Entrepreneurship, at its best, is synonymous with
learning. Don’t let the overnight success stories fool
you. The more common story looks like this: test a
product, fail, retest, and improve. Mistakes are a
crucial part of this process. Of course, not all mistakes are productive. Throughout my years in the start-up community, I’ve witnessed entrepreneurs make some of the same counterproductive mistakes again and again. And I’ve made my share of them too.
Here are ten of the most common and easiest to
avoid:

1. Afraid to disclose their idea:
This is one of the most stupid misconceptions about
start-up ideas (If I tell it to someone they’ll steal it
and make millions of it) Reality is that every loser has a business idea with a potential but most are not
capable to execute it. And people who are able to
execute ideas have plenty of their own. Of course, it’s the execution not the idea – facebook came after
friendster & myspace and google came after plenty of search engines.

2. Lacking Passion and Courage:
Most of the new start-ups are tried by the people who simply ‘emulate’ someone they know as successful entrepreneur. The inspiration is okay but simple ‘copy-cut ‘ ruins them to failure only. They lack passion for the thing they do.
Though it’s difficult to recognize the thing aptly . But, If you are not passionate about what you are doing, then you are in wrong place.
Also, Passion cannot come without some knowledge
around it . But there is no one size that fits all. You
can always hire people with expertise. Follow your
heart. (The brain can do many things, but only the
heart can answer the meaningful question of life!)
Second is Courage. You have to make choices. and you have to be comfortable with the choice even if it goes wrong. Don’t think unnecessarily . When you succeed , all your past and failures get wiped away.

3. Lack of focus:
All entrepreneurs are cursed with having too many
ideas that are too tempting not to be executed. The
point is to be able to put everything else aside and
focus on one with best timing and most potential. Jack Dorsey mentioned somewhere that he had his Twitter idea almost a decade before he started it and put it in shelf – which is his way of clearing distractions.

4. Money matters:
New start-ups always need sufficient money to stand
on. Most budding entrepreneurs wrongly understand
this money factor. They think that they need huge
amount to survive in the race.

5. Quitting too early and not failing soon enough:
Quitting and failing are 2 different things. Failing soon is about not wasting time (or failing in love) with features once you have enough evidence they aren’t going to make profit – you should seek that evidence all the time. Quitting on another hand is giving up to circumstances while knowing that what you are doing can work and will make you happy.

6. Obsessed with competitor’s product:
Someone once famously tweeted: “If you spend all
your time looking at your competition your product
will end up looking like competitions ass.”

7. Picking the wrong co-founder and not having a
shareholder’s agreement in place:
Talking or wishing and doing are to separate things,
when you are motivated and excited everyone feels
like a winner. All people tend to overestimate
themselves, however once it comes to action many
back off or find reasons and excuses to go for the easy and safe route. Making sure you aren’t giving equity to a “co-founder” before you get a proof is what shareholder’s agreements are made for.

8. Issuing equity too early:
Once I was going to offer small part of equity to an
advisor and I had a chat about it with one experienced partner in a law firm, he told me: “Why would you need an advisor who does it for equity? Get people who are excited about your product and want to help out because of that excitement and belief in it, then after a year or more you can talk about equity.”
Same thing with stock options, the ideal time frame
should be around 5 years, if you give it to someone
after 1 year of working they can simply walk away and take a free ride while you’re working your ass off increasing the value of their stake.

9. Failing to keep it simple:
Everybody knows why Apple are so successful. Here’s a quote from Albert Einstein that sums it up nicely: Any darn fool can make something complex it takes a genius to make something simple.
It’s the simplicity not complexity that sells (and
makes it hard to build).

10. Not seeking or using customer feedback:
Well they may not tell you what you should build but they can surely tell what’s wrong – as Bill Gates once famously said.

LAST BULLET: Find that drive/passion, keep it cool and always simple.

What do you think? And what are the mistakes you have made as an Entrepreneur?

http://www.akshitsethi.me/avoid-the-10-most-common-mistakes-entrepreneurs-make/

Love it all especially the passion side of it. Most entrepreneur goes into businesses without passion for it.

Nice

Nice one, OP.

Thank you for this, you are blessed!