First Decision You Take as a Startup Founder...

The first decision you have to take as a startup founder is not your idea. Yes ideation might be the first stage but its not the first decision you take.

Then what is the first decision which shapes you as a competent founder?

The real first decision a founder makes is that he's going to change something. You don't need to know how or what... You just need to know WHY the change is necessary...

For me it was when I had no money to buy games from steam. I wanted to play games but its expensive and I just can't buy any of it. I am just a student. I wasn't earning as a 16 year old so how could I afford these high priced games?

I thought that if there was a service like Netflix... I wouldn't need to buy individual games and I could enjoy gaming in one subscription. The only problem is that there are no such one stop solution for this. I decided to make it myself.

I started while thinking that its the platform's fault. I was blaming steam or epic and even game development studios. But these are not the ones to blame. The real reason why gaming is so expensive is because of the online marketplace model. The whole way by which games were sold is the root cause of all the problems.

This was the thing I wanted to change. Now I have started working in this direction. Okay but is only one decision enough?

No! It's not. Most people don't even have a good problem to solve. so technically most people fail at the first decision. But there are many decisions you have to take from that point.

The second decision will be a team. You can't do everything. Yeah I know that as a startup founder you have to wear many hats. but the reality is that you can't do everything. there are things that you have to let other do. Maybe you're not as good at marketing so you'll need a CMO. Maybe you are not the person who can do business side of things and manage financials and that's why you get a co-founder who knows how a business works. Maybe you don't want to be involved in the day to day operation of the company. That's when you get a COO.

I did not take this as my second decision. I was trying to validate my idea. I was thinking that funding from just the paper plan would be great. I thought that funding from pre-seed would not be that difficult to get because I have the best idea out there. But that's not the case.

I sent out email after email and tried to convince a lot of people but things didn't quite work out. In the end someone who has worked as a partner and CMO at a unicorn and now is making a AAA games studio with more than $8 million in seed funding replied to me with interest. I ended up giving a commitment that I will deliver a prototype with signs of early traction in 3-4 months. In return I got a soft commitment that he'll warmly introduce me to his investors.

Today is maybe the day I made the right second decision. I think I have a founding team ready to build this startup. I have a co-founder who matches my energy, I have a CMO who is charismatic. I have a COO who has a team of developers and is ready to deliver the product in time. Things are going great for now... I think I can deliver on my promise to the person that I will make the prototype with early traction in 3-4 months.

Don't worry... I'll try to explain how to get a good team. How to communicate with your team and some startup basics like share allocation and all in my upcoming blog... Stay notified by signing up for the newsletter down the page!

OVER N OUT,

Harsh Solanki (CE0 & FOUNDER @ VZEYA)