Be ruthless about hiring and your team. Think about recruitment early on to work out how you can get the right people to do the jobs. As someone said, "if you think hiring a good person is expensive, try hiring a bad one". Plan for how to get rid of people who are not working out (easier in some countries than others).
Be super focused. It is easy to chase the money in similar but different directions and then you lack a coherent business strategy or brand. We burned time building a hardware-based version of our product, which we didn't want long-term, because a customer had money. Took about 3 months of the entire company's time and we never saw any of that money.
Honestly evaluate your product/service constantly, but especially in the early days. Is it really something that can be sold or is it low-value and low-volume? Do people want it or need it?
You need to believe in your product enough to charge the right amount (usually more than you are charging) otherwise you send the wrong message to customers and possibly cannot afford to support it if it becomes popular. Think in terms of what you are saving your customer rather than how much it seems like it should cost for a e.g. piece of software.
I would disagree with some of the comments below. Marketing is important but not necessarily early on and not necesarily involving hiring someone. Same with SEO. Can be useful but very market segment dependent. Instead, the one skill of the CEO is to see what is working and what isn't and to deal with it. If you can see a funnel with nothing coming in the top, maybe you do need marketing. On the other hand, if you get the leads but can't close anything, you either have a product or a sales problem.
Be super focused. It is easy to chase the money in similar but different directions and then you lack a coherent business strategy or brand. We burned time building a hardware-based version of our product, which we didn't want long-term, because a customer had money. Took about 3 months of the entire company's time and we never saw any of that money.
Honestly evaluate your product/service constantly, but especially in the early days. Is it really something that can be sold or is it low-value and low-volume? Do people want it or need it?
You need to believe in your product enough to charge the right amount (usually more than you are charging) otherwise you send the wrong message to customers and possibly cannot afford to support it if it becomes popular. Think in terms of what you are saving your customer rather than how much it seems like it should cost for a e.g. piece of software.
I would disagree with some of the comments below. Marketing is important but not necessarily early on and not necesarily involving hiring someone. Same with SEO. Can be useful but very market segment dependent. Instead, the one skill of the CEO is to see what is working and what isn't and to deal with it. If you can see a funnel with nothing coming in the top, maybe you do need marketing. On the other hand, if you get the leads but can't close anything, you either have a product or a sales problem.