Sitemaps
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
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
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
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.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
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

Startup Priority List

The Startups Team

Startup Priority List

Leading a startup company is nothing like leading a big, established company.  Startups are focused foremost on survival, while big companies direct their efforts toward growth or in the worst case, slowing decline.

Startup founders don’t get the luxury of looking too far down the road.

It’s natural that many entrepreneurs start companies with a task list that looks a lot like it did at their old job. After all, they’re likely coming from an established career in a big company. Big companies (usually) have the critical infrastructure in place and as inefficient as they may be, workers are free to look much farther down the road.

Startup founders don’t get the luxury of looking too far down the road. They don’t get to spend inordinate amounts of time on product development or internal policy making. For this reason, a startup founder’s priority list looks a whole lot different.

Get Money in the Door

A founder’s most important question is “do we have enough money to make it past our next milestone?” If the founder can’t answer “yes,” then solving customer problems, addressing HR issues, and planning for the long term just won’t matter.

An underfunded company doesn’t have to worry about these issues. That’s because without additional capital, they will soon be out of business altogether! Therefore a startup needs to focus on keeping the lights on before it can even worry about solving day-to-day issues.

It’s not uncommon for a startup to spend far more time selling to investors than it does to customers.

It’s not uncommon for a startup to spend far more time selling to investors than it does to customers. While this may feel like a distraction (which it is), it’s a necessary evil that supersedes all other activities.

Sell More Stuff

Aside from raising capital to get started, sales are by far the most important activity any company can spend its time on. A simple way to consider this priority is – if you have sales and a crappy product, you can afford to improve your product.  If you have a great product and no sales, you’re dead.

It’s a widely held belief that a great product will sell itself. Sure, great products sell better, but perfection can’t be pursued at the expense of a massive sales effort. Very few products are just so great that they sell themselves and become profitable.

What drives a company forward is its ability to focus its time on actually selling the product in the market, not refining the product in the lab.

Hire Brilliant Staff

Very few products are just so great that they sell themselves and become profitable.

Staffing brilliant people sounds like an obvious thing to do, but in practice few people make it a true priority. It consumes more time and energy to hire brilliant people which is why most settle for “good enough.”

A startup’s ability to succeed in the market has everything to do with the key staff members it finds early on. If you’re rushing through your staffing process, pulling the trigger on the first resumes that float through your inbox, you’re doing the company a huge disservice.

The time spent finding a better-qualified candidate will be repaid by their more competent execution of important startup tasks.

Instead, make hiring brilliant staff a priority even if it takes substantial time away from other activities. The time spent finding a better-qualified candidate will be repaid by their more competent execution of important startup tasks.

Everything Else

After raising capital, increasing sales, and hiring brilliant people comes everything else. The trouble is that most entrepreneurs start with everything else and only plan to address the more critical items.

At some point you need to buy post-it notes, answer customer calls, address product problems, and take a shower. But if you put those activities first, you won’t be in business long enough to continue doing them.

The Priority Filter

A good way to help manage your activities is to create a “priority filter.” If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you manage your work through a daily task list that changes all the time. More often than not, you get easily swept into the mundane activities that are calling your attention.

Simply putting your top three tasks – raising capital, driving sales, and finding brilliant people, to the top of the stack can serve as a constant reminder of your priorities.

Unlike simple tasks like “buying office supplies” that have a defined start and end period, your ongoing priorities may seem hard to handle if you just lump them under one big “to do.” The best way to handle this is to create smaller sub-tasks under each, like “call three new customers today” or “create a draft of the pitch deck” that can be accomplished definitively.

Summary

When you’re still a startup, every moment you devote to your priorities comes at the cost of getting other stuff done. It’s a zero sum game. Yet the benefit of putting your time and effort into your priorities will provide a much greater return on your time investment than running errands and getting distracted.

You’ve got 80 hours per week to work on stuff – stick to the big items and you’ll be in great shape!

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