Top 11 soft skills that every entrepreneur should have according to Unicorn Mafia Community

1. COMMUNICATION:

• Listen without interrupting.
• Speak with a positive tone.
• Pay attention to your body language.

2. PERSUASION:

• Identify what other people care about.
• Create stories that resonate with them.
• Communicate those stories with brevity and emotion.

3. NEGOTIATION:

• Listen carefully.
• Understand what the other side wants.
• Know your worth.
• Then propose solutions that benefit both sides.

4. RELATIONSHIP BUILDING:

• Help others unconditionally.
• Look for common interests.
• Always add value before asking for something in return.

5. EMPATHY:

• Take a genuine interest in other people.
• Look at things from their perspective.
• Acknowledge their feelings.
• Never judge and always be supportive.
• Be generous with your time and attention.

6. POSITIVE ATTITUDE:

• Never gossip.
• Never complain.
• Criticize sparingly.
• Always speak well of others.

7. TEAMWORK:

• Avoid claiming all the credit.
• Celebrate other people's wins.
• Praise teammates publicly and praise them generously.

8. CONFLICT RESOLUTION:

• Avoid arguments and accusations.
• Focus on solutions over problems.
• Apologize unconditionally when it's your fault.

9. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

• Never act impulsively.
• Take a step back when you're upset.
• Understand what you're feeling.
• Understand the consequences of your actions.
• Then proceed accordingly.

10. TIME MANAGEMENT:

• Learn to prioritize.
• Learn to delegate.
• Learn to say no.

11. WORK ETHIC:

• Take responsibility for your work.
• Always show up and deliver on time.
• Always keep your commitments
• Never deflect blame on to others.

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Hi friends, join 112,000k+ Unicorn Mafia community for free

1. Find a co-founder
2. Pump your LinkedIn & Twitter profiles
3. Get support for your Product Hunt launch
4. Get new clients and partners
5. Get free promotion
6. Get access to 200,000 investors

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Here's what you need to know (and avoid) when it comes to company growth:

(from a former ycombinator partner who failed a bunch of companies and sold one for $1 billion)

1. Don't over-rely on press as your primary distribution strategy.

There are very rare cases of companies that manage to hack the press by forcing reporters to write about them over and over again.

This is rarely a replicable and more importantly, sustainable, method of effective distribution.

User acquisition strategy needs to go way beyond just having a few great stories lined up on TechCrunch

The way to achieve this is to make your product 'intrinsically viral'

aka: build something so dope that people will be forced to share it with their friends

Tesla's cars are a great example of physical products that have intrinsic virality built into them, without relying on extensive advertising campaigns

They self-drive 🙂 their own marketing

2. If you haven't figured out initial growth for your company, the last thing you should do is hire a marketing specialist

I see this a lot in technical founders who have just raised a huge round and have no idea what to do with it (cont.)

If you don't have PMF, but force-feed marketing anyway you will run into two outcomes.

Your entire business fails; or you succeed in *spite* of your hires. While one is marginally better, both are far from ideal.

3. Growth masks all problems

Whether its a morale, management, or recruiting problem - it boils down to having a 'growth problem.'

(cont.)

During high-growth periods, these problems are masked. This can be helpful because it won't impede your ability to recruit people or be productive.

However,

4. Growth never lasts forever

Low-growth periods are inevitable, and these tend to be the times when those masked problems become very apparent.

Two implications here:

(i). Do whatever you can to keep growing - super important.

If you can just get *some* growth going, you will find that other problems tend to work themselves out (at least temporarily).

This needs to happen as a baseline for your startup to even be functional.

(ii). Do not accumulate too much debt in the areas that are masked by growth - as soon as growth slows down, these problems will become serious.

It is crucial that you are able to handle them without being so overwhelmed that growth completely stalls and you go into free-fall.

Proactively monitor and tackle pressing issues during high-growth periods, instead of scrambling to put out fires while the ship slowly sinks.

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Top 20 Reasons Why Startups Fail

Although there is some debate on the exact percentage, 90% of startups fail is a common and rather depressing stat that comes up. Only the brave or lucky prevail. What are you doing to mitigate risk in your startup?

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Life changing advice for startup founders

One of the most important things for startups and for life in general but kind of underated.

When you asking something whether from the community, investors, friends, from anyone.

Always provide some real value. Before you asking them you should give something valuable and you have to tell what they will get if they help you, support you, just be always specific.

Otherwise you'll get nothing but regret. While providing real value opens almost every door. Use it.

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How to use reminders

When you ask for help from other founders/connectors and when you follow up after ward intros to investors, frequently people don't respond. This isn't a sign of rejection. Everyone is super busy, traveling, balancing family and work, and could have potentially read your message right before losing connection, jumping on a plane, or doing some other task. The frequency of "dropping the ball" in fundraising is very high.

To counteract, you need to send everyone lots of reminders. I got my previous job (Entrepreneur in Residence at Entangled Group) after a warm intro and *four reminders* before getting a reply. Make your ask super simple, typically, just ask for an indication of interest and readiness to continue the conversation.

Here's a typical sequence of reminders you can use. Space them by 2-3 business days.

*Reminder 1 — Single line, ending in yes/no question*
Hi X — following up to the intro from Y. Would you have time to learn more about our round?

*Reminder 2 — New positive news, brief summary, yes/no question*
Hi X — this is Z from company A again. We do _company description_. Since Y has intro-ed us, we made serious progress on traction metrics N, M, P. The round is still open — would you have time to talk in the next few days?

*Reminder 3 — Last chance, yes/no question*
Hi X — Life is busy! This is my last email on company A after an intro from Y. Is there still a chance you might be interested to consider us for investment?

Generally speaking, once you have a warm intro, an initial indication of interest, or a promise of help, you can do 3-4 reminders until getting the next response.

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One of the most underrated principles in business, marketing, and life is providing extra value and benefits. Giving more than you receive. The king who mastered this principle and took it to the maximum is MrBeast

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According to CB Insights, as of March 20, 2024, there are 1229 unicorn companies worldwide with a total valuation of $3.85 trillion

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5 common mistakes by first-time startup founders 💼

There is no business without mistakes. Especially if this is your first attempt. You feel free to make decisions, but you don't have enough experience yet not to fail.

Undoubtedly, learning from your mistakes is effective. But you can try to prevent them by studying the experience of your colleagues. Here are the most common ones:

1. Hiring full-time employees before product-market-fit. Getting to product-market-fit is the only thing that matters in the early years of your company. Simply put, do you have something that people really love.

Until this point, you will be frantically trying many ideas, sometimes weekly. During this time anyone other than a co-founder will soon get frustrated by the changes of direction and eventually wonder if the compensation they are giving up on elsewhere is worth it.

2. Deprioritizing offshore talent. Saving money is crucial in the early days. The biggest expense is labor and given the quality of talent around the world, and tools to collaborate with them, hiring offshore is the best way to save money early on.

Try looking for employees from lower-affluence countries or regions rather than from world centers and big cities. So you can pay less and get the same results.

3. Holding on to the first idea far too long. Your first idea is very likely going to fail. This may seem like a gross generalization, especially since you probably just quit a job to launch your startup based on an idea you think is very good.

But success with startups usually comes from insights that no one else has. And they are seldom found in a survey but rather learned through failure. So the key to success is to iterate fast through ideas and get those insights quickly.

4. Building a bigger MVP than necessary. Most founders have a grand vision for the solution to a thorny problem. They could create a complete product before finding out people wouldn’t use it.

Developing a mobile app or website needs a lot of resources. Just getting reliable login/ authentication, having useful onboarding, ensuring a responsive layout, etc takes a ton of time and you haven’t even got a feature yet.

Instead, conduct at least a fake-door test: make a landing page with no-code tools, describe your offer, and run ads on it. The number of clicks will show you if it makes sense to work on the idea further.

5. Not having a marketing co-founder. The number one thing investors look for in a startup is a high growth, typically 10% month-over-month or more. That’s because it’s an easy signal for product-market-fit and a business that scales.

But getting to high growth is very difficult and requires constant experimentation with new marketing channels and strategies. A marketing co-founder is essential so that he/ she focuses on growth every day and is not distracted by other things.

Take a break!

Taking just a couple of minutes to gather yourself and daydream can work wonders. Thinking about unicorns (as in magical unicorns, not Uber!) or anything else to take your mind off work can increase concentration for the day and provide energy.

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