9gao.co
对于充满想象力和热情的年轻创业者，吸取前人的经验是至关重要的，然而，很多流行的关于创业的想法可能都是错的。这里介绍了12个创业思维误区，如果你在创业当中碰到类似的问题，至少也有反面的经验让你三思而行。
让我摘录几条有意思的思维和大家分享。首先一条是，硅谷不再是唯一的创业之地，就好比中关村早已淡出了IT创新之地。在信息交流如此发达的今天，地域早已不是限制了；创业公司除了注重扩张，也可以注重盈利；“红海”也许竞争激烈，但有些看是“蓝海”却是不毛之地；不再是盖茨时代，先有产品再做市场，在现在的创业环境里，从开始画“线图”就要同时做市场策略计划。其余的几点也是创业者经常入的坑，有兴趣的话，请大家阅读原文。
抄录：
12 Startup Beliefs That Are Complete Bullsh*t
Mitchell Harper
How many of these are holding you back from starting or scaling?
#1 — If you aren’t in Silicon Valley you can’t build a big business because there’s a lack of talent with domain expertise/scale
Probably the most common belief. And it was true 5 years ago, but now it’s absolutely not. Atlassian, Qualtrics, Zapier, Treehouse, Snapchat, Basecamp, SendGrid, Campaign Monitor, Hubspot, BigCommerce. Enough said.
#2 — All startups need to optimize for growth (AKA raise a heap of money) instead of profitability
Raise a bunch of money at your seed. Grow. Rinse and repeat through series A/B/C/D/E. Go public or get acquired. That works for 1 in 1,000 startups. Literally. But there’s nothing wrong with building a real business that’s profitable. Instead of using vanity metrics (top line growth / number of users) to show progress, you can show how much cash you’ve kept.
#3 — You shouldn’t enter a crowded market because it’s harder
The opposite is true. A crowded market means people need the product and there’s a huge willingness to pay. If you enter a market with “no competition”, it’s not a market and you’ll go under quickly.
#4 — You should build your product first and then focus on marketing
Great products alone don’t build great companies. Great products AND great distribution do. The day you create your wireframes is the same day you should plan your marketing strategy. And you should start with content. Build an incredible blog, start growing your Domain Authority and capturing email addresses. Your email list will be your biggest asset when you launch.
#5 — If you don’t grow 10% Month-On-Month you’ve built a dud
10% MoM growth is what VCs use to gauge “fast growing” startups. If you a) don’t want to raise $100M (like we did at BigCommerce) from VCs or b) don’t want to build a billion-dollar business, then ignore this growth benchmark and obsess about building a great product and looking after your customers.
#6 — Everyone else has their sht figured out early
Marketo didn’t define their core values until they were $20M in revenue. At BigCommerce I had 30 direct employees because I thought I was too young to hire managers that would actually listen to me. EVERYONE is faking it and learning as they go. Even if they’re doing $5/10/50/100M revenue.
#7 — Winner takes all so you better be #1 or you’ll go broke
The winner takes 80%. But if you’re in a huge market, that other 20% is MASSIVE. If you’ve picked the right market you can create insane wealth and an important company being #2, #3 or even #10 (think email marketing, file sharing, group chat, etc).
#8 — You should work 34 hours a day, 8 days a week
Go “all in”. Sacrifice your social life. Don’t worry about exercising. Work until you fall asleep at your desk
Working hard means applying leverage to solve multiple problems concurrently by hiring smart people. We all have only 24 hours in a day and no more than 4–6 productive hours during that same day.
#9 — The average CEO reads 60 books a year
I heard this last week
That’s more than one book a week. If you’re consuming that much information you need to realize the best way to learn is to do. You definitely need to course correct along the way and learn from mentors and advisors, but if you’re spending 10-20+ hours a week reading books, you need to factor in the opportunity cost of not deploying that time against your business. If you’re Warren Buffet then ignore this point.
#10 — You should rent a fancy office to impress investors/clients/partners/potential employees/your mum
Besides people, rent is the biggest overhead for every startup. If you need a nice office to impress someone then you’re talking to the wrong people. Start in a garage, your apartment or a co-working space and only when a) they don’t have any more seats/offices or b) your team is too separated on a day-to-day basis, then get an office. But don’t sign a 5 or 10 year lease. Sublease from a company that ignored this point and rented a huge office that’s 50% empty because they now can’t afford to hire more people
#11 — PR is the fastest way to get the word out about your startup
TechCrunch will get you about 1,500 unique visitors to your site within a few days. *Slow Clap
. The fastest way to get the word out about your startup is to target the followers of your biggest competitors using Facebook + Instagram ads. It’s cheap and amazingly effective if you can position your product against theirs in a way that appeals to their fans/followers/customers. Bonus points if you use Youtube pre-roll ads.
#12 — You should copy what the big guys are doing
Applying stage inappropriate advice to your startup is the fastest way to kill it. If a company doing $20M builds an outside sales team and you copy them when you’re doing $200K in revenue, it won’t work. Find startups in the same growth phase as you and look at what they’re doing. Here are the phases:
Phase 1 (< $1M revenue)
Phase 2 ($1-$5M revenue)
Phase 3 ($5-$10M revenue)
Phase 4 ($10–20M revenue)
Phase 5 ($20–50M revenue)
Phase 6 (> $50M revenue)
Finally, remember that common sense isn’t common. So if someone gives you advice and they aren’t where you want to be, don’t have what you want or haven’t built the kind of company you’re aiming to build, then ignore them.
