🚀 Starting a tech company is exciting until reality shows up with a checklist.
Let’s talk about the unsexy but vital stuff every founder should obsess over.
👉 Swipe through for the 6 biggest pitfalls and how to dodge them like a pro.
1. Validating Real Customer Problems
📉 Most founders build what they think is cool.
The market doesn’t care, users do.
🔍 Talk to them. Watch them. Validate demand before writing code.
💬 “We once built a flashy dashboard. No one used it. What did they want? Alerts. That one feature now drives 60% of engagement.”
✅ Lesson: Your assumptions aren’t data. Your users are.
2. Security & Compliance Debt
🔐 Speed is great until shortcuts trip you up at scale.
SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, compliance hits hard when you’re not ready.
💡 Use tools like Drata or Vanta. Bake security into your design early.
✅ Lesson: Security isn’t a “later” thing. It’s brand insurance.
3. Cash Runway & Unit Economics
💸 You can’t fix anything if you run out of money.
Know your burn. Track your CAC vs. LTV even if it’s rough.
⚠️ “I watched a founder burn $500K in 6 months. Why? Hired fast. Revenue? Not so much.”
✅ Lesson: Money isn’t fuel, it’s oxygen. Treat it like survival.
4. Technical Architecture Decisions
⚙️ That quick tech choice today? It might be your million-dollar regret tomorrow.
Plan for scale. Go modular. Think like a system designer, not a coder.
🚫 Don’t copy what BigCo does, it’s probably overkill.
✅ Lesson: The right architecture buys you speed and flexibility.
5. Culture of Feedback & Iteration
🔄 Products fail when teams stop learning.
Create space for radical candor. Run retros. Iterate on everything: code, process, and comms.
🏆 Celebrate small wins and valuable missteps.
✅ Lesson: Feedback isn’t friction, it’s momentum.
6. Talent vs. Timing
⏳ Hire too early = burn. Too late = bottlenecks.
Anchor hiring to actual milestones, not wishful planning.
🧩 Start with fractional experts. Scale when you’re ready, not just hopeful.
✅ Lesson: Timing beats talent when cash is tight.
Let’s Talk, Founder to Founder
Which of these 6 hit home for you?
Or what’s the one challenge keeping you up at night that we didn’t list?
👇 Drop it in the comments, let’s build a raw, real founder thread.
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