Opinions expressed by entrepreneurs’ colleagues are their very own.
From the outside, entrepreneurship often looks like a foremost roller: rapid growth, media reports, successful exits. I experienced this story – building and running many firms, acting as the general director of Setschedule and leaving firms in real estate and technology before moving to the investment of the project. But the truth is that my real education didn’t come from winnings. It got here from mistakes.
Now, as a enterprise investor who focuses on determining what makes firms balanced and the founders are resistant, I often think about elections that I’d never make again. These are not only my battle scars – these are those that made me a better entrepreneur. In my experience, there are three large mistakes that many entrepreneurs have made, including me. If you are building something now, allow them to serve positive.
1. Belief that everyone could be a partner
In the early days of entrepreneurship there is rush to build a momentum – and in this rush it is easy to confuse the proximity of equalization. I made a mistake, raising early team members to partners without real understanding whether we divided the same values or a long -term vision. Sometimes I felt a sense of duty. Sometimes it was about giving someone a larger stake to carry it. But I learned that a real partnership concerns something greater than titles or capital – it is about sacrificing and faith in a mission.
When partnerships are built for comfort, compensation or charisma, they typically break under pressure. Some of the most public business failures result from the same erroneous assessment. The early fall of Facebook between Marek Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin is a great example. Saverin was there at the starting, but their priorities spread quickly – and this discrepancy led to a legal and personal battle that determines the culture of an early company.
Steve Jobs and the infamous precipitation of John Sculley in Apple is one other warning. Jobs brought Sculley from Pepsi, pondering they might complement each other. However, their values and leadership styles collided. Jobs was finally forced to go away the company he founded.
I used to be there. I gained trust before he was earned. I confused transactional loyalty for long -term commitment. And I paid the price in time, money and emotional capability.
Lesson: Not everyone who starts the race with you must finish it by the side. Partnerships require even values, not only even goals.
2. Prosecution of growth at all costs
If you have ever unfolded VC, you almost certainly said a certain version: (*3*) For some time I believed that speed was the only thing that mattered. I expanded the teams, opened recent industries and exceeded marketing expenses to the borders – all in the name of growth. But rapid growth without a strong foundation resembles the construction of a skyscraper on the sand.
I once doubled the team size before I understood what our best systems were. Result? Tanning, bloated general costs and a product that didn’t improve quickly enough to justify the scale.
There are many cases here. Quickly, the start-up with one click, collected $ 120 million before closing in 2022-a growing variety of employment and marketing of expenses aggressively. The product couldn’t sustain with the noise. Or consider the interior, which became a child of the poster for “height at all costs”. He was valued at $ 47 billion at its peak. Until 2023, it fought for survival, mainly because it expanded faster than his basic business model could support.
In each cases – in my – height was not an enemy. But racing it without discipline, without matching the product market and without individual economics is a rapid way of scaling a failure.
Lesson: Sustainable growth is a by -product of a strong product, efficient activity and brightness of the mission – not only ambition.
3. It will turn into unconditional about business
Entrepreneurs are obsessed. Live Breathe. Take all the things for that. And yes, you have to care deeply. But here is the trap: when your identity is too much related to your organization, you lose your sight of a natural life cycle – and your personal.
I saw the sensible founders missing the exit because they believed that they were building something everlasting. I did it too – I stuck too much, too long. But here I understood: firms have a period of durability, and intelligent founders learn when to enter, when to scale and when to go away.
Jeff Bezos, one of the biggest builders of our time, said: “Amazon is not too big to struggle … In fact, I anticipate Amazon one day.” He identified that firms have life and the goal is to increase it as much as possible when assuming that no company lasts without end.
Think about S&P 500 twenty years ago. Many current giants – Tesla, Meta and even Google – either didn’t exist or have not yet been significant. In 2004, Facebook has just began with Harvard Dorm Room. The average lifetime of the S&P 500 company fell from 33 years in 1964 to only 18 years, in accordance with the Innosight corporate report.
These data do not lie. Companies are disappearing. Change of markets. Technology is ahead of even the most dominant firms. Your task as a founder is to not oppose this – to maintain awareness.
Too many entrepreneurs wrap their personal value in their company’s success and clouds their judgment. They ignore red flags. They provide purchase offers. They burned out. But having an obsession with your organization does not mean that you ought to be blind for his evolution – or for your personal.
Lesson: Be passive, but not illusions. Each company has a cycle. Know when to build, when to rotate and when to go away.
I built firms. I left some, turned others and closed a few. Today, as an investor, I spend more time on the founder’s rankings than the product. Because what I have learned-a success, but above all through failure-it is a way of pondering, judgment and self-awareness, greater than the perfect pitch.
Would I withdraw these mistakes? There is no probability. They taught me things that no MBA could have. It hurts. They cost time and money. But in addition they gave me clarity.
So if you build something today, ask yourself: do I work with the right people? Am I chasing a growth or building a great product? Am I obsessed … Is aware?
The answers can simply be the difference between the lesson and heritage.