How To Make Your Startup A Successful One: Three Tips From a Serial Entrepreneur

Ever think about starting your own company? Wonder how it’s done….and done well? There are many people who not only start their own businesses, but start them repeatedly. Currently, I am the CEO and Founder of Journey Foods, a food tech company that has risen to the top of the space when it comes to food product development and innovation and in doing so, is helping 8 billion people eat better. I a ma serial entrepreneur, who previously founded successful tech and innovative food product companies. My work has been lauded for her work by MIT, CNBC, Forbes, USA Today, Wired, TechCrunch, and many others. What’s the secret to her success? Well, it’s hard to narrow it down to a formula or just a handful of thoughts, but I picked and reflected on top three tips when it comes to running a tight ship.

1. Hire Slow, fire fast

The single most important aspect of your company are the people that compromise it. Selecting and maintaining your team should be the most brain-racking decisions in the course of your business lifespan. Too often, hires are made in haist, or sub-par employees are retained for a variety of reasons. And such decisions can not only hurt your other employees and culture, but also damage your returns as well. Think long and hard before hiring someone because they’re family, a friend, a non-legitimate “referral” or other reasons that might end up counter-productive. I always refer to the Steve Jobs quote that goes, “A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

2. Don’t Underestimate Data

Say you go to a tradeshow. Your booth looks great. You have the coolest swag there. Your team is decked to the tens in sweet company outfits. But…you neglected to find a way to capture the data of people attending the show….Big mistake. As important as marketing, branding, and aesthetics are, data should also be just as top a priority. Even if you have the most gorgeous branding of any startup around, if you have a mailing list of 50 people, that will end up being a problem. Or the data in terms of IP around what your company does. It all comes down to data. It’s valuable, imperative, and will make or break you in the long run.

3. Time is (Not) on Your Side

Think you’ll close that round by the end of the week? Plan for the end of the month. Have a product set to launch in a month? Plan for three. While it’s good to set deadlines, the reality is that in a startup, things often take longer than you hope and expect. This is not me being a pessimist, this is simply reality. And while they do take longer than you might want, they’re still going to move insanely rapidly. So what is incredibly important as an entrepreneur, is to set realistic goals for both yourself, your team, and others so that people can keep schedules accordingly and life can be as normal(ish) as possible. Startups and business are hard, but having a more accurate sense of timing can help things run just a little bit easier.