• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Rob Walling – Serial Entrepreneur

Rob Walling - Serial Entrepreneur

Building, Launching and Growing Startups

  • Home
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Conference
  • Press
  • About Me
  • Essays

Don’t Plan to Get Rich from Your Startup

FacebookTweetLinkedIn

Getting rich shouldn’t be your goal when launching your first startup.

Tens of thousands of aspiring founders are building products right now with the hopes that they will be the next Slack or the Zoom.

There is, of course, a chance that your startup will provide riches beyond your wildest dreams. The odds are slim you will accomplish this your first time out of the gate.

And while it’s true that you might get lucky your first time, “luck” is not a great plan.

Stairstep
Over and over I’ve watched new founders think they should swing for the fences with their first effort, only to spend countless hours building a big idea that becomes too unwieldy for them to launch and grow in their spare time.

Instead of that, I would encourage you to strongly consider stairstepping your way up, starting with a small product that makes a couple thousand dollars a month.

Learn the ropes. Gain experience. Confidence. Skillsets like copywriting and customer support. Learn a marketing channel in a niche that’s not super competitive.

This approach gives you time to learn the ropes. There are dozens of things to learn your first time at the plate. That learning curve coupled with a big market and big competition is likely to crush your chance of success.

Don’t Stack the Odds Against You
I don’t believe I would have been successful building, growing and selling Drip had I attempted it as my first effort 15 years ago. Only after building my skillset, gaining confidence, having some money in the bank, owning all of my time, and building a strong network do I think I stood a chance in as competitive a space as ESPs.

Your first time at the plate you already have many things stacked against you. Don’t stack the complexity of a big market/big competition on top of that.

Maximize your odds of a modest outcome by either choosing a niche market, a small utility, or a tool that fits within an “app store,” typically as a plugin or add-on to an existing large SaaS platform.

It’s not as sexy as conquering a massive market, but your chance of a modest outcome is 10x…perhaps 100x greater.

Start your startup. Learn the ropes. Once you have success under your belt, you can try to crush it with your second or third one.

(This one of the reasons my book is titled Start Small, Stay Small)

FacebookTweetLinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

Rob Walling

About Rob Walling

I've helped thousands of startup founders through my books, podcasts, conferences, and essays. Read more...

Featured in: WSJ, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur, CNet, Mixergy, HuffPost, Investor's Business Daily

Growth Tactics from the Trenches...

  • A 170-page book collecting my best essays from the past decade
  • Previously unpublished material I share from time to time
  • Updates on critical happenings in the startup ecosystem
3 part series

The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition

Start Reading
3 part series

The Inside Story of a Small Software Acquisition

Start Reading
6 part series

Startup Marketing

Start Reading

You might also like…

Why Free Plans Don’t Work

Why Free Plans Don’t Work

How to Detect a Toxic Customer

How to Detect a Toxic Customer

Expenses You Don’t Think of When Starting a Startup

Expenses You Don’t Think of When Starting a Startup

How to Compete Against Open Source Competition

How to Compete Against Open Source Competition

Startup Growth Tactics

What you get for signing up:

  • A 170-page book collecting my best essays from the past decade
  • Previously unpublished material I share from time to time
  • Updates on critical happenings in the startup ecosystem

Growth Tactics from the Trenches...

"Rob is one of the most pay-it-forward founders I know."

– Hiten Shah, Product Habits
  • Home
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Conference
  • Press
  • About Me
  • Essays
Rob Walling Logo

© 2023 ROB WALLING.