I've made 1000 mistakes in my startup's journey to a million dollars.

Let me tell you the 7 important lessons I wish someone else had told me when I was starting: 1/ Business before tech

Everyone wants to make a million dollars before making 1 dollar. So, we start by building complex tech.

BIG mistake!

You started a company to make money. Tech is meant to help you with that - not the other way round.

So, business-first. Tech-later.

Most founders think of raising VC money as the 1st step. This duo built their startup to $50 million in revenue before going for funding.

Who are they?

Read, learn & get inspired 👇 1/ How it started

Ritesh Arora & Nakul Aggarwal were roommates at IIT-Bombay.

Both pursuing Computer Science and had their hearts set on entrepreneurship.

Having the safety of “IIT Bombay CS” tag, they had no fear in taking the plunge and began working on their first startup.

While founders aimed for unicorn status, Paras’s goal was to earn Rs. 50,000/ month from Wingify.

Today, Wingify:
1. Revenue = Rs 155 Cr
2. Profits = Rs 51.5 Cr
All with ZERO VC funding!

Here’s a masterclass in startup lessons by Paras👇 1/ Catching the entrepreneurial bug

When Paras was a kid, his dad bought him a computer. And, instead of games, Paras went straight to coding.

In 8th grade, he built and published projects on the web and set up a donation button.
Soon, he was earning 5-6k/mo 😮

Finding a great co-founder for your startup is a game-changer!

The MOST important & toughest decision you will make.

A 3-step framework to help you find the important partner for your startup 👇🏼 Firstly, let's all accept that no "perfect" person exists :)

Your goal here is to find a great co-founder by being specific with your priorities.

The idea here is to not make a compromise but to find one that works perfectly with you.

Building a successful startup is hard.

But building an audience around your startup?

That's a superpower.

Here are 6 ways to create an engaged audience for your startup: 1. Get personal.

Share the story behind your startup.

Including your:

• Inspirations
• Challenges
• Failures

And what sets you apart from the competition.

Let your audience get to know the people behind the brand and connect with your mission.

We wasted thousands of dollars buiding a marketing website.

Then our startup made millions of dollars using just a $10/month NoCode builder.

Here are 11 tough lessons I learnt about building a quality marketing website (so YOU don't make the same mistakes ) 🧵 1. Good not Custom

A marketing website is important. However, for an early-stage startup CUSTOM design & development is not!

So:
- Don't waste time & money building the perfect website (doesn't exist)
- Instead, spend it on building the business

We ignored SEO => 700 visits/ month
vs.
We focused on SEO => 500,000 visits/ month

Here are 6 reasons WHY ignoring SEO will hurt your startup!👇🏼 1/ 5.6 billion searches!

That's the number of searches on google
=> NOT every year or month, but every SINGLE day.

By the time you read this, a few million new searches would have already taken place 🤯

You are missing out on so many customers by not making the most of SEO!

Over the last 12 months, I tested 30+ SEO tools end-to-end.

Here are 9 FREE SEO tools to market & supercharge your startup!

Try & share with others 🧵 Have split them into 5 categories:
1. Keyword Ideas
2. Keyword Research
3. Writing
4. On-page SEO
5. Tracking

Structure of tweets:
1. Use for
2. How to use
3. Website

I've shared many more details in Chapter 11 of my free SEO course :)

Link: buildd.co/courses/startu…

SEO contributes >50% to our $3 million startup.

Finding hidden gems in KEYWORDS is a very critical part of the game.

Here's my secret 8-step actionable playbook, so you can replicate the success!

Thread 🧵 Before we start, the only tools that we would be using are:

1. @ahrefs
2. Google sheets

I have explained this in detail in Chapter 6 of my free SEO course.

Link: buildd.co/courses/startu…

Dear Startups,

SEO is NOT tough. It is just poorly taught.

In 9 tweets, I will explain SEO using the analogy of a LIBRARY.

Even a 5-year old would understand! Promise :)

Thread 🧵

(Bonus video included!) If you like the below thread, I bet you will like our SEO course!

It is absolutely FREE!

buildd.co/courses/startu…

We failed - we had to shut down our startup, Remote Clan.

But all is not lost - learnt a ton of things along the way!

Here's the story, the "Why" and my lessons of the journey.

Thread🧵 1/ The Idea

Even before the pandemic we believed the future was remote work.

We built Remote Tools - a discovery platform for any tool you need for remote work.

But our vision was to buildd a network of remote workers.

Basically, unbundling LinkedIn for remote work.

After losing thousands of dollars on building a marketing website, my startup with $3 million in revenue runs on a $10/month NoCode builder.

In this thread, I share the 11 hard lessons I've learnt about building a quality marketing website.

Thread 🧵 1/ Good not Custom

A marketing website is important. However, CUSTOM design & development is not!

So:
- Don't waste time & money building the perfect website (doesn't exist)
- Instead, spend it on building the business

SEO is a super reliable marketing channel.

It has helped our startup hit $3 million revenues by driving 300k monthly traffic.

Today, I'll share a mini-course in SEO:

1. Understand SEO using the analogy of a library
2. 21 lessons we learnt
3. Our secret playbook

Thread 🧵 1/ SEO in Simple Speak

SEO intimidates so many, but frankly the concept is quite simple.

So, to make it an absolute breeze to understand, I've explained it in 9 tweets using the analogy of a library.

Here you go!

https://twitter.com/KarthikS2206/status/1418073125153955847

Building a startup is tough!

We struggled for 2.5 years & then grew from $700k to $2 million in 1.5 years.

Marketing, sales, product & even managing my own mindset - we had to do well in all.

Here are 7 lessons along with links to detailed threads on my personal experiences👇🏼 1/ Validating your idea

A 100% validation of your idea cannot be done without actually taking the leap.

Your goal needs to be to get a better sense of the market and to improve your odds of success.

https://twitter.com/KarthikS2206/status/1395249741873565699

In my startup’s journey to a million dollars, I've made a million mistakes.

These are mistakes I wish someone had warned me about when I was starting as an entrepreneur.

So to all aspiring entrepreneurs & startup enthusiasts, here are my top 7 mistakes, so you can avoid them👇 1/ Business before tech

Everyone wants to make a million dollars before making 1 dollar. So, we start by building complex tech.

BIG mistake!

You started a company to make money. Tech is meant to help you with that - not the other way round.

So, business-first. Tech-later.

My startup, Flexiple, grew from $1mn to $2mn revenue in 4 months - the major driver was SEO.

I absolutely love it, yet, it intimidates so many!

So, in 9 tweets, I'll explain SEO using the analogy of a LIBRARY - guarantee you'll understand it like never before :)

Thread🧵 1/ The characters involved

👩‍🦰 Librarian = Google
📚 Books = All websites
🧔Person searching for a book = Your potential customer

I'll connect it all in the end!

As the Indian startup ecosystem celebrates @zomato's IPO, here are the 5 lessons an early-stage founder can learn from it about entrepreneurial mindset, product & marketing.

Thread 🧵 1/ Don't obsess over unimportant things

Early on, founders treat every decision as being equally important.

- “What should be the color of this button?” becomes a team discussion.

- The font/ font size of the pitch deck is a serious team meeting

Beautiful design illustrations make your startup's website, app & marketing collaterals sparkle.

Here are useful websites that offer you illustrations for FREE.

Thread 🧵 1. Scale

• Free

• No attribution required

• Can change multiple colors, add/remove mask, gender filters, etc.

• File format(s): SVG, PNG

• Link: 2.flexiple.com/scale/multi-co…, 2.flexiple.com/scale/all-illu…

With less than 1% startups getting VC funded, it is important for you to open your mindset to the world of bootstrapping as well.

Having bootstrapped Flexiple to $2mn in revenues, here are the 7 hard lessons I learned. 🧵 1/ Stop fantasizing about scale

The biggest driver of stupid decisions in an early-stage startup is to plan for scale before making a single-dollar.

You know nothing about your industry and can't identify what your scaling bottlenecks will be.

So, what should you do? (contd.)

"Our startup's $2 million revenue runs on a $80/month NoCode stack."

When I shared this, I got many questions around the tools used.

So, today I share 7 types of NoCode tools along with:
1. Specific use case each solves
2. Real examples
3. Alternatives

Thread 🧵 1/ Marketing websites

A) Tools: @unicornplatform, @umsohq

B) Use cases
- You can simply drag & drop elements onto a page

- Build a marketing website in less than 60 mins

- Easily edit your marketing copy & communication to customers

I’ve built 2 startups & tens of products and I am often asked this question - “How do you validate your startup idea?”

So, in this thread, I share:
- What a realistic expectation of "validating an idea" is
- 9 ways to a validate your idea

Thread 🧵 Disclaimer: This isn't magic!

Let's be clear from the outset: **No method validates your idea a 100% other than actually just going for it**.

If there were a way to do that, there would be no failed startups. Don't fool yourself to think otherwise.