If you could time travel to change your past, what would you have done differently in your business?
Kate Dalessi
39 replies
Is there anything you would have done differently?
Is there any skill you wish you had, or any contact you wish you never lost?
Maybe, there was a good deal that you turned down and regretted?
Replies
Brenna Donoghue@brenna_donoghue
Morgen
I would stop trying to do so much and focus.
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if I could travel back in time, I would learn more marketing skills. It's one thing to create a product, but it really is a completely different thing selling it =)
@lysten_inc That's for sure! But that's something you can do in the present, too:)
@katyaveremeichik that’s true!
If I could go back in the past, I would‘ve not even begun my business. 🙂
@katyaveremeichik, I positioned the business under an ideal where people were not ready for it. My target audience is too busy scrolling on Instagram and watching short videos on TikTok. Social media stole all the attention. 🤷♂️
I would have kept everything simpler (business organization, contracts, technical infrastructure, message). I started to appreciate the beauty of simplicity.
@marco_ancona2 yeah, 100%. The more you do, the more you understand that the simpler the better.
We created an application called Levelfields.ai that finds events that catalyze stock prices before they are widely known, but I was so busy building it, I didn't use it enough to make trades and generate more money. I made some profitable trades that I used to partially fund the company. I regret not setting it up to auto-trade for me as many of the events were yielding 15% per day and we should have self-funded even more than we did. We're working on that now since it's still working even in this lousy market.
I have some other changes I would have made from this business and the previous one I sold to a PE firm:
1. Create a content community prior to building you can sell into
2. Build and sell a much less robust application to get feedback faster
3. Sell non-dynamic data first
4. Solve one customer problem first before trying to change the industry's problem. This is easy to say but hard to do. Effectively, you end up making an incremental improvement you can leverage for cash flow before you work on the game changing tech that transforms the industry. it will save you lots of cash and enable access to investors faster as you will have ARR quicker.
5. Buy a great list of investors that are in your industry and stage - building one took me 120hrs. But don't buy one from a vendor, buy one from a builder/entrepreneur
6. Make sure cofounders have big networks of useful connections
7. Raise money before you need it
8. Focus on being good at 1 thing at a time to differentiate
9. Don't hire any marketing firms without a trusted referral
10. Don't hire any marketing people without testing out their ability to setup marketing infrastructure from scratch
@andrew_lvlf that's some GREAT advice! And your story "how I helped people make money and forgot to make money for myself" is awesome:)
@katyaveremeichik thank you - it is a good lesson in how to incorporate designs for busy audiences as well
If I could go back in time, I wish I could change nothing and live my life as I lived right now. Relive the moments of joy and sadness and feel it all over again. I don't know why exactly you would want to go back and change something but I think it's overrated the way we think about time restricted results.
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I would not like to travel to the past. What should I do there? I would like to take a trip into the future to understand what I need to focus on now, what to understand, what to study. This is a trip that would be really useful✨😉
Be honest I wouldn't change anything, where I'm now in my position and in my personal life I'm happy. And if I had such a chance to go back I guess I would have done the same thing all over again. If something or someone I’ve lost in my past, (I mean no longer in touch ) I never regret. I will do my best to chance my present so I could be more happy in the near future. As long we are alive and in good health, we can change and learn and get whatever we want.
Focus on single business model and not try many things at once.
The 'dont put your eggs in one basket' analogy is only applicable when the chicken has laid the eggs. When the eggs are not even laid and you are worried about diversifying is not the right way to go!
If I have the power or given the chance to ponder around my past and make few changes which I believe would have worked is to get started on things fast and see if it fits the requirement and if not switch to other planning mode or may be change the approach towards the same.
@katyaveremeichik yes absolutely not to wait for the right time to come and do not fear from failure.
@bhav_singh So, basically, learn not to wait and to move on quickly from a bad idea?
I would have signed better contracts - for an important project I did not take care of the copyright transfer, which sort of tied my hands a few months later.
Contracts are signed for bad times - such a valuable lesson learned from this situation. ;)
@pawelszafa what do you mean you didn't take care of the copyright transfer, can you explain further?
@lysten_inc Sure. I was working with "friends" on a side project and we agreed that they, as freelancers, will transfer copyrights to the code when we will incorporate. The product was a success and after lunch when they saw traction they demanded more share than we agreed at the beginning. I agreed, so they demanded even more. Then I said no and they said they wont transfer copyrights to the code to new entity.
In EU if you do not have copyright you cant make any changes to the code, so that was a problem.
To sum up, this a legal aspect that teach me to sign detailed contracts with everybody because later on, I may need it. If I could travel in time I would definitely sign those contracts back then.
@lysten_inc @pawelszafa thank you for sharing, it's an instructive story!
@pawelszafa wow, I’m sorry that happened to you! I’m glad you know better but that’s really awful that happened.
Thanks! I am glad that I can warn people: always sign a contract. ;) Have safe and profitable deals!
If I could travel to past I would get more business experience working on enterprise company. I mean the skills to scale the business.
Test test test before dropping too much money on ad spend.
I'd started the hiring process before having secured the cash from investors! Making things the safe way isn't anyway a thing in a start up, so waiting to have hte cash in the bank before hiring was a mistake, or at least, made us delay for no reason!
Ever experienced that feeling of having to dare more with the business @katyaveremeichik?
@katyaveremeichik @raul_silverstone Interesting point @raul_silverstone, will keep that in mind as we may get there in the near future!
@raul_silverstone actually, I'm more of a safe player. A bit timid even. That's one of the things for me to work on!
If I could travel to the past, I would like to focus on connecting with suppliers and manufacturers. I need detailed product information (images, ingredients, etc.) and it's really hard to cold call companies.
No need to go back to the past, Moving ahead and doing positives things is the best.
My name is Kelly hello everyone, it is a pleasure to be here among all of you, all of you have been so kind and thoughtful. So my reply to Katya question?
I wouldn't change anything even the bad slow miserable, days of starting out. I would have never met one of the biggest motivators in my life which is Jerry Gallegos. I was down and out, I was three days away from closing the doors in my business, When I met Jerry.
And then he invited me here among all of you wonderful people. What's amazing about that? It's rare that you have someone looking out for your best interest and needs. At least for me that's been my experience. So Katya, I wouldn't change anything or done anything different. I know that's probably not the answer you were looking for? But it's the one that I have in my heart, and it's my true feelings on a good friend. Thank you.
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