Conventional wisdom (some of which I also fell for):
– Leave your job.
– Chase VC funding.
– Spend all the money on ads and a huge team.
– Pray for the next round of funding.
A better way:
– Don’t leave your jobs until much later — start by working evenings and weekends.
– Focus on your customers, not VCs.
– Incur minimal costs — you and your co-founder(s) do all the work.
– Build an audience on LinkedIn, YouTube. Ads come much later.
Building a startup should not cost you peace of mind. That has been my biggest learning from building HabitStrong.
– Rajan