1. The Most Common 40 Mistakes of First-
Time Entrepreneurs
This is a collection of the most common 40 mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make:
1. It's the execution not the idea - facebook came after friendster and myspace and google
came after plenty of search engines.
2. Trying to build a product for everyone.
3. Lack of focus.
4. Quitting too early.
5. Picking the wrong co-founder and not having a shareholder's agreement in place.
6. Too many features - overcomplicating.
Everybody knows why Apple was 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)
7. 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.
8. Not realizing you have a real company (not a science project)
9. Not having a question to answer (always ask)
10. Lack of Communications
11. Eat your own food: If you find yourself not using your own site. There is a problem.
Learn to use the tools you've made (as basic as they might be).
12. Lust: Easily lured by the fun, sexy market.
13. Gluttony: Flooded with ideas. More startups die from idea gluttony than starvation.
14. Greed: Pure pursuit of profits is perilous.
15. Sloth: Lazy founders languish in obscurity. Toilers Triumph.
16. Wrath: Get angry with competitors. Instead of attacking the problem.

2. 17. Envy: Copying others out of envy of their strategy.
18. Pride: Excessive self-confidence kills. They under-estimate the power of Humility.
19. Lack of patience: they expect to have profits in the first 3-4 months since the start. Rarely
are the cases when you can have this.
20. Bad Cash-flow management: they run out of money 2-3x times quicker than they have
predicted.
21. Choosing a business field they don't understand or studied.
22. Starting too big.
23. Quitting too quickly.
24. Not starting again after quit/fail first attempt.
25. Not being good at basic financial calculus.
26. Believing that articles on wide spread media relating entrepreneurs success stories are the
rule not the exception.
27. Failing to realize that the world was not starving waiting for you to open. i.e. "You still
have to acquire your customer base, one way or another".
28. Failing to realize that it is likely to take 18mths to 3 years to break-even on your brilliant
idea, let alone make profit. i.e. So you need more capital than just enough to cover
infrastructure costs. You also need working capital to fund the losses during this period
until your idea is financially sustainable.
29. Failing to realize that successful corporate approachesare inappropriate for small
business startups. i.e. You are in a fight for survival not just playing your part in a
management committee decision making activities. A startup is not just a small version of
a corporate enterprise.
30. Failing to realize that real margins are not just buy for 1 and sell for 2 (100%) but rather
buy for 1 and sell for 10. i.e. You need greater profit margins than you originally think to
cover the costs required to fund a sustainable business.
31. Failing to realize that you need to be very good at everything not just be an expert in
one field. i.e. You need to be the generalist rather than the specialist.
32. Failing to realize that you need to build a secure 'beachhead' in the market before
striking out for the main prize. i.e. do everything to get traction in the market first -
however small.
33. Failing to realize that you are more likely to succeed creating an adequate product with
brilliant marketing and distribution ... rather than the other way round.
34. Failing to promote benefits over features. (what’s in it for me?)
35. Never outsource anything important. Ever. There's no such thing as a brain transplant.
36. Never trust anyone with anything critical. No one. You have to be the one to take care of
it. And don't even trust yourself. Constantly question how you're doing, what you're
doing, why you're doing it.
37. Never stop thinking about what can go wrong, because something is always going wrong.

3. 38. Never trust your reports who tell you everything is fine. Nothing is ever fine. Things are
always breaking. Things are always going wrong. (We say: "rejoice, things are
breaking. We're growing!"). Breaking isn't necessarily a bad thing. Frustrating yes, but
not bad. It usually means you're growing.
39. Treat your customers better than yourself. Take your customers for granted, pay the
price. Without customers, your company is a high school science project.
40. You fail because you let things fail. And at the end of the day you'll blame every person
you've ever met for your failure. You'll give 100 reasons why it's their fault. How that
employee didn't do his job. How that customer screwed you. How that investor didn't
invest when it was really important. How the developers delivered crap to you. Then
you'll wake up one night when it's just you sitting there alone, and you'll realize that
you're the entrepreneur and you're the only one holding the bag of responsibility. That
company is yours, even if you're a 1% equity holder. Investors have lots of other deals
going on. Customers always have other options, and they're pretty good about reminding
you of that. So at the end of the day, it's just you. You and your company. Because, you
see, the company is you. You are the company. That's when the lightbulb goes on and
you have to be a big boy or big girl and say: "I take absolute and total responsibility for
the success or failure of this company. It will succeed in part by me, and I will get partial
credit for its success. But it will fail in full by me, and I will take 100% of the
responsibility for its failure." Sorry, you only get partial credit, but 100% responsibility.
Reference
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-common-mistakes-first-time-entrepreneurs-
make