Failure is a harsh teacher, but it's also the most honest one you'll ever have.
The first startup I created I had to shut down. What started as an ambitious dream ended with zero revenue and hard-learned lessons. Today, I'm sharing 10 things I wish I'd done differently (in no particular order), hoping they might save you from making the same mistakes I did.
1. Focus on One Thing
One feature, one target audience, one price. Minimize variables.
When you're starting out, every additional feature, audience, or pricing option multiplies your complexity exponentially. Pick one thing and do it exceptionally well. You can always expand later, but you can't succeed if you're mediocre at everything.
2. Stop Making Things Perfect
I spent too much time perfecting things – landing pages, logos, and more. Meanwhile, potential competitors were shipping and learning from real users.
Done is better than perfect. Your first logo will need improvement. Your initial landing page will convert poorly. Your MVP will have bugs. Ship it anyway. You'll learn more from one week of user feedback than six months of internal perfectionism.
3. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid
Don't worry about integrating scaling tech until it's time. I spent too much time setting up things like backend job queues and load balancer infrastructure when I could have been focusing on marketing.
While I was architecting for massive scale, I should have been focusing on getting my first ten customers. Premature optimization isn't just the root of all evil in programming – it's startup suicide.
4. Beware of "Unique" Ideas
If there is no competition, that should be a red flag. It could be what YC considers a "Tarpit Idea" – ideas that seem promising on the surface but trap founders in seemingly endless development cycles without ever reaching profitability or meaningful traction.
Tarpit ideas often involve building something that sounds valuable but lacks a clear path to revenue or has fundamental barriers that aren't obvious upfront. If nobody else is tackling your problem, there might be a good reason. Competition often validates market demand. Don't run from competitors; learn from them.
5. Understand the Problem First
I should have talked to more people first and validated it. I was solving a problem that wasn't actually painful enough for people to pay for.
Spend time interviewing potential customers until you're sick of hearing the same complaints. The problem should be so painful that people are already using terrible workarounds or paying for inadequate solutions.
6. Create an MVP and Deliver It Manually
Most SaaS ideas can be created with an Excel sheet. Reach out to customers, find the problem first and perfect it manually.
Don't be afraid to be the "wizard behind the curtain" initially. Manually deliver your service, use spreadsheets, send personal emails. This approach helps you understand the workflow intimately and validates demand before you build complex automation.
7. Leverage Templates, Libraries and Boilerplate Code to Build Faster
Are you a student or are you a builder? I often struggled with this as the student in me wants to constantly learn about everything. Learn front end code, learn back end, learn design, learn everything, so I often do much of this stuff myself to learn and I find it fun. But I also want to make money. So time is of the essence. It's an opportunity cost.
If the goal is to make money then be a copy pasta at the start. Get things published and produced, and after product market fit, you can custom make things perfectly how you want. That's why I made alpacaui.com, similar to ui.shadcn.com but for marketing components to help get landing pages up ASAP. Just copy and paste the component code and you have things 90% done.
8. Do the Boring Things
Much of building a production level app is fixing boring bugs, making things better and marketing it. Don't spend all your energy on building features and fun stuff when there needs to be some left over for the boring bits.
Bug fixes improve user experience. Marketing brings in customers. Customer support creates advocates. The boring stuff isn't optional... it's essential.
9. Leverage a Marketplace
Marketplaces are gold mines for traffic. If your app or product can be offered in a marketplace, get it in there. It fast tracks success.
The first time I ever made money online was offering landing page templates on Leadpages.com marketplace in 2015. I launched it and overnight I made $30. My eyes opened to the possibility that I could make money and be free from the 9-5 grind. Just be careful building your entire business around that model though, as marketplaces can change in an instant leaving you with no sales overnight.
10. Avoid Offering Free Stuff
At least from the start. If people don't want to pay for it, the product is not validated. Add a free tier later when you start building out your sales funnel and optimized your conversion percentages.
Free users are not customers – they're just users. Charge from day one, even if it's just a small amount. You can add a free tier later for your marketing funnel optimization once you've proven people will pay.
The Bottom Line
Failing taught me more than any business book ever could. My next startup won't be perfect, but it will be focused. It won't be revolutionary, but it will solve a real problem that people will pay for.
Failure isn't the opposite of success, it's the foundation of it. The question isn't whether you'll fail, but whether you'll learn from it when you do.