100+ tips and habits for building a successful startup I learned from 100+ mentors

Maintain safe cashflow

Plan yearly cashflow on -50% of the realistic sales plan

Plan cash on doubled sales cycle than in a realistic sales plan

Raise funds whenever possible

Investors often say you are either too early or too late to raise, don’t worry the right investors will be eager to invest.

Founders to maintain equity and voting majority through seed and Series A at least.

Convertible notes for Seed / Pre-Series A is convenient and fast

Raise Seed round pre-revenue to avoid discussions over whether current revenues are good enough.

Don’t spend the money from investors on unnecessary equipment and staff

Increased spend must follow increased revenue within few months

Lead by example

CEO updates entire company continuously

Founders avoid being representatives of just certain teams

CEO re-iterates and explains the vision and reason of existence min 1x month

Support your team members unconditionally or let them go

Acting otherwise damages culture and performance

Travel and meet new people every month

Get a fresh feedback and motivation continuously

Share your progress and ideas to receive feedback, new job candidates, introductions

To business partners

To family and friends

Random people you trust

Divide clear responsibilities between founders

CEO to build sales, partnerships and get investors

COO to manage company internally and keep morale high

When travelling often or working across continents, apply following habits:

Set smart goals with your partners

Make routine daily status calls

Respond early to emotions and signals from the team

Get involved in daily topics via team chat

Frequent report both successes and failures to the entire company

Grow a relevant network through introductions

Travel home regularly and have fun with your colleagues

Continuously explore unique local opportunities

Meet new friends, keep an exercise routine and read every day

Build close investor relations

Communicate failures and under-delivery fast and straight

Send monthly report to investors and advisors

Keep investors involved on topics that matter to them and can help with

Ask investors for introduction to prospects Offer 5-10% commission

Prepare investors to help with additional funds when needed

Don’t cold call, get new investors only through current investor introductions

Offer 3-5% finders fee

Deliver on key metrics

Set one key metric as a mantra in the company

Booking revenues (enterprise sales) or monthly recurring revenue (SME/B2C sales) in revenue generating companies

Set up secondary “Health check” metrics

Product user engagement

Customer retention (churn)

Satisfaction (CSAT / NPS)

Improve goal setting every quarterExceed your goals sometimes to improve morale and make investors excited

Build stable legal basics

Incorporate British Ltd. or Inc. in Delaware (USA) - investors like it, customers respect it

Create 8-12% employee stock option plan before first investor round

Grant stock options to employees based on:

Relevant experience

Strategic importance for a company

Job seniority

Job role

Vesting 3 years, cliff period 6 months

Document all your IP (code) continuously, you will not have time when investors demand it

Learn every day and inspire others to do the same

Spend one hour a day on learning something new

Define 3 learning goals for every year

To achieve your work goals

To feel better every day

To fulfil your dreams

Choose the most appropriate learning form for you and your goals

Books

Audio Books

(Video) Lectures

Coaching

Find a mentor you trust

Each founder to spend 1-2 hours a month with a mentor or a coach Offer stock options if you lack cash

Build advisory board early

Strong seasoned experts, each with focus on one of following:

Finance

Sales

Marketing

Product Development

Strategy / Fundraising / M&A

Change members annually based on the current needs

Meet 1-to-1 or in group via Skype, no F2F group sessions necessary

To help to perfect your go-to-market strategy

To receive a reality-check

To receive a relevant introductions

Giving stock options not necessary, offer opportunity to learn, network, being part of something big

Read a book every week

Read weekly in depth news and editorials, avoid distracting daily news

Build crazy buzz around the company

Share successes and announcements monthly

Stand out by language tonality - use full spectrum of language, appeal to emotions.

Share authentic stories

Share failures openly and how you support “failing forward” attitude

Position your company as a category owner

Position your CEO as a spoke-person / representative of your market category

Build customer-led product development

Get a customer feedback min 2x a year from 70% of your customers

Request testimonials and introductions from promoters

Make turning key detractors to promoters the key company priority

Don't get dependent on key customers in product development

Build agile product development early, make developers responsible

Ask leaving customers and lost deals for feedback on informal 1-to-1 basis

Insist on developers attending min. 1x demo or trial a month

Insist on all developers working directly with customer support feedback

Spend 10-20% of development time on technical debt.

Ask developers continuously if there is something in the product leadership ignores.

Scale result-oriented marketing

Focus 70% of efforts on delivering marketing qualified leads

Forget brand-awareness building with no direct performance results

Attend / Sponsor only conferences that bring sales qualified leads within 2 weeks

Build close relationship with 3 selected journalists / market influencers

Change them if they don’t cover you continuously

Don’t pay analysts for featuring you in studies, build a personal relationships instead.

Hire right, fire fast

Hire sales hunters, not farmers, you need to focus on new sales

Improve things based on early feedback of a new hire

Hire senior engineers, there is no time for training

Don’t create culture, it’s made by who the founders and early employees are

Let go if clearly set KPIs are not met within 3 months + 1 “last chance” month

Hire key people that can become C-level gradually

Prioritise hiring the right character and culture fit over hard skillsFocus on:

Coachability

Curiosity

Respect to Culture

Intelligence

Prior Success

Build aggressive and predictable sales

Build predictable pipeline by outbound sales

CEO to create and update the winning sales methodology

CEO to ensure all sales people qualify deals the same way

CEO to drive learning on repeating sales successes and avoiding sales dead-ends

Don’t ever take “No” from a prospect for an answer.

A door was closed? Get in there by window.

Create TOP 100 customers to win and work on them fanatically

A prospect not interested? Amaze him with a customer insight.

Build inbound lead generation with minimum spend, prove ROI, than increase budgets

Focus on month-to-month % progress rather than absolute goals

Stay obsessed by productivity

Schedule your day into a time blocks

25 min - suitable for most individual meetings and statuses

50 min - suitable for most individual activities, when you need to product something

1:20 hod - only for workshops, typically 50 min is more productive

Schedule 5-10min breaks after each activity

Schedule a time for reflection after every 3 blocks

How do you feel about the progress?

Re-read notes

Think about how it went

Plan how to improve next time

Prepare what are you going to do before you turn on your laptop

Redirect > Reflect > Finish later when you get stuck

Envision how you team/customer will be happy once you achieve your goal

Say NO to most of the things that are offered to you

Reward yourself for achieved goals

Small rewards for daily achievements

Medium rewards for monthly achievements

Big vacation or similar for a game-changing successes

Apply strict prioritisation process

What are the tasks someone else is waiting for?

What will help me to get closer to achieve my current goals?

What simple urgent tasks I can resolve immediately?

What tasks will I enjoy working on?

What tasks will help me to learn in the area I am interested in?

Delegate: What are the tasks someone else will do better?

Reflect the day before you go to sleep

What have you done you have a positive feeling about?

And negative feeling?

What are you going to change tomorrow?

Vit Horky

Co-founder & CEO of Brand Embassywww.brandembassy.comwww.linkedin.com/in/vithorkyV 1.5, December, 2016