How not to f*#k up when starting up!
“Today is the day! I’m going to quit my job, live off of my savings, and invest in my entrepreneurial dream so that I can take control of my life and hopefully become rich!”
This is how it usually starts…
Fast forward to 18 months later; you’re $75k in debt, the business you started is losing money (a lot of it), and things are starting to look dire. You stay up at night drowning in panic hoping that you’ll be able to fix it, but deep down you know that you’re f*#ked! All your hard work, money, and sanity…gone.
This happens way too often to people that want to be entrepreneurs and it sucks! To help avoid this, I will be writing a series of posts that will help you start a company and make it successful. I can’t promise you success, but I can give you a framework that will greatly improve your odds of creating a great business, and ultimately a great life.
Why listen to me? My name is Raad Mobrem and I am a successful tech entrepreneur. I raised $3m from investors for my last company Lettuce and sold it to QuickBooks for $30m. I’ve advised and invested in many companies, helping them grow to be multi-million dollar machines.
Part 1: Don’t just start a company, solve a problem first!
Most people I encounter start companies because they want a change. They get fed up with their job, hate their boss, or just want to make a lot more money. While this is a good source of motivation, it’s a horrible reason to start a company. And here’s why:
When building a business, until you improve the lives of your customers, you cannot improve your own (REMEMBER THIS FOREVER!!!).
The key word in the previous statement is “improve”. To improve means to fix. Thus, if you want to start a business, it shouldn’t be because you want to start something of your own, but instead because you want to solve a problem! In addition, the product you create should evolve from a problem that many others have endured. Time and time again, people that want to be entrepreneurs create products that they think will be a success but end up failing because the product didn’t provide significant improvement to the user’s lives.
As a result, if you want to start a “successful” business, you’ll need to find a big problem that a lot of other people have and solve that problem really well.