I’m starting this thread to ask the house some of the most important lessons you’ve learnt as an entrepreneur that can help others save time and money as well as achieve success. Be generous. Share!
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Talking from the perspective of a guy who pays for talent and oversees management. Mostly on personal projects.
RHETORICAL PART
i. That you need people. You need them to fail you, you need them for support. But NEVER to depend on!
ii. You will nurse doubts. It simply proves your business is still a work-in-progress. It doesn’t mean there’s something fundamentally wrong with your model/business.
iii. Learn to fight without breaking up. Heated arguments don’t mean the end of business together. Take a break, and come back, still with the “knives” not far away, but in its sheath.
iv. Be your worst critical. Now there’s a balance to be struck here; people who tend to be overly critical of themselves, end up being easily despondent with the slightest aspersion cast over their POV. The idea is to be equally critical of 3rd party critics or antics as the case may be.
v. Learn to manage people, you don’t have to be the smartest guy in the group. That’s the single most important skillset as a business person.
LESS BS PART
i. There’s talent to be found in Nigeria, that said; CVed up talents, can be really pompous tools. Working with any (whether paid or on collaboration), start early to find replacements (whether paid or on collaboration). You’d be lucky if you don’t need replacement, and you’d be damned when you do and failed to prepare. It humbles people when they find they weren’t the live of the ‘party’ afterall. Once a ‘disgruntled’ local dev found there were atleast 4 Ukrainian devs with read access to a repo he was working on, he ‘just’ humble. ‘4’ was an overkill. Right? I know.
ii. Build up some credible financial footprint. It just helps, never know when you might need some quick loan. Life-altering loan.
iii. Most valuable lesson; there is, i repeat, there is always a cheaper, easier way of doing anything. ANYTHING. Just apply yourself to find it.
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The very important lesson I have learnt is never to make important decisions in a haste. Always wait, think and watch things unfold.
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Most important lesson for me is never to stop learning. It is kind of generic but every rule, business knowledge, or code seems to be changing everyday. So learning to keep learning must be an art.
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One mistake most entrepreneurs make is they get lost in the moment of sticking to their guns.
Always listen to your customer and take their feedback very serious.
Implement at least 10% of the feedback you get from customers
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A few major lessons 
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Great companies are often built by a team of people who each could have built something smaller themselves working together who make it work. Don’t rest until you find A-team people to co-found your company with and make sure you don’t hold back on equity (likely your only bargaining chip) when you find them. Do whatever it takes to bring them on.
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Find a big mission. If what you are doing is not truly transformative. Stop doing it right now. Especially in a society like this, too many monumental problems for us to be chasing incremental solutions. As yourself, is this a billion naira company? If its not, stop doing it now.
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Escape competition by any means possible. In every industry, if you are not clearly the first or a close second, please exit. Don’t deceive yourself. Things will not get better. There are no miracles. Your competition is smarter, have more money and have thought farther along than you have. As Peter Thiel says “All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
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I don’t even know which of these 3 is the most important but yes.
If something is not working, STOP IT!
Be very clear when you have failed and act to clip that in the bud. Too many people are flogging a dead horse and insisting it will soon live. There’s nothing as bad as a zombie startup. If you aren’t growing (revenues, users, traffic, whatever) actively, there’s a big chance you’re dying. Check your metrics. Be brutally honest. Ask about the state of the industry. Ask for metrics from other firms. Look under your hood. Look under other hoods. And decide if you’re growing fast enough to win. If the answer is no and you’re not rolling in so much profit growth is a luxury, you’re probably a zombie startup.
If you have a team member that’s not working out, fire them. If you have a partnership that’s faltering, address the issue and (possibly) dissolve the company.
If you have a product that’s doing badly, close it. Where’s TechCabal PR? Exactly.
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Tell that to Slack.
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Slack is a clear first in their industry. As per #1 work collaboration tool. That’s what I mean… You can tell if what you have is 10x better than the competition…
If you don’t have an angle on an existing industry that can propel you to no 1, it’s not likely to be worth it. Like, what’s the point of the 4657th to-do app? Exactly.
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I disagree. Slack got there some months ago, it wasn’t like there were no other work collaboration tools, or they were obscure.Till today, there are many businesses who prefer and need other solutions like Slack that are not Slack.
You can tell if what you have is 10x better than the competition…
Not to be unnecessarily argumentative but this kinda then defeats the whole escape competition phrase to me. If they just saw the other solutions, and went, ah, screw it, they might not be here today. I’ve also heard the ‘it’s not who’s first, is who’s best’ rule, which I kinda prefer, because it doesn’t say avoid competition, it says BEAT competition.
These are all great points, I just sometimes worry that there’s too many people with too many ways to do this whole thing and it can be so overwhelming.
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- Hunger makes people smart!
- Sabo to Anthony on foot is about 1.5 hours
- There are 2 thin lines between being delusional and being visionary: hard work and objectivity!
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I’ll have to say a big ass NO to that. 7 years ago, 37signals was the tech darling, with their insightful blog, Basecamp, and Campfire. Oh, and they started fully bootstrapped which even made silicon valley bloggers all over them. Butterfield and Sons saw this.
Flowdock came a couple of years later. Oh, and it had all the integrations you could want and more - https://www.flowdock.com/integrations. How about comparatively better user interface to Atlassian’s HipChat? Yes. Butterfield still didn’t care.
Oh, I already mentioned HipChat, right? That too.
I’d wager that Slack’s success, can be pretty much attributed to media induced curiosity. Period. Nothing that is said about them as an advantage hasn’t been done before. I love Slack as much as the next guy, and that’s why I would say your 3rd point isn’t that much of a truth in every case. There’s always a chance the new guy knows something the competition doesn’t - think the payment space in Nigeria.
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Bruuuuhhhh!!! I can totally relate. I got to learn how long it was to walk from Opebi to Magodo too.
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Completely agree with this point here. My point is if you don’t - please save us ANOTHER e-commerce website.
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Thanks for this!
Find white spaces in your big missions by all means, if it does nothing else it helps your confidence.
Every entrepreneur must go read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One cover to cover before launching any product. I have been postponing doing an article about this “no competition” concept for a while.
I remember travelling from the east-Lagos and seeing 15-25 women lined up on the street selling THE SAME THING! Unfortunately many entrepreneurs are like that.
That is why I’m totally in love for Elon Musk. Paypal → Solar City → Telsa → SpaceX → (Hyperloop). He doesn’t do competitions!
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You’re just simply telling us to think more before starting out.