What was the biggest mistake you made when launching your startup?

Cool post. Mistakes are a good way to learn. Here's my personal top: 1/ Didn't care about HR branding. 2/ Didn't start social media before launching. 3/ Didn't create a waitlist of future users during development. 4/ Saved on experienced team members (quick hires). 5/ Didn't find advisors. 6/ Set wrong goals (revenue, not user adoption). 7/ Watched too much of the competition. 8/ Checked the dashboard too often instead of talking to users. 9/ Didn't listen to the team, only listened to myself. 10/ Tried to do everything at once. 11/ Didn't get enough sleep. 12/ Got too much into technology. 13/ Wasn't persistent. I don't know which one is the biggest 😆

I've launched lots of startups, and they've all failed prior to my current SaaS, Schedulr. I'd say I made the same mistakes on all of my previous startups, namely believing I could just build it, not talk to anyone, and somehow people would just magically sign up. It doesn't work like that, you have to get out there and talk to people, even before you launch. It will help you to not spend months building a tool only to find out on launch that nobody wants it.

1. Building a lot of features instead of one killer feature 2. Not marketing early enough 3. Working alone for a long time and not collaborating 4. Not testing at all before pushing to production 🤭 I'm working now on intab.io and I'm doing my best to avoid making any of these mistakes 🤞

No idea - I'll tell you in a couple of months once we've launched!

Launching without a waitlist 🥴 justin-mcleod.teachable.com 🙌

The first time 1. Not spending enough time talking to users/potential users 2. Getting biased by our own optimism in the user interviews we did (Tips - Read The Mom Test) 3. Not spending enough time on distribution. As engineers, was easier writing code 4. Not building a board of advisors 5. Not raising capital

This was about 3+ years ago, but my biggest mistake I ever made launching a startup was working with a co-founder that didn't have the same work ethic and work style as me. Fast forward to 2021, I'm working with @lynetteperkins and our work ethic + style align amazingly. Having this is key!

I am still figuring this out as I go. I always get the best results, though, when I do something I’m scared of. Being driven by joy instead of fear has helped me the most. Concrete example: I used to avoid sharing anything personal about myself with users in the fear that they wouldn’t like me. It turns out vulnerability has been the only way to keep users engaged on my social network (so far).

We all learn from our mistakes and they don't break us, rather our mistakes make us. This approach makes most of the things straight. I wanted to start a venture of my own of professional resume and cover letter services As I am a writer and have been working in the field of CV writing, I had immense experience in this field. This I failed to deliver quality products and standard CV and cover letters which resulted in the closure of my setup and office. But I have no regrets as this experience highly polished my skills and gave me exposure.