Adapt

April 14, 2012

Startup Success Step #15

It’s a team sport. You’re not in this alone. At least, you shouldn’t be.

A business startup requires a whole support structure, including vendors, advisors, mentors, support staff, cheerleaders (both Startup Launch buttonfamily and friends), lenders, investors, accountants, lawyers, pinch-hitters, utility infielders, objective outsider truth-tellers, technology jedi and/or the occasional bartender. You don’t do all those things well, so choose help wisely, soon.

Every business (product or service) has three big jobs: innovation, operations, marketing*. Someone to create value, someone to operate the nuts and bolts of the enterprise, someone to get the market to buy the work.

You may believe you do all three, but once you admit that you do one better the others, you can begin to look for people to do the other jobs better.

*Peter Drucker famously limited it to two: innovation and marketing. We add in operations, because it’s probably what entrepreneurs (innovator/evangelists by nature) do least well.

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