Top 5 Learnings after 2 years of Entrepreneurship

I shut down my first company in Oct’21. We were building first, unprepared, listening to investors and folks who weren’t our ideal customers. At this point, my key takeaways are:

1. Sell first, build later: Focus on building accurate user personas first. And talking to sufficient users before building anything.
2. Be Patient: Things take time to pan out. Once you actually zero down on the building, it could take 6-12 months to see the impact and meaningful adoption.
3. JTBD: Focus on solving/improving existing user behavior patterns. A new behavior pattern created by a new tech could be transient. Disruptive technologies usually still help with the same jobs to be done, just in a better manner.
4. Funding is the wrong goal: Don’t focus on picking up VC funding. Focus on getting the user profile and product right and forming mutually beneficial partnerships to grow through.
5. Take Decisive Control: There’s no concept called “soft-raising”. Get fundraising done in a pre-defined time period, whether successful or not, and go back to the building

Incase you are not sure about one or more of these, checkout the books that have helped me get better at these.