9 Critical Thoughts to Help You Transition from Small Business Owner to Startup Founder
It’s really hard to get business people to think like startup founders.
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On the surface, business owners usually want to reach beyond the “Small Business” revenue levels, but the sacrifices required to push through to scalable growth are hard to accept.
Because I work with tons of scalable startups through Navigate, an early-stage accelerator, I fully understand why investors always say that they invest in the founder and not the product or idea.
The founder and their mindset is by far the first most important driver of the success of a startup.
I originally posted this as a twitter thread to itemize the most misunderstood issues that I encounter on a regular basis. Moving it here to make it easier to read:
1) You are going to need to be extremely deliberate about what you’re doing each and every month.
Milestones are not for fun, they are real targets that you either need to hit, or adjust based on new learnings, while keeping the big picture in mind.
2) An aggressive growth mindset isn’t nice-to-have, it’s critical.
It’s the thing that determines if you have an investable startup or not.
Growth and progress is not a straight line and not a hockey stick in the early days. It’s a messy string of ups and downs.
3) You’re constantly stressed and trying to figure out what to do next.
You must be learning every month. Keep a journal of everything you’ve learned (specifically about your business, audience, messaging, etc.) if that helps you feel better.
4) One or two weeks does not make a pattern. Sometimes staying the course is the right course of action.
It’s better to be patient than to make decisions based on…
