These 4 attitudes got our startup off the ground

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I previously wrote an article here on Tech in Asia about how we at Zookal got our first 100,000 app users in three months. We received a lot of positive emails from founders, startups, and people who are generally interested in growth, strategies, and generating revenue.

With this new article, I think I can answer a lot of the questions we got by first highlighting what I think are the four most important traits that helped us achieve our first 150,000 paying customers.

Urgency

A sense of urgency is one of the most important mindsets you need to have. Mark Cuban once said, “Work as if someone else is working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you.” I have always kept this in mind because without a sense of urgency, it is easy to become complacent and float in your business. Once you start floating, you stop pushing, being proactive, and really giving yourself the best chance of success. Urgency is important for startups especially, as we are all running out of time (or money) to generate revenue, find product/market fit, raise money, and do more. So, having a sense of urgency is crucial to getting shit done.

We were lucky early on when we first started in 2011, as we were forced to behave and think urgently. We always had competitors nipping at our heels or peak seasons in trade that we had to take advantage of. If we did not perform, we would fall short. That’s why having a sense of urgency in our work and toward our destination was always important.

This is not to say you should be busy running around all day doing nothing. Working urgently and productively is what we should all aim for. Unfortunately, I have been guilty of this: being busy just for the sake of being busy but not being productive. I use a paper diary to help me keep track of what I am doing, what I need to do, what is important, and what is high priority.

Optimism

Fortunately (and by pure luck), I am naturally a very energetic and optimistic person. I say this is luck because I think it helps tremendously to be this way if you run your own business.

This is my desktop screensaver below:

What they say about startups being like a roller coaster is true. One day, you are on top of the world, and the next day you might have the rug pulled from under you. I have come to normalize this as the startup roller coaster and it has been helping me manage my expectations.

This means that after something really great happens to us, like landing a big customer or hitting big milestone, I don’t get too carried away because I know that right around the corner is probably a big storm cloud. Then, once the storm hits, I don’t let myself get too down. Why? Because I know that if I keep working hard, there will be a beautiful rainbow that will appear right around the corner. I guess this is how I have managed to navigate the startup seas in my own mind.

Humility

Consistent work ethics