Lessons from mentoring 100 startups

In the past 10 years, Daniel Rizea has mentored over 100 early-stage startups. Some were at the idea stage, while others were scale-ups with 1000s of users.

He shared the top 5 things he learned through his experience as a mentor, starting startups, and going through 2 acquisitions.

This is a gold mine.

1. The best teams are diverse — If your team is made only of technical founders, you will have difficulty building a business. Aim to build a team with different backgrounds, views, experiences, skills and perspectives; it all melts together to spark innovation. 

2. Mentors buy time and experience — Startups are a game of competitive advantages. Having a great mentor who can teach you things and open doors for you is one of them. Yes, you can become a great marketing specialist in 10 years, but why not be great today? Get mentors to fast-track your future experience.

3. Choose the right co-founders — People want to start startups for different reasons. Some want fame, and others want money. Some want to work on cool, impactful projects with smart people, while others hate authority and want to do their own thing. You need to know the motive and whether they will stick around when the going gets tough or when a new shiny opportunity appears.

4. Don’t get lost in a sea of advice — Advice paralysis can overwhelm you and keep you stuck. In the early days, the probability of your startup getting killed by not moving is bigger than exploring each path fast and then changing directions.

5. Speed is essential — You have a great idea, but it is most likely wrong. It will need to evolve in the next month and then again in the next month. You must progress until you reach the edge of a specific field. Reaching the frontier of a field, you will stumble upon something that hasn’t been solved yet, which will make all the difference. Society will reward you for offering something it wants but hasn’t been able to obtain so far.

👉️ For more on the lessons learned from mentoring, head here: Top 5 Learnings After Mentoring 100 Startups

Lessons from a failed VC-backed startup

Joy Zhang hit the jackpot. Her startup raised pre-seed funding during the pandemic, and it seemed the world was their oyster. They partnered with 10+ companies, and their customers loved the product. 

But… then they struggled to find product/market fit and eventually pulled the plug. 

Like all failures, this story is full of lessons, which Zhang shared in the hopes she can help others avoid the same pitfalls. 

1. Choose a problem worth solving — If your startup isn’t tackling a problem that really needs a solution, you’re off to a bad startup. And if you’re not willing to pivot to the solution you should be building, you’re facing an uphill battle. 

2. Choose the co-founder you’d go to war with — Because you’re both equally passionate, you’re going to argue, fight and disagree on ideas and decisions. But it’s necessary and keeps you out of the echo chamber. Find that person! 

3. VC is a means, not the goal — It shouldn’t be anyone’s goal to “build a VC-backed startup”. The way it should read is: “build a startup that makes a meaningful impact… and raise VC if that’s what we think will get us there.” 

4. You don’t need a better product; you need better distribution — Even if you have a bad product, having good distribution will quickly get you the tough feedback and hard “no”’s you need to iterate or seriously reconsider your product (or market).

👉️ Head here for a deeper dive into these lessons: My First VC-Backed Startup Failed — Here’s Everything I Learned

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