Being a first-time startup founder is confusing. You don’t have the experience to know what a startup needs to grow nicely and start printing cash – at least I know I didn’t. But since my first startup I’ve learned how to lay the groundwork for future success in an early stage startup.

The most important thing early-on is selling before you’re ready to sell.

Obstacles everywhere

After coming up with my first “golden” startup idea, I did what most first-time founders do. I spent a lot of time daydreaming and planning a perfect product that I “had to” build, and calculating how much money I’d have to spend – obviously coming up with amounts beyond my budget.

I thought that removing budget obstacles was the only way to create something sellable. So I spent a lot of time knocking on VC’s doors, which seemed to be the only path. But my product wasn’t insanely hard to develop, and I could’ve bootstrapped an mvp or a simulation on my own to start selling it. Why didn’t I just do that?I