Few notes on startups (2023 Edition)
learnings and observations from building a startup
I know I’m one-quarter late writing this particular edition due to some ongoing things at Fueler. But as they say, it’s never too late.
Hello friends, welcome to the 9th edition of TheHustleBook, this edition is about my learnings from building a startup in India — building a team, product, community, and everything in between
This might sound a bit weird, but our startup journey has been all about survival — an extra day, an extra month, an extra quarter, an extra year. And it is definitely discouraging when we see or hear any startups going down — it’s never a piece of good news for the founding team members and the ecosystem.
We at Fueler have understood the fact that we are no exception hence we have to keep trying, keep going, and do the boring and monotonous work every single day.
If you ask me the reason, it’s nothing special. And to be honest it all has to do with the place we come from. But today is not the day to explain it — story for some other day.
As I keep saying, we are always grateful for all the support from the community. Every time they mention us on social media or on their articles or on videos — its a “our day has been made” feeling for us. Like every year, there are a lot of learnings to share.
Here are a few notes from 2023 on building a startup
When building a team - look for obsessions, always a good metric, no tool to measure to it, you will somehow know deep down
Take communication as a very important metric and a trait, do not ignore it
Prioritise hard on what’s important for the business rather than how you feel about something or someone
Identify between efficiency and inefficiency - applicable for people, processes, and strategies
Always good to remember the thumb rule: beg, borrow, steal. Read more
Things can and will go wrong, please be prepared.
Energy decays. Do and communicate what’s necessary to preserve it
Nothing but EGO kills startups.
You are always responsible for noise to noise-to-signal filter ratio. Deliberate focus is the key
Startups and entrepreneurship are long-term games, pick players with endurance and attitude.
Ownership is seen on the ground and through efforts, not on titles or papers
Rejections are better than regrets. Always.
It’s all over the day, you stop giving a damn about your company
Last but not the least, spread the wins, own the failures
I love to visualize my learnings in the form of these mental models. I will show you when we meet IRL. You can however check it all here. Maybe I will try to make a video series on these learnings.
Unsolicited advice: If you want challenges and want to grow in your career in less time, try to work at a startup early in your career. Great if you could break into startups right from your college days.
Trust me the learning is insane, even more insane when you work with the team onsite - being part of day-to-day decision-making, the ups and downs and lot more. Probably will share more on this in the upcoming edition of TheHustleBook
Thanks for reading, and thanks a lot for your invaluable support and contributions in Fueler Community. As always, Team Fueler is grateful to you
Your friend,
Riten
P.S. We built something new recently 👀 Are you aware that now you can work with your favorite brands using your proof of work on Fueler? We have brands like Topmate, Flexiple and GrowthX — Go check it out already