🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

It's better to try than to talk about it. I have had so many ideas over the years that I never bothered to realize. They could have been great, ahead of their time. Who did not think of the iPhone, or this and that? Yes, everyone had similar things in their mind where they say: oh yeah, this could be great. The difference is always in the execution. So there has to be biased for action. Do it earlier. It does not have to be perfect but do it.

Go work with either Score or the SBA- The small business administration and let them guide you. A great resource that will save you from making tons of mistakes that I had to make starting out thinking you know everything. Go ahead and get some people to help you know it. They are here to assist you. I would say to go and use your resources.

It's just a sense of denial or not even a sense of denial. Being in denial about something very important to the business. And maybe as a founder or entrepreneur, you are not seeing clearly, So finding colleagues that can be brutally honest with you. Whether that's friends, family, business partners, or other partners, it's very important. I think you can kind of self realize every day, but that is a challenge. Having outside accountability is helpful. But constantly questioning yourself and being ok with that. Taking negative feedback or even critical feedback is really valuable and important.

One we are boot-strapped so we are trying to get the most out of every dollar that we can get in the business. For us, we are always trying to look at different ways to market, sell and attract leads. We do the things that we can get the most out of every dollar that we can. We started initially with a digital marketing campaign but our messaging was incorrect. We had to change that. We had to pivot. We had to stop that and come back and move forward. Now we have started putting together some of these sales and marketing items with the right messaging to attract customers. We are getting a great response. We are getting a lot of leads, a lot of meetings, and a lot of feedback. More usage of the product helps us improve what we are doing. It's moving in the right direction.

I would have to say cash. Make sure you really understand your runway. So you know where your money is spent. How long do you have? And aside from cash what is your personal runway? Because there is the money aspect and, there is your personal mental health being. Can I sustain these ups and downs for the next six months without a paycheck? Am I feeling depleted that I need to not be doing this or, I need to take a break? I think it's your personal runway and also your cash. Making sure you spend it wisely because cash is king. If you don't have enough money, you are going to be out and you are done.

When you ask for money, you get advice. When you ask for advice, you get money. When I was doing my research interviews reaching out to centers of influence I was only asking for advice. I was letting people share with me what their feedback was. Those conversations have led me to other connections where if I was reaching out to somebody and said, hey, I am going to be doing this virtual reality event startup and I want you to either invest in me or give me some money. That channels how the person your talking to thinks about their role in it.

The best piece of advice is around time. Time is a constant. You can't mess around with time. Leave it to Elon Musk and Bezos to mess with space. But still, no one can mess with time. With time it's either for you or against you. When you first start, it's really important that you don't want time to be against you. The thought is as a side hustle, nights and weekends you have a salary, you have your health insurance taken care of. But, as soon as you leave your job to focus on this hustle and the hustle is not to the point that it's paying your salary or paying for what you need then, time becomes against you. Be smart about when you make that decision to go full time with a project and how you want to approach it.

Surround yourself with people who inspire and challenge you. We are braver when we are feeling inspired. We are more committed when we are feeling challenged. You're going to run into hard things and, you're going to struggle. But when you do, who do you want in your constellation? Who do you want in the group of people that you know? Do you want people around you who say, I knew this was going to happen, or do you want people who say, come on, get up, you can do this take a second to breathe if you need to, that's ok but, you've got this.

Save your money first. That was one of the big things we did when we knew we were going to start our own company. We set up the initial business formation in 2009 and did not quit our day jobs and go full time until June of 2010. We did not want to quit our jobs, start working and realize well crud I either have to say yes to everything because I don't have any money. Or I have to go find another job right away because I don't have any money.

Focus on MVP-minimum viable product. We have all heard the term before but, when it comes to hardware it's particularly important. It crosses lines into all elements of a business. Whether it's a service or software, you need to think about how to make your best feature. The real innovation, that golden nugget that you thought about. How do you make that shine and nothing else? We have a motto that's plastered all over our design offices brilliantly simple design. Modern, clean, sophisticated, edgy, but focusing on that one or maybe two core features for your first version.