My answers to 6 startup questions after learning from my mistakes as a founder

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Being an entrepreneur is exhilarating. It is filled with doubt, excitement, insecurity, and a sense of achievement all at once.

My two friends and I founded NoBroker, a C2C brokerage-free real estate marketplace in India, over three years ago. We bootstrapped for a good time, worried about funds, raised three rounds of funding, established our first office in a house, got some great founding team members, agreed and disagreed with each other, received both criticisms and praises from our customers, and expanded our customer base.

In this eventful journey, we made many mistakes. So, let me share some of the big pitfalls here. We entrepreneurs have done enough mistakes. It’s time to learn from each other.

Should I put my best foot forward when I talk to people?

We entrepreneurs are generally never satisfied with what we build. We want to fine-tune our product more and more before we show it to the world. We want to be well-prepared when we talk to customers and VCs. But this often backfires.

I have a founder friend who spoke to a customer too late. The customer told him, “Yes, the product is good. But I don’t think we will ever have a budget for these services.” Imagine yourself in his place. Burning midnight oil for months, perfecting the product, and missing to ask a simple question: Will my customer ever have a budget to buy?

Another friend of mine approached VCs who told him, “The product is good and the customer problem is real. But the market size is too small. Didn’t you notice?”

In our company’s case, thankfully, we learned from others’ mistakes. We bounced ideas off our friends in the VC community while building the product. We asked questions like, is the market big enough? Where did other firms falter in the past? Is this a VC-fundable business? We spoke with friends and potential customers and got practical insights. We did mystery shopping and understood the pain points that our competitor was unable to solve.

The trick was to keep the product/service iterative. Talk to people and learn something. Use that learning to modify your product/service. Then, make it live and gather feedback. Then, again, talk to people, learn more, and repeat the cycle. Don’t wait.

Is scaling the main game?

Yes, we want to be 10x bigger than what we are now. But how soon? On which dimension? The real dilemma here is a short-term quick jump in metrics vs long-term sustainability.

A business can be a depth game or a width game. Which one did I choose? NoBroker helps owners and seekers meet each other directly without a broker in between so they can save on transaction costs. In this business, the customer need is micro-market-based. The matchmaking is micro.

Let me explain. A customer has a house with X dimensions in locality Y, with rent/sale amount of Z. We need to find a seeker who wants exactly these X, Y, and Z. So, this is more of a depth game where penetration and building a network in the same city is beneficial to both the business and the customers.

Did we also want to play the width game, which is about having presence in more cities? Yes, we wanted to expand; we are in five cities now. But for us, depth is more important than width. The priority is clear, and our team and investors understand this.

So, what is more important for your business? Width or depth? The answer seems obvious in hindsight. But with competitors breathing down your neck and VCs hungry for quick numbers, this is a dilemma that only us, entrepreneurs, can truly understand.

Should you do what VCs say?

Is GMV still important?

Should we wait to hire HR and finance talent?

Should founders maintain control?

Should I hire that McKinsey guy?