The 10 mistakes that are most dangerous, common, and overlooked by the startup founders. Most founders, unfortunately, focus on things that don't matter, and it's the reason why most startups fail.
Here, are a few mistakes that startup founders needs to be avoid:
1. Lack of Focus
A lack of focus is the most common reason why startups fail.
This includes, trying to do too much at once, entering too many markets, or catering to all types of customers, etc.
Narrow it down to a specific "target" segment, use 'customer persona' to guide you throughout the customer journey.
Prioritize key resources effectively, and specially during the early stages.
2. Keyword Research
95% of the your effort must go into picking a domain name based on intense keyword research.
Most founders spend only 5% of their time on domain names and 95% on coding.
3. Landing Page
The first landing page version deserves 95% of the attention to go into the texts and 5% into the design.
Most founders do the opposite. Once the product gains traction, the design on the page deserves more attention than the text.
4. Resources depends on the Phase
The way u allocate ur focus, time, and resources depends on the phase.
Exactly the same task requires a totally different approach based on the phase you're in.
5. Onboarding
Onboarding does matter for early adopters.
It's important to solve problems for the early user, hold their hands on a Zoom call.
Once the product gets stable traffic, 95% of the attention must go into onboarding, it's all about conversion into signups now.
7. Focus should be to make the user pay
If users don't pay, there is no need to spend on marketing, improve product or onboarding or the website.
The reason is that users can't justify the cost vs value.
8. When users start paying, most founders pay a lot to get more traffic for signups
Focus on turning users into promoters.
The ROI of bringing traffic is too low (except SEO, which must be done from day 1).
9. The ROI of User Promoters has infinite value:
You've 100 visits a day
20 Signups
2 Paying Customers
These 2 paying customers bring friends (2 each, total 4)
Out of those 4, 2 bring their friends too. This is what you call "Product Market Fit", a true organic growth.
10. TLDR
Average efforts make average outcomes that lead to the average business
Average business sucks and dies
Putting the ultra focus on the right thing at the given stage lets u squeeze great outcomes out of each phase
It sums up into a great product at the end
While taking the same amount of time & resources & simply differing in how the resources are allocated throughout the process
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