Time Wasters for Early Startup Founders
Things I wasted my time on as an early stage startup founder...
- Reading competitor’s fundraising announcements
- Experimenting with ads
- Debating our company values
- Redesigning the look & feel of our website
- Rewriting our vision, mission & strategy docs
- Attending conferences
- Hosting external events for our users
- Talking to “advisors” who didn't build anything relevant
- Entertaining coffee chats with vcs outside of a fundraise
- Overcustomizing our CRM
- Outsourcing critical work to agencies
- Launching a podcast
- Debating on brand guidelines
- Creating a 6-month+ strategy when the strategy changes monthly
- Talking about A/B testing without statsig metrics
- Writing investor updates read by 10% of our investors
The only important things early on are:
- Talking to users
- Launching new things for users
- Finding the best ways to reach more users
Nothing else matters.
Anything you’d add to your list?