Tips for founders doing their first tech startup

Tweet After my last post about my first entrepreneurial year. I thought a bit more about what specifically I would tell myself if I could that would have helped in some way to accelerate my learning. Here is what I came up:

Start a blog

It took me about 5 months before I started a blog. I could have started this earlier. It is surprising what I have gained from writing this blog. It has helped me express myself and think things through as well as keep up with friends and others. It also helps to be part of the community to understand it better. Finally its useful to promote your own vision of yourself. Altogether all the reasons and excuses for not doing it that I had didn't amount to anything.

Find a 3rd co-founder

Tony and I were the only founders when we started Revmap. The 3 main reasons why a 3rd person would have helped is:

1. Skills - Would have bought more skills with them and be another person you can depend on.
2. Conflict Resolution - Would have helped resolve conflicts. In any situation it is hard for 2 people to always reach a consensus; a 3rd perspective would have helped.
3. Learning - It takes a particular art to work with teams. I think having a 3rd person would have improved me in this aspect. Also you learn a lot about your co-founder working with them solidly for long periods and so it would have helped increase my understanding of the human character to work with an extra person to that depth.

Some of these arguments can extend to 4 or 5 people and sometimes that makes sense. But there are diminishing returns; and at that point you probably might want to consider dilution as well.

Visit Silicon Valley!

I would issue this one pretty much as a command to my younger self. I don't think Tony would have wanted to move here but visiting would have helped in many ways. It would have helped me understand more about whats necessary to build a successful Internet startup, understand flaws and lacking in Revmap. And of course people doing startups in a similar field and investors.

I think if we had come here early on we would have ended up significantly adapting our idea.

Make more friends with people who are where I want to be

I am not sure about this point, in the sense that I am not sure how I could have executed this better than I did. Again visiting SF/Valley would have helped. But I do firmly believe that the best way to learn is to meet people who are further towards the goal that you strive to achieve.

Conclusion

I have no regrets and I did what I needed to do to. I only write this to better understand what I could have done differently and help others. I still have a long way to go so I will probably be writing something similar next year :-).