5 Favorite General Tips for Founders

Recently, I was asked about my favorite general pieces of advice for founders. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided on five tips that have resonated with me over the years.

#1. Go big from day one. It takes a tremendous amount of work to build a business—from the sleepless nights to the regular rejection to the roller coaster ups and downs. Whether the goal is to build a small or large business, it requires the same amount of effort to get it going. So, entrepreneurs should work to create a large business when at the idea stage.

#2. 10x products win. All too often, I see entrepreneurs that invent a new product that’s only 10% better than what’s on the market rather than 10 times better. It’s really hard to get people to change and to get businesses to buy new, unproven products. The best chance of success is when the product is truly revolutionary and not merely incrementally better.

#3. Markets are more important than ideas. Picking the market is even more important than picking a great idea. More often than not, I see entrepreneurs fixate on the original idea and are not open-minded to finding an even better idea that’s adjacent or related to that first idea. I found that, in almost all cases, the idea that was successful wasn’t the idea that the entrepreneur started with. But starting somewhere is critical, as it leads to the idea that ultimately works.

#4. Small, fast-growing markets are best. Entrepreneurs often come up with ideas that fit into an existing large market because it’s human nature to want to create something that already has a big audience. The reality is that markets like that are much more competitive, with many more incumbents, making it much more difficult to break through. The best markets for entrepreneurs are ones that are very small and fast-growing. Small is important so that it’s not heavily competitive with a bunch of incumbents, and fast-growing is important because a market that’s small today is going to be large in the near future. The goal is to establish a position of strong market share today, and then as the market grows fast, to maintain or even grow faster than the market such that 5 to 10 years from now, you’ve built a big business.

#5. Culture wins. The only thing that the entrepreneur has control over is the values of the team. You can’t control the market, the government, the timing, or the competitors, but you can control the values, beliefs, and what you stand for as a business. The culture of the company is the defining trait for success. Startups that continually win have the strongest cultures.

Entrepreneurs learn a number of lessons and tips along their journey. Go big from day one, 10x products win, markets are more important than ideas, small, fast-growing markets are best, and culture wins are my favorite general tips for founders. There’s no one way to do it, but these have been instrumental to me.