I am not in the Tech-industry nor in the Startup world, but I built a sustainable business in real estate in the last 6 years.
Currently, I am advising some startups in Berlin, while I have limited knowledge about funding and investors. But I do have tons of management and operations know-how. Especially in sales, negotiation, team building and networking. So here are my first couple of (random) advise I constantly repeat:
- focus, focus, focus on what ever is the bottleneck in your business.
- you should be able to understand and explain the basic model in your industry in 60 seconds.
- you should be able to address the main obstacles you and your competition are facing.
After this you can innovate, not before. - always go for low hanging fruits first.
- a customer you have to educate is not a customer (see 3.).
- an investor which you have to explain how to invest, is not an investor (see 3.).
- rule for partnership: two broke guys don’t make a winning team.
- your partner should have different skill set than you.
