Intell Informed’s Post

🚀💡✨📈💼 I want to share some short lessons (mistakes - picked the top 5) from two startup incubators, an additional two startup accelerators, and pitch events and pitch competitions in Frankfurt, Chicago, Austin, and New York respectively that I hope the startup community may find useful. 1. People (VCs for example) might not care too much about your brand new idea. Try to flip the roles and put yourself in the investor shoes - it might be good to start with your achievements (why you), especially if it leads to your current traction. The intro would then make more sense than the TAM or product for early-stage startups. Some people who are experts in explaining why they don’t care (such as Paul O'Brien) might be very useful as mentors on the way. 2. Fail-fast methodology - a well-known one in the product space, but in practice, this might also mean changing your deck slides a bit before a particular meeting. 3. Huge events such as #SXSW are great, but definitely come prepared with the right target group and events. Although it might sound logical, I’ve noticed that many startups are aware of their potential ideal (target) customer but are not aware of their target investor or partner which might lead to many unnecessary conversations. 4. Startup accelerators can accelerate you, but also take too much of your time. It is as valuable as you make it at that point in time, so I would say that there is a bare minimum requirement to join one - especially in the early stage with a clear idea and a few potential pilot customers who validated the idea would be a bare minimum starting point. Otherwise, focus on your customers. 5. Celebrate milestones, since this is a long-term trip. Also, what I am still trying to figure out and practice is to be able to see the right things to prioritize, in order to not have to make 2. point more times than needed. I am also curious to hear what you all think. At the end, I will leave a few folks that have been valuable during this intensive past few months (or much more) journey that also have a fair share of experience here. Digital Den MediaTech Ventures Start2 Group Branko Džakula Nebojša Lalić Velibor Miranović Denis Memić Dražen Stojović Nina Milic Anja Adamović Jonie Oostveen John Zozzaro Megan Botha Melinda Wong #startups