Startup
I recently saw Sam Altman's session on YouTube regarding How to succeed with a startup.
This session resonated with me, my co-founder, and our team.
Today, I am sharing some of the key points of the sessions and what I am doing as the co-founder of 0rbit 💫.
1. Building a Good Product
Building a good product is the hardest part of the startup. The product should be so good that people recommend it to others, creating a network effect. If this is achieved, 80% of the work is done.
2. Easy to Understand
The product should be easy to understand. Considering we are building 0rbit the Decentralized Oracle infrastructure, our product should be easy to understand for the developers who will use it. The audience type should be considered while analyzing if people can understand.
3. Exponential growth in the market
The market started to undergo or will soon undergo exponential growth.
Building a product in this type of market ensures the growth of the product overtime as the market grows.
4. Fake Trends & Real Trends
Real trends are the ones that will actually happen, like the adoption of AO to build a decentralized permaweb, where people showed self-interest and wanted to use the product. Fake trends are the ones where founders make the community buy the product, but no one actually uses it.
5. Evangelical Founder
A guy in the startup, usually the founder(s), will go out and sell the product, raise funds, and explain the product to the people- The face of the company.
6. Ambitious Vision
Your vision shouldn't overshadow others but grow organically. People become interested in the team's ambitious vision.
7. Hard Startup vs Easy Startup
The correct market state makes raising funding easy. However, getting people interested in the product and its vision is challenging.
8. Confident and Definitive View of the Future
The founders should be confident and have definitive views of the future. They should be able to adapt to market changes and pivot if necessary to achieve the vision.
9. Huge if it works
The product has and creates value in the ecosystem; if it works, it will be huge and grow exponentially. Again, this lies in the product quality and the vision.
10. TEAM
The team you built is the company you built.
Building a great team is the most important thing to do after picking the right market and the product.
Every "successful" founder goes through the journey of
building the product -> building a company = building a team.
Optimists
Startups need to have an optimistic team. The world will say no to you and your product, but the team should always be upbeat and step up to the challenges.
Idea Generators
The team should be able to generate ideas. This is achievable if the team consists of people who understand the product, the vision, and the market.
"We'll Figure it Out" Attitude
If you ever face some problem that looks unsolvable or the end of the company (there will be many), the team should have the attitude to stand up and say we will figure it out. This is important for founders; they know the team has their backs in the hard times. Investors trust the team and don't pull out the funding. And, of course, the success of the company.
"I've Got IT" Attitude
The early team members should step up independently, take ownership, and solve the problem.
Action Bias
The startups must move fast and take action without having all the data. The team should be able to adapt to these situations and move at the required pace.
The Blessing of Inexperience
A statement from Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
The best things he did at Apple came from not having experience and the money.
Being inexperienced in something is an advantage to an early startup because it allows you to solve problems in non-traditional ways without knowing they were previously unsolvable.
11. Momentum
Never lose momentum.
The founders should always maintain momentum while building the product during the startup journey. If you lose momentum once, it becomes difficult to regain it within the team and yourself.
I think I made this mistake before and saw the repercussions
12. Competitive Analysis
The founders should be aware of the market competition and clearly understand the product's position. This helps them gain the trust of the investors.
13. Sensible Bussiness Model
The founders should have some idea of how the company will make money, and investors need to know how the company will sustain itself.
In the case of 0rbit, we are aligned toward building a community-focused, self-sustainable network. Building a business model around this takes much time and is challenging.
14. Distribution Strategy
The founders should have a sensible idea of the product's distribution strategy before reaching out to the investors.
In our case, being an infrastructure layer moves our focus towards building a developer community. This will help in the distribution of the product automatically when the developers realize that the product is easy to use and help them bring ANY data from the Internet to the Blockchain. I am not sure whether this is the correct approach or not :)
15. Frugality, Focus, Obsession, Love
The above four points should be clear to the founders.
For me, frugality is one motivation to build a great product. No one likes to be frugal, but you need to be when building a company; you can't spend $$$ on promotions when your product is 💩.Focus is something I am learning right now. Before, I used to focus on multiple things, but today, I need to focus on different things under one umbrella.Obsession and love are always there in me to build products for the community; the only difference this time is that I am building a company around it.
16. Why Startup Win
One Yes or One No
Look for ideas that sound bad but are good.
In big companies, you need multiple yeses to get a product out. In startups, you need only one yes to get the product out.
Fast-Changing Markets
Startups have the advantage of agility and speed.
Startups can adapt to market changes quickly and pivot if necessary. This is a huge advantage over big companies.
Platform Shifts
Startups can change their trajectory in a day if they see a market change or a new platform shift. This takes a considerable amount of time in big companies.
If you are building a startup, I recommend watching the session. It will help you understand the startup journey and the challenges you will face.
Apologies if I mistakenly interpreted any of the points. I am still learning and trying to understand the startup journey.
Thanks for reading!
Keep Building (🧱,🚀)
Twitter @megabyte0x
GitHub @megabyte0x
Email contact@megabyte0x.xyz