1. Don’t build a solution, product and/or service that doesn’t address an identifiable business need or pain point, otherwise you are living in a fantasy and will waste a lot of money and people power.
2. Don’t let vulture capitalists own the largest percentage of your company; if they do they soon will be making all the key decisions, including selecting your board members.
3. Don’t seek growth for growth’s sake; identify profitable sustainable growth opportunities that will drive the bottom line.
4. Don’t be a market follower and spend too much time watching what the competition is doing. Market leadership behavior is all about thinking and executing what you will do.
5. Don’t set product expectations and service levels that you can’t achieve. This is the kiss of death, especially for an early startup.
6. Don’t set your price too low; price is always equated with value.
7. Don’t be cheap in developing and designing your logo and brand image. Use the illusion of largeness and spend the extra time and resources; it will pay off big time down the road.
8. Don’t think that all your innovation comes from within, get out of your own Idaho and spend as much time in the field as you can. The game is played in the field.
9. Don’t let customers take you down a rat hole with them. Make solid business decisions that make sense for your company. There are some customers that you want to give to the competition.
10. Don’t let nonbelievers impact morale and organizational culture; make the hard decisions and lead by example.
In startup land there is no substitute for experience and unless you have been in the heat of the battle you have no idea what will come back to haunt you. The list above represents my experience in four startup companies, two market research and two technology product companies. One of the first things that I became cognizant of during my startup days was that you are in a perpetual state of war. Business is war and sometimes it is hard to recognize where the front lines are. The second, and probably most important business strategy that can be easily executed, is understanding your customers needs, both stated and unstated. This means visiting them and getting to know their needs in a hands on way.
Personality of Fish: Night Dives with the Johnson Sea Link II
After five years of dragging Yankee otter trawls and plankton nets over the Georges Bank, we had finally won a grant to rent the famous Johnson Sea Link submersible. Designed and built by the Harbor Branch Foundation (endowed by the Johnson and Johnson family) the submersible was outfitted with robotic arms and various collecting and devices along with multiple video cameras. The Sea Link was capable of diving down to around 700 meters and it descended at approximately 89 feet per minute. This sub found the ill-fated Challenger off the coast of Florida, and features a unique large acrylic sphere.Our objective was to conduct the first ever multidisciplinary study of juvenile cod and haddock that combined physical, chemical and biological oceanography along with marine sedimentology and ichthyology from a four man submersible. After a week of day dives we decided to conduct night operations, which are high risk and not easy when it comes to retrieving a submersible with a crane arm from a ship in a rolling sea. The risk was more than worth it and shortly after we descended we switched on the sub lights and were amazed by the large number of fish, crabs, lobsters, squid and everything else that had come out to party. At night the ocean comes alive and the deeper we went the more incredible it became, thousands sand eels approached the sub and flew by the lights, squid; octopus and many fish came to investigate us. The personality of the ocean at night was a stark contrast to an often desert like ecosystem during the day. Startups are a risk, but thinking through early decision making can often make the reward more than worth the risk. Until next time great selling and decision making, and remember there is no strategy without execution.
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