What did you do to save time as a startup founder?
Curious for those startup founders out there, what did you do to save time so that you could focus on building your company?
I'm willing to entertain all ideas. I'll also note that I have a wife/baby daughter and a house, and I want to have quality time with my family.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] threadThen you can have family time knowing everyone has each others back.
I've got this wrong before, I've got it right before. A new company sounds like a good opportunity to use new tech, but It's disarming if you can't solve a problem because you haven't mastered your tools yet. It slows progress if you have to learn on the fly. In contrast, using tools you're already comfortable with gives you really good momentum.
Once you've proved that it's viable, you can go back and rework things to be better/cooler/whatever
Other than that automate more, be it with own tools or existing ones.
All other things are very different, very specific for each startup, and depend on what is your target environment, what is your kernel tech, etc.
It's a best seller, people say it's life changing, but I have yet to hear of someone actually doing what's in the book. Even the author works extremely long hours after becoming an angel investor.
Don't think of scaling in terms of user count, employee head count, revenue. Think of it in complexity. You can scale pretty easily in a small market until you get 90% of the market. It's by being clever that many people start to scale poorly. You know you're scaling poorly when you're hiring people just because you're hiring people, and when you spend more time communicating than doing the work.
You can't move safely as an entrepreneur. Even as a bootstrapper, someone will come in and buy out your market or siege you out of it. There are fairly safe red ocean businesses though, e.g. games and "specialist spreadsheets" like CRMs/ERPs.
Family time shouldn't be much of an issue; it's other hobbies that suffer. You should have a decent amount of time left over once things click.
Also, take care of yourself. Not getting distracted is difficult as it is, but will get impossible once you are exhausted.