I’ve been writing a series of posts on social media on what founders should look for before starting a startup. I’ll reproduce them here, as reel style snippets you can scroll to make a full story.

Each post will be effectively a collection of snippets and there are 5 such collections:

1. Mindset and other intangibles

2. Problem

3. People

4. Product

5. Paisa

Would be great to get feedback on this new format! :)

Part 1: Intangibles

Money as runway

A lot of people start operating as founders way before they actually become one.

And no, I’m not talking about just building side-projects.
More importantly, people start thinking of money in terms of (personal) runway.

Regardless of what position you are at, if you have never left steady income, it’s going to be at least a bit of a stress. The way to reduce that stress is to have a savings corpus that lasts you ~1-2 years without any income. (This applies differently to you if you are a college student starting out).

There are multiple repercussions here.

1️⃣ Not upgrading your lifestyle when you have steady income —> This requires an active effort because most likely, your peer group will be upgrading theirs and the temptation to do the same will be too high. E.g. Being satisfied with a filter coffee instead of a Starbucks, a domestic trip instead of an international one and so on...

Quick sidebar: If you’re interested in other things, there’s nothing wrong about it. But know that it will make your runway requirements that much higher.

2️⃣ Not having additional money obligations —> Most prominent one here is buying a house and paying EMIs, but there can be other such obligations as well. Almost every first time founder I know didn’t buy a house even when they could have easily done so, just to avoid the future money stress.

3️⃣ Not being too conservative about runway —> A lot of people use benchmarks like “I’ll startup when I’ve enough money to not work ever again.” This is a dangerous trap. That’s the equivalent of saying I’ll do cliff jumping but only from Everest. There’s a reason why I mentioned 1-2 years and not anything more.

It is definitely true that starting a startup itself comes from some position of privilege. Not everyone can play on high risk mode. But if you’ve already decided to do so, know that operating frugally is the first lesson of any business, one that you’ll need to learn way before you start one.

Speed

One of the crucial intangibles to figure out before starting up is having the right skillset. And no, I don’t mean hard skills.

The biggest skill you need to have as you move from a job to your own thing is getting things done fast. When you are doing a job, especially in a larger setup, you do your part and then pass it on to others for theirs. You (mostly) dont exercise a lot of control over how that gets done.

In your startup, the buck stops at you.
If you don’t get it done, no one will.
If you don’t push it, it will not be prioritised.
If you slack off, the company slacks off.

This means you will continuously need to operate in high energy mode, constantly removing blockers to get things done.

If you don’t have a reputation already as an employee of getting things done, you’ll need to ramp up a lot before you become a good founder.

Worse, you’ll get into thought traps like the execution is not happening because you dont have the right team.
You’ll rely on other people to figure out the work for you, while you do ‘strategic thinking’. 🤦‍♂️

Startups are a doing game, and good thinking is an outcome of great doing. So before you start out, make sure you have the skill and reputation of getting things done fast.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Jobs saying the same -

Founder Mindset

In my post above, I’d mentioned how the skill of getting things done is important to be a founder. The hack is - this skill comes from major mindset shift.


Founder mindset.

There’s a lot of jargon around this, but very simply, founder mindset is comprised of two things:
1️⃣ proactively looking for problems to solve and
2️⃣ do whatever is required to solve them
For even a lot of good people, ownership often stops at 2. However, this is not enough in a founder context.

The most fundamental of shifts when you start out is that you don’t have any existing momentum to work with. There is no one already expecting you to do something.

You generate momentum.
You create ideas out of thin air to work on.
You push the limits on how fast and how much you can get done.

Hence, the proactiveness part is very important.

In most large companies, proactiveness is not necessarily valued. You can get ahead even if you just do what’s expected of you well (except when you're CXO). This is not true for early stage startups. You don’t have room for passivity.

You can start small here. With a contractor I’ve worked with, a lot of conversations were of the nature - “Oh btw, I noticed this was missing on the website, I’ve already fixed it, can you just have a look?”

Founder mindset is a people property, not a context property.

You just commit yourself to one thing - keep moving forward.
In this commitment, you’ll also discover what’s blocking you from moving forward, and by effect, get through it.

Do this long enough and you become an unstoppable force.

Stopping is not an option

Everyone in startups talks about founders should be unstoppable forces. But why?

In the Dark Knight, Joker famously spoke about an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
The object in question here is markets.

Markets are of two kinds:
1️⃣ Elephant markets --> Almost immovable
These are the markets where things move slowly, incumbents are pretty well settled, systems are set, barriers to entry are huge. (E.g. Pharma)
Changing anything in these markets as a young startup is hard.
Heck, even getting customers in such markets is hard if you don’t have an edge.
Only if you push through will you have a chance to survive.

2️⃣ Dragon markets --> Moves too fast
These are markets where pace of change is super fast, barriers to entry are generally low, incumbents also move fast. (E.g. Consumer social, a lot of AI software products today)

You may get customers easily but you may lose them just as fast.

Here, if you don’t keep up with the market, you’ll die. But that is just a necessary condition to win, not sufficient. You have to be faster than the markets to create an edge.

Also, regardless of the market you choose, two generic truths for any new startup are:
⭐ Customers don’t care about you
⭐ Rallying people to get anything (new) done is hard

Now you see the nature of forces against you. Which is why you don’t have an option but to be unstoppable. Everything we see around us was created because someone made that choice.

Doing things yourself

In my post above, we talked about one mindset shift required to be a founder. Another such mindset shift required is doing things by yourself. Why?

This is among the biggest differences I’ve seen in the way Indian vs American founders operate. US, because of expensive labor, has learnt to do things by themselves or through technology. India, because of our labor advantage, has the luxury of having people to do things.

However, this luxury becomes a bane in 0 to 1 journeys. The most important thing in a 0 to 1 journey is the insight on what will work with customers. That insight is not straightforward, and can come from the smallest of things. That could be a customer support email, an ad copy, a LinkedIn comment and so on.

Doing these things yourself allows you to be exposed to all these insights, which you would have lost out on if you’d hired people. Even if they communicate those insights to you, you’d not feel the intensity, and hence be unable to judge the importance.

You’ll not be able to justify the ROI of time doing all of these things, but it’s there, it’s just non-linear.

Once you have some of these core insights, it’s definitely great to hire people and leverage the efficiencies of scale. But before that, don’t expect others to ‘figure it out’.

If you want to see how good a wave is, it’s not by asking other surfers, but going out with a board and trying one for yourself.

Unwavering support

I’ve been talking about mindset required to startup but the biggest intangible, by far, that helps before you start a startup is neither mindset nor skillset.

It’s unwavering support.

Let me tell you an instance.

In April 2021, I’d just finished an incredibly fulfilling chatroom stint, taking it from 0 to ~$10Mn ARR within 7 months and was moving to a new role within ShareChat for my next challenge.

But there was some excitement missing. I’d tasted blood with chatrooms and wanted more of the 0 to 1 highs, but from scratch.

I was sitting in the living room with my parents, and told them that I wanted to start up. They asked if I had an idea, I said no. I had some vague inclinations but no concrete ideas.

Them: “Do you think you’d be happier starting up?”
Me: “I think so, at least I’d want to try and figure out.”
Them: “Then go ahead and do it.”

That was it. No conversation about income loss. Stability. What happens if you fail. How will you get an idea. Anything.

I completely believe starting a startup comes from a position of privilege, but even after that, you need unconditional support from at least a few people to take the kind of risk and hardships startups entail.

I started working on some ideas on the side, disproving some, learning from them and learning more about what kind of business I wanted to build. It wasn’t until at least a year later that I actually started up full time.
However, the seeds were sown much earlier and nurtured only because of the kind of support I got.

Even during the tough parts of the journey, the support I’ve gotten has been immensely powerful and I’m deeply grateful for the same. In fact, Dad regularly pitched some ideas on what he thought was missing (and that I used to argue back on why they weren’t for me is a different story 😅 ).

If your loved ones are not on board yet with you starting up, I’d recommend you taking the time and patience to convince (at least one of) them before you get on this journey.
Regardless of the team you build, starting up is a lonely journey and the supporting ecosystem is incredibly helpful in that phase. Once you build that, the fire you’ll have will be unquenchable.

"Go kiss the world."