<story><title>Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you&apos;ve learned?</title><text>Running a business is hard. Startups are even harder. A lot of it comes down to not actually knowing what you&amp;#x27;re doing wrong.&lt;p&gt;What are some important observations and lessons you&amp;#x27;ve learned working at startups and running businesses that were not immediately obvious (both technical and non-technical)? Did you learn the hard way?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>tnolet</author><text>Sales fixes everything. Very hard to learn for engineers and designers often.</text></item><item><author>armc</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s 30 years of experience for you:&lt;p&gt;1. Few business problems can&amp;#x27;t be solved by more sales.&lt;p&gt;2. Cut expenses when the storm is approaching, not when you&amp;#x27;re soaking wet.&lt;p&gt;3. You can&amp;#x27;t eat assets or inventory. Don&amp;#x27;t get emotional about what you own, only about your cash balances.&lt;p&gt;4. Banks are your friend only when you don&amp;#x27;t need them. Corollary: One bank for borrowing, one for cash balance accounts.&lt;p&gt;5. 70 completed calls per week. Not emails, calls. You can do it, start now.&lt;p&gt;6. Don&amp;#x27;t be an asshole: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_No_Asshole_Rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_No_Asshole_Rule&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;7. Hire and retain &amp;quot;T-shaped&amp;quot; people. In difficult times those employees execute across multiple domains.&lt;p&gt;8. Client, vendor or employee drama is quicksand. You assist with a stick or a rope, you don&amp;#x27;t jump in with them.&lt;p&gt;9. Don&amp;#x27;t romanticize work &amp;amp; try to avoid romance getting in the way of work.&lt;p&gt;10. You&amp;#x27;re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Prioritize good parenting over work. Good parenting = SOS: Self awareness, objectivity, selflessness.&lt;p&gt;11. Get a prenup. No, really, do get one.&lt;p&gt;12. Pay yourself according to a financial model that prioritizes healthy business cash balances, and not your personal desires.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cupofpython</author><text>I want to emphasize an important distinction between Actual sales, and the sales department.  Actual sales fix problems, the sales department may or may not be relevant to what causes that to happen.. although they will surely fight for the credit either way.&lt;p&gt;AFAIK Engineers have an axe to grind with the sales department, not actual sales.  Giving credit for a sale is a very subjective matter, and more often than not every sales person who so much as sent an email to the opp want credit - effectively taking advantage of the subjective nature as much as they can get away with.  Even if in reality the customer had to pretty much talk around everyone on the sales team and speak with an engineer to gain confidence in the product.  Then the engineer has to go play catch-up from the 1 hour meeting while the sales member gets % of the sale.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you&apos;ve learned?</title><text>Running a business is hard. Startups are even harder. A lot of it comes down to not actually knowing what you&amp;#x27;re doing wrong.&lt;p&gt;What are some important observations and lessons you&amp;#x27;ve learned working at startups and running businesses that were not immediately obvious (both technical and non-technical)? Did you learn the hard way?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>tnolet</author><text>Sales fixes everything. Very hard to learn for engineers and designers often.</text></item><item><author>armc</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s 30 years of experience for you:&lt;p&gt;1. Few business problems can&amp;#x27;t be solved by more sales.&lt;p&gt;2. Cut expenses when the storm is approaching, not when you&amp;#x27;re soaking wet.&lt;p&gt;3. You can&amp;#x27;t eat assets or inventory. Don&amp;#x27;t get emotional about what you own, only about your cash balances.&lt;p&gt;4. Banks are your friend only when you don&amp;#x27;t need them. Corollary: One bank for borrowing, one for cash balance accounts.&lt;p&gt;5. 70 completed calls per week. Not emails, calls. You can do it, start now.&lt;p&gt;6. Don&amp;#x27;t be an asshole: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_No_Asshole_Rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_No_Asshole_Rule&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;7. Hire and retain &amp;quot;T-shaped&amp;quot; people. In difficult times those employees execute across multiple domains.&lt;p&gt;8. Client, vendor or employee drama is quicksand. You assist with a stick or a rope, you don&amp;#x27;t jump in with them.&lt;p&gt;9. Don&amp;#x27;t romanticize work &amp;amp; try to avoid romance getting in the way of work.&lt;p&gt;10. You&amp;#x27;re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Prioritize good parenting over work. Good parenting = SOS: Self awareness, objectivity, selflessness.&lt;p&gt;11. Get a prenup. No, really, do get one.&lt;p&gt;12. Pay yourself according to a financial model that prioritizes healthy business cash balances, and not your personal desires.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nullspace</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know... I might be having a reverse-survivor bias seeing, being in and contributing to failure, but I&amp;#x27;ve _never_ seen a case where &amp;quot;let&amp;#x27;s increase our sales headcount&amp;quot; strategy actually did anything (EDIT: i.e. when things are bad. Of course, if things are good, sales is a key driver to growth)&lt;p&gt;If you need &amp;quot;more sales&amp;quot; to fix it, the problem often lies somewhere else.</text></comment>