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Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
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Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
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Startup Financial Assumptions
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Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
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The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
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Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
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All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?
Always Take Money off the Table
Founder Impostor Syndrome Never Goes Away

Focus On What You DON'T Want to Do

Wil Schroter

Focus On What You DON'T Want to Do

Startups set tons of goals, and most are focused on what we want the business to achieve. But sometimes the most important goals to set are the things we DON'T want the business to do!

When we founded Startups.com, we had lots of experience in previous startups doing things we loathed.

This time around, we set out to not only build a startup we loved, but an environment dedicated to avoiding things we couldn’t stand.

What did you never want to do again?

We began by listing all of the things we never wanted to do again like:

  • "Never working with jerks"
  • "Never creating any situation where we can be told what to do"
  • "Never letting our startup come before our family"

Among others.

Itemizing everything you absolutely don't want to do again is not only powerful, but it's also liberating.

It cuts past all of the subconscious reasons we lean toward avoiding certain issues and just puts them front and center. "Why didn't we want to raise capital? Reason: We didn't want to be told what to do."

Saying it sounds easy. How hard is it really?

Saying that we "won't answer to anyone" is one thing, but it's much harder to do when the bank account is almost empty and we're dying for an investor to help pull us from oblivion.

We've found the key to sticking to our guns is having goals that everyone truly believes in. This makes it easier to band together to rally around goals when it would just be SO much easier to abandon them altogether.

Sometimes the "Win" is what you don't have to do

Life (even at a startup) isn't always just about what we get to do — it's often about what we don't have to do.

Not sacrificing our core beliefs and goals, no matter what the upside, can become one of the most powerful and rewarding parts of building a startup our way.

The first step is to simply put them in front of us and commit.

In Case You Missed It

7 Business Goals for Early Stage Startups. Mapping out business goals for an early-stage startup can be tricky. Here's a loose guideline to help you get there.

Start Faster by Starting Smaller. Building a startup is a game of tiny wins over and over and over. The big wins come as a result of the micro victories. The key is how you pick your battles.

Team Goals are Your Company’s Recipe for Success. Sometimes as Founders we get so focused on the big-picture goals we have for our company, we forget about another set of goals we should be setting: goals for our team.

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Lori Glauser

This headline made me think the article was about finally delegating or automating the things we don't ever want to do, even if costly, which I think is also good advice. I have a tendency to do this to the things I find easy first - because they're easy to delegate or automate. But its the hard things I need to shed first. Thank you for all the insights.

Reply3 months ago

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