My Top 10 Learnings from Alexis Ohanian’s MasterClass on Building Startup
I had the opportunity to do the MasterClass of Alexis Ohanian on “Building Your Startup” this weekend. This is undoubtedly one of the best courses I have done this year and thought of sharing my top 10 learnings with you all.
Be Relentlessly Resourceful: As a founder, you have to wear a lot of hats in the initial days. You have to do everything from market research to sales. Not only you but your early hires also have to do the same too. You have to be persistent in finding solutions and getting the job done. You have to make the most out of what you have and use it to your advantage.
Make Sure You Have PMF: PMF stands for Product-Market Fit, which refers to how well your product or service meets the needs of your target market. Two key signals of PMF according to Alexis are - a high retention rate and organic growth. A high retention rate indicates people are here to stay, not just to explore. High organic growth indicates people have self-motivation to come to you for solving their problems, you don’t have to pay to earn their attention.
Nail Your Execution: Execution is everything, ideas alone are worthless. Relentless focus on getting things done, prioritizing the right work, and cutting down everything else is what ensures successful execution. Doing the work isn’t the goal, doing the right work is.
Drop The Jargon: Jargons are often a red flag. It sometimes acts as a signal that the person talking doesn’t have the clarity to explain something in plain language. Jargon helps experts discuss ideas quickly but its usage should be limited. The goal is to explain what you do to everyone expert or not.
Be Cautious On Early Hires: Your first 10 employees are going to shape your culture. People with a “This isn’t my job” mentality has no place in an early-stage startup. Don’t increase the probability of your startup’s failure by hiring or worse, keeping them in your startup. Right hires radically increase the probability of success.
Focus On Your Community: Too many startups obsess too much over competitors and focus too little on customers/community. Make decisions based on what your customers want, not what your competitors do. Build a strong community of customers by delivering great service.
Look For Peers, Not Mentors: Try to learn more from people who are one-two years ahead of you than the ones five-ten years ahead of you. Learning someone from five-ten years ahead is surely great but sometimes the difference in timeline makes your reality with them different. What you should do is be with and learn from people who have recently gone through the struggles you are facing.
Audit Your Time: “Movement isn’t progress”. Read that again. Focus on building great systems and habits that allow you to flourish. Consistently audit your calendar. Are you wasting too much time on meetings? Sorry to break your bubble but your meetings aren’t real work in most cases. Go do some real work and help your business.
Strive To Be Better: Surround yourself with people who make you better. This is the best way to grow. If you really want to grow, surround yourself with people in the office and in the home who make you a better person.
Make Room For Winners: During 776 BC a chef (Coroebus of Elis) participated in Olympic running competition and won the gold medal. Greatness can be found anywhere, there’s no template. You have to continuously create opportunities for people irrespective of their backgrounds, gender, nationality, etc. The only thing that matters is building a level playing ground for everyone to achieve greatness.
It was an incredibly rewarding experience to learn from a successful founder and investor’s personal journey of becoming a better person and contributing to the world. I hope to learn from more people like them and share my takeaways in the next newsletters.