6 Mistakes to Avoid as a New Founder

I remember some of the biggest eff up’s I have made, and if you are a founder, you probably remember yours.

Being an entrepreneur is being able to walk with uncertainty, embrace mistakes, no matter how messy they might be, as learning opportunities, and take those learnings forward to make change.

Mistakes are part of the process. And as a recovering perfectionist, I know how hard that sentence is for me. In our jobs and in our schooling, everything is outlined; there’s a rubric. There’s KPIs. But in the early days of business, it kind of feels like we are just swimming. (Swimming in an open sea with some whales and sharks lurking beneath but no one can see them.)

This feeling is even more true if you are developing your first product or service.

So, I want to share with you some top mistakes I’ve made and I’ve seen other founders make when developing their first product or service.

Striving for Perfection

Mistake number one, trying to be perfect.

I remember the very, very first education app I was working on, I wanted it to be beautiful. I was comparing myself to the Duolingo standard of execution. I wanted it to be perfect.

And all of my mentors, all of my colleagues were saying if you’re not embarrassed when you are launching it, you are in launching it too late.

And they are absolutely right.

If you are trying to be perfect your product or service will never be done. It is about getting something out there a minimum viable product, an MVP, that you can just get feedback on, then you can iterate over time to create the absolute dream product. But do not let perfection get in the way from your impact.

Lacking Customer Input

Mistake number two, building a product or a service without customer input.

I’m speaking from experience here. When we were building some of our first UI and UX, I thought it was beautiful. I’m so proud of it. It was fun. It was whimsical. It was colorful I thought kids around the world would love it until I handed it to them.

And they were clicking and swiping the images… when I did not make them clickable or swipeable. (Face palm.)

I spent money and time building something that they didn’t even really like or use properly. This UX and UI was a huge learning.

So even from before your product or service days, keep customers and users involved, whether that’s through a focus group or maybe you have some ambassadors who can help you along the way.

No matter what you do, you need to keep your ear to the ground to customers because trends change habits change. And you do not want to build something that at the end of the day, they don’t want to buy or use.

Spending $$$

The third mistake I’ve seen is shelling out lots of cash.

Don’t get me wrong. If I had all the money in the world, maybe I would outsource some more things. But cash should not be a barrier for your earliest prototypes.

As founders, especially first time nontechnical founders, we think we need to pay the developer to build our website, we think we need the software set of eyes to help us design that app. Or we pay for a branding a designer to make our brand presence absolutely beautiful.

But, I’m telling you, there are freebies and shortcuts.

At this early stage, I recommend spending no money on your product or service.

Cost should not be a barrier at this stage. Think of all the free resources like Google Forms, Caard, or yep.so for a landing page that you can use to really go out and test your idea. And once you test and have feedback, then invest some money behind it.

Fearing Criticism

Mistake number four that I see founders make is being afraid of criticism.

This goes back to that mindset piece. There are going to be customers out there who don’t like your product, who say no.

I know, it sucks right?

But, when we’re in the early days where our product or service is kind of our baby, those elements of criticism are just like a stab in the heart.

I remember when I was doing an outreach campaign direct emailing to get a new client, and someone just emailed me back “No, we’re not interested.” That was it. Short and sweet, but I took it personally.

But guess what, their criticism is not personal. I wasn’t the right fit for them, they weren’t the right fit for me. (Like Oprah and my mom taught me, No is a complete sentence, and with them, I got the message.)

Being an entrepreneur requires you to have a little bit thicker skin or over time, develop those layers of thicker skin. Because there’s always going to be critics out there just as well as there’s always going to be advocates and cheerleaders for your business. It’s the nature of the beast.

But, it is also part of the process and being able to segment that out of your mind, take their learnings, iterate, and go deliver a product to the individuals who do truly love your product or service.

Not Trusting Yourself

The fifth mistake I see people make is not trusting their gut. I believe we all have some form of intuition, trusting your gut, or however you want to call it.

But there’s usually an inclination of when you’re on and when you’re off track.

You know, when you get that feeling where this is the product or service that could really change someone’s life. Or I really think that I’m onto something my customers are giving me this feedback that this is what they’ve been looking for.

Those are absolutely positive times to trust your gut.

But it’s also important to realize when you’re off track, sometimes our head is saying keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. But our heart and our gut knows, maybe this isn’t the product or service that is the best fit for my user. That’s happened to me too.

And sometimes it takes courage to recognize when there’s that misalignment between your head and your gut.

Believing False Illusions

And last but not least, mistake number six thinking you can or you have to do it all. Similar to trusting your gut, you do not need to do it all at once. Who ever on social media posts that they are is just hiding behind an illusion.

I understand when we start out building a business, we paint this whole picture of what we envision it to be the big end product, and when our MVP or our prototype does not meet it, we get disappointed.

But you don’t need to do it all in the early stages.

Really focus and build something that provides benefits to your users. Then you can put on the bells and whistles, the really pretty branding, and everything else in between.

Start at your business’s core, and then the rest will fall into place.

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