No matter how many business books you read, nothing can prepare you for building a company from the ground up. From finding the right investor to getting used to the fact
that you’re “always on,” 10 founders told us what they’ve learned along the way.


You don’t need big VC money to build a
company

“When we started, I thought success was correlated to money raised,” says Russell D’Souza, cofounder of SeatGeek, a search engine for tickets to local events. “You always see splashy headline about companies who raise tens of millions, clearly they must be doing something right? Luckily, my co-founder and I don’t think that way any more. We realized that you don’t need a lot of money to build a big company; we’ve raised $4 million, have 30 people, and are profitable. We’ve still got a long way to go but taking five times more money would not make the road any easier.”


It’s about drive

“They don’t teach you drive,” says J Sider, CEO and founder of Bandpage, an application that lets musicians build fan pages. “Many investors I’ve talked to say that they invest more in passion and drive then a great business plan. There are so many highs and lows day in and day out that only those with the most endurance will make it through. Others will give up too early.”


Organizations are messy by nature

“Every company, big and small, is a mess,” says Neil Blumenthal, cofounder and co-CEO of Warby Parker, which designs and sells boutique-style glasses at affordable prices online. “Organizations, for the most part, aren’t beautiful, hierarchical schematics that we imagine or read about in textbooks. They’re networks of human beings who create and change processes, whose responsibilities shift, who have good and bad days.”


Small things make a big difference

Matt Salzberg, the CEO and founder of Blue Apron, a food delivery service that gives you the exact amount of ingredients you need for a selection of recipes that changes weekly, said he was surprised by how much of a difference small things make. “On the web product side, for instance, you can change one small piece of text on your website, and reduce customer service volumes by 20%. In our fulfilment centers, scheduling a shift slightly differently can increase capacity by 50%.”


The hours you work will be even crazier than
you expected

“No one ever tells you the hours you’ll work. It takes time to get used to the fact that you’re ‘always on.’ especially if you’re used to a 9-5 environment,” says Pat Phelan, founder of Trustev, an identity verification company to prevent fraud online.


There might be no roadmap

“Our startup is centred around Muse, a disruptive technology, so much so that we had to come up with a term to describe what we are doing, hence brain sensing technology,” says InteraXon co-Founder and CEO Ariel Garten. “There was really no reference guide or linear roadmap to follow. To be engaged in bringing brain sensing technology to the masses is a unique challenge, and there are no analogous products with which to build on or compare to. With something like a smartwatch you have the watch to build upon and to be a frame of reference for understanding what a smartwatch is. It’s an iteration of an already- existing thing.”


Picking the right investor is like picking a
marriage partner

“Picking the right investors is crucial,” says Ayah Bdeir, founder of littleBits, a startup that makes lego-like electronic kits. “Sometimes in your rush to want to do things, you start to see all investors as equal and all the money as equal.” “I was given the advice that it was really important to pick the right investors because they’re partners and it’s essentially like you are getting married,” she says. “You need people who become family, that you could rely on, that can help you build the business and not just give you money and disappear. That’s been something that’s been very helpful at different times, when I’ve needed help, when I’ve needed support, when I’ve been lost for a big decision; my investors have been great.”


Focus is more complicated than you think

“Everyone tells you to focus,” says Edward Saatchi, co-founder National Field, which started off life as way to organize Obama’s 2008 campaign and now makes private social networks for businesses. “But nobody made me understand that the entire experience of building a successful startup makes me want to not focus – it plays to one’s vanity that “if this worked, well, why not try everything” – focus is a sine qua non – but it’s really really really difficult.”


You’ll have to make it up as you go along

“I think the biggest surprise has been discovering how much you truly don’t know, but that’s also the most fun part,” says Daniella Yacobovsky, cofounder of BaubleBar, which sells fashion jewellry at ‘guilt free’ prices. “We try to make sure we surround ourselves with incredibly talented colleagues and teammates who can help us answer all those questions.”


It gets better

“Building a company is much more fun than starting one,” said Adora Cheung, cofounder of Homejoy, an online home cleaning business.