Things To Think About When Starting a Company

# Get the best support staff you can: Everyone talks about hiring the best team, that A-players are incredibly more valuable and productive than B or C-players. But don’t forget the support staff too — accountants, bookkeepers, janitorial staff, etc. These people can make a huge difference to how smoothly your business operates, and they come in very handy during big startup milestones like financings and acquisitions.

# Get out of your comfort zone: Don’t start a company as a tech person if all you want to do is code. If all you want to do is code, then get a job coding. Starting a company means to do a lot of things you’ve never done, and a lot of things you won’t be comfortable doing. Get used to it. Make the uncomfortable comfortable.

# Decide what you stand for and believe in: I do think it’s important for startups at the very beginning to work on determining their values and purpose, and to find some common ground amongst co-founders. A startup culture isn’t automatic or easy to build and maintain.

# Do your homework: Although you can never really know what it’s like to start a company until you do it, you need to do your homework before you jump in with both feet blindly. There are ample resources for that: books, blogs, advisors, other successful entrepreneurs. On top of which, you need to do your homework about the industry, market, competitors, etc. You need to get out there and talk to customers before you even build a product. Do your homework. Please. Otherwise you stand a very good chance of being startup D.O.A.

# Iterate quickly and pivot nearly as fast: Developers don’t have to be told to iterate quickly, most guys get this, but what’s harder when you run a startup is to pivot — to essentially take what you’ve done and worked your a*s off on and set it aside (I don’t like the term “throw it in the garbage”) to do something different. And often what you pivot to is significantly different. You have to have the wherewithal and maturity to accept that something you’re doing isn’t working, stop banging your head against the wall and change. There’s a fine line between “good stubborn” and “bad stubborn” – be aware of when you might be crossing it.