Founding a startup is a professional adventure like no other. There’s a deep sense of mission, many sleepless nights, and unmatched emotional investment. And while challenges are inevitable, there are valuable lessons founders can learn from those who came before them.
We rounded up the best advice for aspiring founders from successful entrepreneurs and investors at VivaTech to help you avoid common mistakes.
Learning to Walk Before You Can Run
Startup founders are running a marathon, not a sprint. Ambition fuels many founders, but it’s also critical to build a strong foundation and not scale too quickly.
In a rush to grow, many founders overlook steps such as validating their idea or understanding their target audience. Learning to walk before you can run means mastering the basics: creating a solid business plan, conducting thorough market research, and testing your idea in small ways before going all in.
Founders also need to prepare for the pressure and expectations that will be on their shoulders, as Dominic Jacquesson, VP of Insight and Talent at the venture capital firm Index Ventures told VivaTech 2024 attendees:
“You start off in the super early days as a Chief Building Officer. You’re fully focused on product. You’re building, iterating, directly on product every day. In the middle stages you shift to what I’ll call the Chief Decision Officer. So you’ve now got dozens, maybe hundreds of initiatives going on, and you’re bombarded with questions.
"What we say to founders is, you really have to think about at the start of your journey, are you ready for those shifts in the evolution of your role? Because it’s a profound change going between those different roles. Are you ready to be leading a team and inspiring a team? You have to really think about that.”
In the beginning, startups feel like sprints. But ignoring early-stage fundamentals and failing to think ahead can lead to costly, avoidable missteps down the road.
Common Mistakes Founders Make (With Examples)
Leading a startup comes with a steep learning curve. These are some of the most frequent mistakes founders make, along with expert advice on how to avoid them.
Incorrectly Testing for Product-Market Fit
Product-market fit is the holy grail for any startup. But founders often make mistakes when testing for PMF.
One common error is using superficial metrics or anecdotal feedback instead of concrete data. For example, founders may assume that early enthusiasm from friends, family, or a small subset of users equals market validation.
To truly achieve product-market fit, you need a sizable amount of customer and market data. Then you need to continuously iterate your product to fit the needs of the market.
“In order to crack a market or segment, you need to make sure you really have the product that is good enough to sell by itself. Because the growth is coming from the product. Full stop,” Revolut’s Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Antoine Le Nel, told the 2024 VivaTech audience. “I sometimes hear founders or CEOs say, ‘my product is great, I just have an awareness problem.’ No. If your product was that great, you wouldn’t have an awareness problem.”
Want to know how to properly gauge your product-market fit? Read this: 6 Proven Ways Startups Can Test Product-Market Fit
Hiring Too Fast or at the Wrong Time
Scaling too quickly often causes startups to hire prematurely. Bringing on new talent can be exciting, but doing so without a clear need or sufficient revenue streams can create unnecessary financial burdens. Hiring too much or too fast can burn through your funding, force layoffs and damage your team culture.
Index Ventures’ Dominic Jacquesson warns that the biggest driver of organizational complexity is headcount: “When you’re in high growth you might be doubling your head count every year, and you’re doing that for several years running. That level of hiring means that at any point in time, half your team is going to be new to the company. That puts a huge amount of organizational stress, and it brings with it, inevitably, a lot of chaos.”
The bigger the organization, the more complicated leading it becomes, and alignment issues can come up. Prioritize building a small, agile team that can adapt as your business grows.
Lack of Market Research
Founders often fall in love with their idea without fully understanding their market. This leads to products or services that don’t align with customer needs. Market research is about more than identifying competitors – it’s about deeply understanding your audience.
“It’s such a big investment to go into a market, it’s important to validate along the way,” says Alex Weber, Director of International Expansion at N26, Europe’s leading digital bank. “The first thing we do is user research. We go there with a user research team, we interview, we validate, to make sure along the way that it actually makes sense to continue.”
Founders must consider what their target audience values and what will solve their problems. Without understanding these preferences, the product will likely struggle to gain traction.
Poor Funding and Revenue Planning
Securing funding is one of the biggest challenges for startups. However, poor financial planning can sink a business even after raising capital. Founders often underestimate how much money they’ll need or overestimate their revenue potential.
Market intelligence platform CB Insights reports that the top reason for startup failure is running out of cash. Poor cash flow management, inadequate budgeting, and resource misallocation can quickly put a startup out of business.
An early and dramatic example of this was Pets.com, an Amazon-style pet supplies company. Intense marketing and a super-popular sock puppet mascot couldn’t save the company from poor cash flow and an unsustainable business model. In February 2000, Pets.com raised $82.5 million in an IPO, but filed for bankruptcy just nine months later.
Advice Founders Wish They Knew Earlier
Each year at VivaTech, successful founders and investors share the best decisions and biggest mistakes they’ve made leading their startups. Here are five important pieces of advice entrepreneurs told us in 2024:
Focus on Core Strengths: Identify your startup’s unique value proposition and hone in on delivering that. Founder and CEO of Headway Anton Pavlovsky advises: “Smart people try to use their brains as much as possible and sometimes they overcomplicate things. I would advise to really KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid. That’s the approach one should take with a small market, focused audience, and then you can expand later. But focus, especially in the early days, is extremely crucial.”
Trust Your Gut: The biggest piece of advice co-founder and CEO of Localyze Hanna Asmussen gives to aspiring founders: )“Always trust your gut feeling. I think sometimes as a first-time founder it’s tough. You have the feeling that a lot of others know it better, investors, advisors, etc. But when your gut is telling you one thing, go with it, because no one knows your company as well as you do. Consider it, be coachable, but also really trust your gut.”)
Invest in Hiring: “If I could go back, I’d put even more focus on people,” says Moritz Kreppel, co-founder and CEO of Urban Sports Club. “People, people, people. That’s everything in the end. Take even more time than you think to select the right people that you hire, spend as much time as possible to train them and help them grow. But when you realize it’s not the right face anymore, then also part ways quickly.”
Don’t Scale Too Fast: Another great tip from Localyze co-founder and CEO Hanna Asmussen: “Find the right balance between scaling and staying closer to the smaller problems. Because I think when you scale something that is not 100% working, you can cause a lot of very big mistakes later.”
Stay Flexible: John Chambers, CEO of JC2 Ventures tells founders they have to be ready to adjust quickly: “In today’s world, if you're not re-thinking your strategy almost on a yearly basis – that’s how quickly changes are occurring in terms of communication and direction.”
Being a successful startup founder doesn’t mean having all the answers on day one – it’s about being adaptable and learning along the way. Keep all this valuable advice in mind to avoid the same mistakes and set your own startup up for success.