As a founder, what struggles do you face when growing your startup?
Evgeniy Yakubovskiy
18 replies
I am a founder myself and have seen some founders firsthand, and the most significant challenges are in sales. Creating a product is hard, but selling it is even harder. And sales are directly related to finances.
Share your challenges and how you overcame them?
Replies
Berrier Joffrey@berrier_joffrey
Paperoad
I'm founder and developer
I have created 5 B2B2C side projects and the goal is always the same, how to sell my product ? Which canal use ? How many money I can put is ads facebook, instagram etc without cheating, many people buy some fake account for reach likes and subscriber.
I just post a new product on producthunt and 1 hour later I receive a mail for buy fake upvote on producthunt 🤯
Please don't buy fake account, fake like, make a product it's complex no cheat code for that !
It's better to have 100 real subscribers and customers than 1 million fake ones
Be brave 💪🤗
Share
@berrier_joffrey Golden words and completely agree that it is better to have 100 real subscribers and clients than 1 million fake ones.
I think our biggest struggle is just finding the like minded people who will really invest in the idea of our start-up. We have been lucky to come across a great group of people, but it was still challenging to find.
@lysten_inc What kind of difficulties in the search have you faced?
Easier to point the struggles I don't face.
But overall, money and hiring which, by the way are extremely co-related.
@jose_alcides_rodrigues Thanks for such fantastic advice. It is constructive to hear the opinion of experienced people. Good luck to you!
We are now throwing all our energy into creating a solid product that will generally be one of the leaders on the market. It's challenging work, but we are trying and starting to think about attracting investment.
@jose_alcides_rodrigues Tell us about what works best for you.
I'm always happy to hear about the strengths of companies and people
@evgeniyyakubovckiy A couple of things work well, first and most importantly and amazing product will always be your best marketing, social media and KOLs sure work but the retention is low if the product sucks so, I'd rather pay a good product team than pay an amazing marketing team.
Sales are your best friend, the founder should always lead it, no one will sell your product better than you.
After product stablish just build a sales machine and supervise it but, specially before PMF the founder leadership in the sale side should be non negotiable.
Now your startup has revenue and are on VC's crosshairs, raise a solid round to enlarge the team.
After those steps hiring comes easy because you have the money to pay for good and senior people.
That's stuff i wished i knew before imploding a great idea a couple of years ago.
Pro tip: Hiring junior personel is an investment 89.7% of early stage startups aren't ready to make.
@jose_alcides_rodrigues Definitely! I always like to connect with people with a baggage of knowledge and experience!
@evgeniyyakubovckiy Loved that! let's keep in touch maybe there's other things i can help!
Generating leads from social media/blogs/article. Really basic things like where best to post.
Still trying to figure it out.
@andrew_isherwood1 We're also working on the question of where to post.
Can you tell me where you now post news about your startup?
Evgeniy, I completely agree with the interest in this question. For myself, I would say that for a startup, it is extremely important to assemble not just staff, but a team. People who are like-minded and enterprising, who live the idea of the product. Developers, marketers - all as a single organism, like we have at inqoob.
@katerina_kurshina Thank you, Kate.
I agree, the team is one of the foundations of success! We at inqoob are forming a dream team
What I really recommend doing is hiring someone who is good at sales. Think of the benefits that working with a professional will bring to your startup/business. It can really make a difference.
Focus on the tasks that you're really good at and outsource what's out of your range.
You don't need to know how to do it all.
I see where you're coming from, but in the end, the welfare of our staff is the most important concern we have. fnaf security breach
One of my favorite quotes from P.T. Barnum is "Without promotion something terrible happens... nothing!"
You could have an amazing new product and spend time, money, and resources on research, design, hosting, and development. So far so good. Once it's finally launched, you have little to no budget for marketing or try to do all the marketing yourself which takes ages, in meantime, no one goes to your site because you have no traffic, no traffic means no customers, no customers means no sales. Your great idea turns to dust, your business turns to failure. You're not alone though, according to online statistics, roughly 80% of startups fail within their first year!
I discovered the best-kept secret: Growth hacking. If you want massive growth in a short time by getting as many users as possible then use Suite.Social - a growth hacking tool that creates a viral promotion so visitors share, refer or invite to claim your offer, growing your traffic, leads, and sales on autopilot, while you focus on improving your product.