{"id":3399,"date":"2019-11-04T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T06:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/?p=3399"},"modified":"2019-11-23T11:58:50","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T06:28:50","slug":"growth-lessons-from-the-startup-trenches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/growth-lessons-from-the-startup-trenches\/","title":{"rendered":"Growth lessons from the Startup trenches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">As I dig through the net to find wisdom I found this very comprehensive 2015 piece by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/ACoAAAC4MN0Bs1q_fE-U3qdZxetF_eTT6tfUYAs\/\">Joseph Walla<\/a> the founder of Hellosign (2012) and HelloFax (2010) earlier. He writes about the numerous lessons learned while taking his two ventures from 0 to 1mn ARR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>There are 43 lessons he lists and explains in a succinct style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sample these: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1. Charge for your product as soon as possible. Really. <br>4. \u2018You have a distribution problem, not a product problem.\u2019 <br>7. There isn\u2019t a strong correlation between beautiful design and success (in the early days) <br>15. The Dropbox referral page is amazing for Dropbox, but does it work for you? <br>19. Month on Month (MoM) growth is key <br>23. Annual plans are amazing. Implement them ASAP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are useful references to posts by Mark Suster, David Skok (on SAAS Metrics &#8211; See my post #162 on this) and Paul Graham.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.pitch.link\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/23115755\/0-8.jpg?resize=768%2C768&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Growth lessons from the Startup trenches\" class=\"wp-image-3400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.pitch.link\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/23115755\/0-8.jpg?resize=768%2C768&#038;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.pitch.link\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/23115755\/0-8.jpg?resize=768%2C768&#038;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.pitch.link\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/23115755\/0-8.jpg?resize=768%2C768&#038;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><figcaption>Joseph Walla <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Joseph writes as he wraps up the article &#8211;  \u201cFor some reason, the mental default for founders is that their product should be free \u2013 and charging needs to be justified. The inverse should be true \u2013 the mental default should be that your product should be paid and being free should be justified.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Great reflective reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where I learnt this #308 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>43 lessons growing from $0 to $1+ million in revenue, twice <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/entrepreneur\/2015\/06\/13\/43-lessons-growing-from-0-to-1-million-in-revenue-twice\/\">https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/entrepreneur\/2015\/06\/13\/43-lessons-growing-from-0-to-1-million-in-revenue-twice\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I dig through the net to find wisdom I found this very comprehensive 2015 piece by Joseph Walla the founder of Hellosign (2012) and HelloFax (2010) earlier. He writes about the numerous lessons learned while taking his two ventures from 0 to 1mn ARR.<\/p>\n<\/p><div class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/growth-lessons-from-the-startup-trenches\/\" class=\"btn btn-small btn--dark btn-hover-shadow\"><span class=\"text\">Continue Reading<\/span><i class=\"seoicon-right-arrow\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,83],"tags":[70,81,174],"class_list":["post-3399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learnt-today","category-startup","tag-alwayslearning","tag-startups","tag-lessons"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Subhanjan Sarkar","author_link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/author\/subhanjan\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paX7jg-SP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}