Startup Guide South Africa

After 2,000 investments at Antler, these are the seven harsh truths I'd want every founder to hear before they start: 1. Nobody hands you customers, hires or investors. You have to go and win each one. 2. "I'll fail and learn from it" is an expensive plan. A job teaches you the same lessons on someone else's money. 3. The first two to three years take nearly all your waking hours. When I co-founded Zalora, and again with Antler, I told friends and family I'd be off the grid. 4. Until you've tried to sell it, you don't know if anyone wants it. Bill Gates and Paul Allen pitched their first product before they'd written a line of it. 5. Some very talented teams end up in trouble because both founders are great engineers and neither can sell. 6. You will hit walls, usually more than once. SpaceX lost three rockets before its first successful launch. 7. Most startups fail for ordinary reasons: the wrong team, the wrong business model, or poor management. The upside is that none of this is fixed. You can get better at every item on this list. Which one did you learn the hard way?