first-time founders: 5 most common mistakes 90% of founders make. and how NOT to get into those traps
I started businesses three times: I had two restaurants (the first one failed painfully, the second one - sold) and an educational tool for medical workers (exited). and since then I’ve worked with 50+ early founders, who are starting with a blank page.
>> a spoiler alert: “what do I do?” is the wrong question. “what moves the needle” is the right one.
yeah, nice advice Leta, just do the right things and you’ll be fine! fair enough. here’s a list of 5 things that look like legit progress but under the hood they are not. and some ideas of how to deal with that, of course.
1. “I’m not ready to sell yet” trap. aka “let me fix this last little thing first and then I’ll be good to go”.
selling is tough. showing the product to a perfect stranger is tough. hearing no is tough. and that’s when the “productive procrastination” comes for a rescue, and it has the name to it: Endless Prep. here’s what it looks like:
→ doing, redoing, and then updating the webpage once again (same for the pitch deck)
→ name, logo, fonts, colours
→ create “The Strategy” file, and then the “Marketing Strategy 2.0” and the “Product Roadmap for 2026-2027”
→ pricing: what do competitors do? what do companies in similar domains charge?
→ outreach automation: a sequence of 5+ automated emails before the first ever email being sent
I’ll probably stop here, you got the point. here’s what successful marketing → sales cycles looks like:
+ you set up a Notion page → you share it with 10 folks from your network who look like they are a good fit → you get 3 calls → quite an awful sales pitch as you do that for the first time → no deals closed.
the bottleneck discovered: sales pitch.
+ you set up a simple webpage → post from your personal profile in social media → boost the best-performing posts → have conversion so people book calls with you → jump on the calls → get a massive push-back on pricing → adjust → get three first deals closed. the pricing was the problem → now fixed.
+ you vibecode the simplest possible MVP → share it in a very niche community → see the number of trials booming. two ways from here: you now have access to users and can talk to them or you can work on the conversion to paid customers. the wins: you validated the product idea + the this particular channel for user acquisition.
my point: you’re ready to sell earlier than you think. whatever you choose to do today, the quick self-checking question is ‘will it bring customers on board?’
if that hasn’t been helpful, here’s another mind trick:
set up a "failures tracker” and set a goal, let’s say 100 failures in the next 30 days. every single time you try something and it doesn’t work, you put another line to that tracker (or a simple tick if you prefer that) → that tricks your dopamine system into believing you’ve got an achievement. and I want you to believe the achievement is real: you’ve just tried yet another thing on your way to building a robust business - that’s a bloody amazing job!
here’s mine:
2. copying the big names sounds logical - they are big and successful for a reason. here’s why it’s a trap.
what's good for OpenAI ≠ what's good for you. it's a huge resource mismatch.you just raised (about to raise) your first $500k - $5M in funding. OpenAI spends (loses?) $3.46 million every hour.
the big guys’ frameworks, whitepapers and playbooks are useless for the early stage. all these “comment FRAMEWORK and I’ll share it with you” posts are very effective engagement strategies. you’re welcome to do the same when you need eyeballs on your page. but the actual frameworks are someone else’s story - please make sure this someone is at the same stage as you are, the same business model (remember the b2b with $100k contract value vs an app for GenZ?), and ideally the same market.
so yes, I’m basically saying you can copy your closest competition and be successful in it for a while. you’ll still need to differentiate at some point to win. but by copying the big names on the market and their ways, you’re setting yourself up for a loss before you even started.
another POV - you’re early, it means you now have the privilege of moving fast and making mistakes while unnoticed by anyone. you can play the wildest cards as you’ve got nothing to lose just yet - use it well.
3. "I have to have the answers" trap.
you spent weeks and months thinking about your product. what it does, what user pains it closes and how it is better than existing competitors.
what you probably DON’T have when you’re starting:
+ clear pricing understanding (is it too much? what do the competitors do? can I afford paid ads?)
+ clear view at where your customers come from (what channels, how did they hear about you, what message worked)
+ all the financial metrics (what’s important to track? are my numbers any good?)
so the next thing you know, you’re trying to get answers for all those questions → getting more questions in return.
here’s the bare bones of that early 0 to 1 in three steps, and its purpose is to give you a list of hypotheses you’re about to prove / disprove.
please do promise me you would never show it to any seasoned marketer out there - they would eat me alive for such an ungraceful simplification of the craft.
the real life check: you're early, you have no data. it's not the answers you're after - it's the conversations that will help to figure those answers out.
4. “I’ll hire someone to do X”, and usually that X is go-to-market planning and execution.
yes, you will at some point. but in real life it works the other way round: you first do the job, then you figure out what needs to be done, and next you understand who you want to hire and what’s the expectation there.
two examples to illustrate:
case 1. you’re a b2b cybersecurity startup. your sales cycle is about 3 to 6 months, high trust, high ticket ($100k+). you’ve tried different channels and discovered that the best-working one is the in-person events and conferences, targeting VP-level employees. your best bet now is a marketer who understands what it takes to work in the field, can build those long-lasting loops, and probably is extremely good at classic PR to gain you the credibility you need.
case 2. you’re a hyper-growth personal app, helping Gen Z follow the music their idols listen to right now. God knows how that marketer with field experience would help you! what you really need is a specialist in social media (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts), performance marketing (aka paid ads) and maybe a bit of guerilla marketing to start the wave.
different cases = different hires. ex-Google and ex-Meta won’t do the trick. go out there → do the job → figure out the basics and what makes the difference → outsource later. if you can’t get excited about selling your product, why should anyone else be?
the unspoken expectation from investors: you take your startup to $1M ARR before you hire for GTM. get your hands dirty, you’ll learn a ton. if anything, you’ll find out who exactly you’re looking for.
5. making your startup LOOK legit instead of building it to BE legit.
do you know that feeling when everything feels like one big rehearsal? another one: when you started, did you have a list of things to make sure your startup looks like a solid one? like, get a @mycompany.com email address, a proper startup logo and that email sign off with a shiny new logo? I did. and it’s ok.
so now’s the question: when would you know that your company IS legit? not a ‘work in progress’, not a ‘we are getting there’, but is actually a real thing?
>> a brief insert of psychology here. we tend to downplay how serious we are about what we build, so in case things go wrong, we might say ‘well, that was just a project - it failed, but that’s not a big deal’. a defense mechanism. >> the end of the psychology explanation attempt.
now, you probably already know the answer I’m leading to.
you are legit day 1.
you don’t need any special attributes to build:
- you don’t need a webpage
- you don’t need to move to SF and pay $5k for rent
- your @gmail address is just enough to start with
yes, you’re early and you’ll figure all those things later. please remember to enjoy your journey and be unapologetically you. if people out there want what you’re building, I 100% believe you’ll be able to figure the details out.
if I had to simplify this whole issue to one sentence, that would be this one: “Will This Thing Bring Customers On Board?” if the answer is yes, go for it, do it and have fun.