In the early days when you’re laying the ground for your startup, the founder or co-founders and the core team do whatever it takes to make it work. You are a funny mix of engineering, testing, marketing and the ultimate sales machine. But how are you promoting your product?
These days everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and launch a startup. It’s cool to be your own boss, wear the same clothes to work every day, have a ping-pong table in the fun room, and brainstorm with your team over pizza at 3 in the morning.
Still, there is a huge gap between the way people picture the startup life and the actual reality. In fact, the gap is so big, you can easily call it a chasm. Multiple factors have created it and continue to widen it every day:
The media that glorifies highly successful founders, yet says little about the rest of them, which in fact represents the majority
The pot full of gold that people dream of finding at the end of the rainbow, i.e. a startup turned unicorn
Blockbusters that make you want it even more
Let’s take all these urban legends out of the way, even if it’s just for a second. The picture is not so bright anymore, right?
As long as you have a brilliant idea and determination, nothing can stop you from reaching your goals, in life and business. Just look at these successful entrepreneurs: one of them finished reading an entire library by the age of 8, the other learned English by offering tour guide services to foreign visitors, and the last one doesn’t know how to code, even though he owns one of the most popular apps today. Guessed who I’m talking about?
Author: Maurizio Pesce, image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk,_Tesla_Factory,_Fremont_(CA,_USA)_(8765031426).jpg#filelinks
I strongly believe in the power of the right people in the right place. For a startup, this makes the difference between life and death. While there aren’t two startups alike, the things I will talk about in this article apply to all of them.
I was fortunate enough to learn a lot of things the hard way and I want to share them with both early entrepreneurs and people who are wasting their potential instead of joining a startup.