{"id":10184,"date":"2018-01-01T09:16:27","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T06:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/01\/7-painfully-obvious-lessons-i-learned-in-2017-while-building-a-startup\/"},"modified":"2018-01-01T09:16:27","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T06:16:27","slug":"7-painfully-obvious-lessons-i-learned-in-2017-while-building-a-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/01\/7-painfully-obvious-lessons-i-learned-in-2017-while-building-a-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"7 painfully obvious lessons I learned in 2017 while building a startup."},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year Medium!\u00a0\ud83c\udf89<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know I suck at so many different things before I started a company.\u00a0\ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n

Building a company requires you to get good at a lot of different things besides your domain expertise. You may be good at product\/engineering but you also have to do other things like fundraising, hiring, marketing and taxes etc. As a result, you become self-aware of all the things you\u2019re bad\u00a0at.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A: I am really bad at PR. I\u2019d send press releases to journalists with detailed product description, quotes, image resources and announcements about Archie.AI\u2019s product releases and never hear back. We hit 500 customers, launched on Google Assistant, Alexa, Chrome Webstore, won startup contests, got huge computation grants from IBM and NVIDIA, raised a funding round\u200a\u2014\u200apress didn\u2019t even accidentally write about\u00a0us.<\/p>\n

I just sucked at telling a compelling story to write about. But the PR failure pushed us to build our own audience the hard\u00a0way.<\/p>\n

We started getting our message across directly to whoever would\u00a0listen.<\/p>\n

We built our own audience through sharing real insights we learned and people started to\u00a0listen.<\/p>\n

Here are 7 painfully obvious lessons I learned in 2017 while building Archie.AI, in no particular order.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Gif by Lisa Vertudaches<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \n
  1. Do not underestimate the power of your vulnerability. Sharing it is hard, but it is instantly relatable to EVERYONE. People like real shit, it\u2019s beautifully simple.<\/li>\n
  2. Empathy is the most useful skill for building any product. Second most useful skill is the ability to rely on Data to make decisions.<\/li>\n
  3. People will never buy something they don\u2019t understand. No matter how intricate your product or service is, a 10-year-old should be able to verbalize it in his\/her own\u00a0words.<\/li>\n
  4. Humans have no issue paying for things that give them value. Your customers will look for a good deal, but if you can provide real value, people\/market will reward you for your\u00a0efforts.<\/li>\n
  5. If you have real insights\u200a\u2014\u200aonly acquired by experiments and experience\u200a\u2014\u200apeople will listen. Your audience may be small today but it will grow if you have a real story to tell and you\u2019re willing to put yourself out there in front of the\u00a0world.<\/li>\n
  6. \u201cDone\u201d is always, unequivocally better than \u201cperfect\u201d. Perfection should reside inside your head where all externalities can be\u00a0ignored.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n

    7. Faking courage is the same as having real\u00a0courage.<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    Bran thought about it. \u2018Can a man still be brave if he\u2019s afraid?\u2019
    \u2018That is the only time a man can be brave,\u2019 his father told\u00a0him.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    \"\"\/<\/p>\n

    \n

    7 painfully obvious lessons I learned in 2017 while building a startup.<\/a> was originally published in Archie.AI<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Happy New Year Medium!\u00a0\ud83c\udf89 I didn\u2019t know I suck at so many different things before I started a company.\u00a0\ud83d\ude80 Building a company requires you to get good at a lot of different things besides your domain expertise. You may be good at product\/engineering but you also have to do other things like fundraising, hiring, marketing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}