Having a startup is a lot like being a mom. There are all kinds of people telling you that you’re doing it wrong, not doing enough, if you ONLY spent 30 minutes a day reading to your child, having dinner with them, exercising, out in nature, checking their homework, discussing current events, teaching them a musical instrument, having them do chores around the house …. well, by the time you get to the end of the list you would need a 40-hour day.
A start-up is just like that. Here is just the tip of the iceberg of things people tell me I need to do:
- Compute the total available market, service available market, service obtainable market.
- Have a blog,
- Be on twitter
- Compute trailing twelve months revenue
- Have a Facebook page
- Get a youtube channel
- Monitor website statistics daily
- Create a demo version
- Evaluate every marketing expenditure, ad, conference etc. to see how many visits and how much revenue it brought us
- Have a linkedin page
- Add a social aspect to the game
- Add leader boards that show who has the highest score each day
- Add more game levels
- Create boards on Pinterest
- Integrate the math problems more with the game storyline
- Be more active on Instagram,
- Be on reddit.
- Do a podcast.
- Do usability tests with customers.
- Present at conferences.
- Write white papers.
- Write articles for scientific journals.
- Write grants.
- Get in the app store.
- Get on Amazon
- Pitch at startup events
Just like with being a mother, everyone of these ideas is GOOD and if I did them all, I would be a bad mother/ founder because I would be dead with exhaustion within a week. Here is another common element – no one really knows what they are doing. There is no magic formula. You just work hard, do your best and at the end of the day, if you are lucky enough to get a good night’s sleep, try again tomorrow.