When you’re starting a business, you’re signing up to dedicate a good part of your life to it. Starting and scaling a tech business is hard–brutal, even–especially right now with the tech correction, inflation, hiring, and supply chain issues, but you don’t truly know how much of a roller-coaster it can be until you do it.
事实是，没有什么可以使您充分做好准备成为创始人的准备。需要通过经验来学习一些课程，并且您将永远不会看到很多问题（例如，全球大流行）。但是，我认为有一些基本建议适用于每个企业家。这是我希望在十多年前开始旅程之前认识的四件事。（免责声明：我不是第一个提供此建议的人，您可能至少被告知其中一些建议，但这是因为它有效，而且很重要，需要再次聆听。）
Have a cofounder
您可能在这方面不同意我，您可能是对的。拥有共同创始人并不适合所有人，但这绝对是我找到Jobber的最好举动，这是一个小型的运营管理平台home service企业，与我们的首席执行官Forrest Zeisler。联合创始人的关系是独一无二的，在这次旅程中让我陪在我身边是无价的。作为创始人，您需要戴很多帽子，这有助于能够与合作伙伴一起完成所有需要完成的工作，尤其是如果您拥有互补的技能或享受各种基本工作。
您可以与与其他人无法与其他人进行脆弱的对话。我和福雷斯特（Forrest）就我们与业务有关的疑问和恐惧进行了许多公开和诚实的对话，负责员工的生计，并在工作之外平衡生活。您可以以与其他任何人的困难或不可能的方式与联合创始人分享负担和挑战，这很有价值。
不要屈服于枢转的压力太快
The startup world is plagued with “pivot culture.” The moment things get too hard, or don’t go the way you thought they would, there’s pressure to find a new direction. At Jobber, we were early to our space developing SaaS for small- and medium-sized businesses–and we’re actually working with very small businesses, most between 1 and 30 people. So, we had a hard time raising money early on; a lot of investors thought our customer segment wasn’t compelling enough. We had to push hard for years before it was clear that our idea was going to be successful and we could scale.
We kept pushing because, even though things didn’t go the way we thought they would, we had validation from our market. It’s important to always be talking to your users, and to build up your own conviction about what you’re doing. Jobber began because of stories we heard from small business owners struggling with paperwork, organization, and all the administration work of running a business. I continued to spend hundreds of hours connecting with customers over coffees and lunch early on, and the experience sparked new ideas that we wouldn’t have uncovered otherwise, and had a profound impact on how we built (and continue to build) our product and our business.
If you believe in your idea and you’ve validated it through research and conversations with end users, don’t be too quick to abandon it.
雇用真正相信您的使命的人
花点时间弄清楚为什么要做自己在做什么以及要产生的影响，然后找到想要帮助您的人。
It’s not just about hiring the smartest people or the ones you’d want to be friends with. Especially early on, the people you hire will shape your company culture and values, so look for constructive and collaborative people who are eager to contribute to what you’re building. These are the people who will have the biggest impact on the cultural direction that is established from the outset, so they should connect with your mission and how you’re trying to make a difference in the lives of your customers.
当您开始发展领导团队时，这一点尤其重要。这些是您最紧密地与之合作的人，随着公司的发展，将会产生巨大的影响，因此请花时间建立信任。您的工作关系应该使您成为直接的 - 将来有很多困难，建设性的对话，并且您想快速而坦率地讨论解决方案。通过将小问题一起解决兼容性的方式，通过领导候选人来测试您的工作动态。如果您可以友好，有效地解决这些问题，那是建立长期业务关系的好兆头。
在乔布伯（Jobber）雇用的早期，我们本能雇用了真正与客户订婚的人（其中一些企业家本身），并为使他们的生活更轻松而更好而感到兴奋。我们开始时并没有有意识地寻找这些品质，但最终它帮助我们建立了强大的基础目的，文化和价值观。当我们坐下来真正正式化并定义它们时，它们不是理想的 - 我们已经在生活。
考虑您的早期投资者
早期的投资者可以对您的业务产生巨大影响，因此除了他们贡献的资本之外，您应该确保他们与您的愿景保持一致，并可以提供有用的建议和外部视角。
Early stage investors are signing up for a journey with you, and there will be rough patches along the way, so you want them to believe in your vision and plans for achieving success. The last thing you want is pressure to pivot when you hit your first bump in the road.
The insights, partnership, and connections our early investors provided were so beneficial and valuable to scaling Jobber. We were fortunate to raise capital from two early stage investors who were very involved as educators, coaches, and mentors. They were critical to our early and ongoing success.
When we first started Jobber, my cofounder and I were meeting to work in a coffee shop. Now we have two offices, over 500 employees, and 160,000 service professionals using our software. I’m not sure I could’ve imagined this when we started. There have been many challenges, but we’ve also had the opportunity to build a business that I’m passionate about, give others career opportunities, and help our customers be more successful in their own businesses.
重要的是要记住，您无法避免出现的每一个陷阱，而挫折和错误是创始人旅程的一部分。将他们视为学习机会，并因他们而变得更好，这一点很重要。这是一次艰难的旅程，但也是最有意义的旅程之一。希望我的经验在开始建立自己的业务时能帮助您。祝你好运！