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The startup world is all about moving fast — but at what expense?

We've built this narrative for ourselves within startups that we're constantly under the gun to move quickly or else. If we don't move quickly, we won't attract more funding, we'll lose ground to all of our competitors, and we'll be perceived as being "slow," which is considered the death knell for any respectable startup.

But what if all of that is bullshit?

What if there are real costs to moving too quickly that will far outweigh whatever perceived benefits we're told we're getting? We stand to lose a lot if we invent a false notion of urgency that prevents us from making good decisions for the long term.

Pleasing the Wrong Party

Let's start with who we're moving fast for. ...

Investors want to believe that we're on the same side of the table and are interests are aligned — but it's all bullshit.

The pitch from investors goes something like this "We want all of our incentives to be aligned, so that a big win for us is also a big win for you. We're on the same side of the table!"

That sounds wonderful, but what's missing from that pitch is the fact that only a tiny number of outcomes wind up with both of us having the same upside. Like when you hear about a company getting acquired for a giant sum or going IPO — that's what investors are referring to.

But statistically, that's not how it actually goes. Less than 1% of funded startups are going to have that kind of outcome, which means we should be way more concer...

What if I told you that selling a company for $40 million could net you more money than if you sold it for $200 million?

On its face, it sounds ludicrous, I know! But what's missing in that formula isn't the exit price, but how much of that exit we get to put in our pocket as we raise more rounds of capital.

More importantly, our opportunities to sell for $40m are dramatically more abundant than selling for $200m (or more!). That means every time we raise capital, while it sounds like we're improving our chances of an outcome, we're also reducing our options to find an exit at all.

Real Founder Dilution Numbers

CapShare released a study of 5,000 startup cap tables to determine how much equity Founders have at each stage of a funding round. ...

What happens when our main customer becomes our investor?

This is fundamentally the rabbit hole that nearly every startup goes down when fundraising. At some point, we start to realize that we're no longer building a startup for the needs of our customers; we're building it for the perceived needs of our next investors.

At any given time, our startup needs vastly more cash than we have, so we're always looking for the shortest path toward filling that gap. The very nature of investor capital is that it comes dramatically before customer capital (revenue), so in most cases, our early "customer," as it relates to cash, is an investor.

So what happens? Our investors become who we're building the company for.

We Optimize for Their Needs First

T...

Startup Founders are like top athletes — if we don't keep working that startup muscle daily, we get out of shape fast!

Normally while we're building our startups, that's not a problem — we get all the "exercise" we need in the form of unrelenting stress and anxiety (hey, it's burning calories, right?)

But seriously, being active in our startup keeps us relevant, connected, and engaged in our business worlds. The moment we disconnect, whether it be from a sale, a wind-down, or even just a career change, we start letting that muscle atrophy, and it's very hard to get it back in shape.

We Lose Our Relevance

When we're in the middle of building our startups, one of the things that we can take for granted is how relevant we are at the moment. We...

It doesn't matter if we have a "big opportunity" if it never really accomplishes our personal goals.

Yet it's hard to avoid starting a company without thinking in terms of the market potential or the ultimate outcome. If we run around saying that our new startup could one day be a "$1 million business," we're going to get very few high fives. Yet, if we say we're going to be a "$1 billion business," we'll have people lining up to talk to us. Why is that?

The difference in that balance becomes who benefits from that outcome. At $1 million, it's almost entirely the Founders. At $1 billion, it's investors, staff, and everyone else that's joined in the party. What we need to consider is who we're really building this business for and, as such, ...

There are very few problems at a startup worth actually stressing about — but that doesn't keep us from burning ourselves out about them.

Startups are nothing but problems. Everything about this epic shit show that we've created is a problem. We're building a company that has never existed, in a market we invented, with a team that got here 5 minutes ago. What about that would breed anything but problems?

Even if we can agree that the fire hose of problems will never be turned off, we can at least understand how to treat those problems differently, separating the ones that may end us from the ones that are "just another day at the office." If we can't, we will crush ourselves with stress and anxiety.

Problems vs. Apocalypse

First off, we re...

Startup investors are incredibly useful experts — on investing in startups.

The problem for us Founders is when we start taking their expertise on building startups as gospel, and worse, start pivoting based on their feedback versus our own decisions.

This stems from the fact that as Founders, we don't really have a lot of data points or experience when it comes to the qualifications of investors. We tend to think that since they invest in startups, they must be experts in how startups operate.

Investors are not Fortune Tellers

One of my favorite indulgences is listening to an investor who has been thinking about my business for 60 seconds tell me what the future of my business will be. I will always politely listen (you never know what you...

There are tons of famous Founders who have built world-changing companies in less than 40 hours per week — I just can't name a single one.

I'm not talking about the later stages when a company is already successful. I'm talking about the "garage band years" when it's just the Founder(s) doing every possible job and scraping to get a single paying customer.

The idea is that we can simply put in our 40 hours, work really hard, then turn it all off and live a regular life. Which sounds awesome. So why is it that every time we hear the origin story of a Founder, it's always the same — they worked insane hours for an insane amount of time to get to an incredible outcome?

Time is Money

Let's start with the correlation of hours to our success and...

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In this blog post, we will look at why these innovative startup ecosystems are so important in America, as well as explore options for international entrepreneurs who want to access these global community support structures too. Finally, early-stage investor input is discussed with tips shared on how best to navigate through the process successfully!

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• Startup communities provide powerful resources and connections to help entrepreneurs succeed.

• Explore the vibrant startu...