How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Build a company around a problem that you yourself have.

To 10x your chances at startup success: Fix a problem that you yourself have.

• Make a list of 15-20 problems in your life 
• Rank them by the most painful 
• Build a product that solves one of them

This is crucial because:

• You’ll have a familiarity with the problem which will help you design a solution
• You’ll have knowledge of existing solutions and what they lack
• You’ll know about the space
• Youll know about your target market and customers

Building a company for a problem you have is better than building a company for financial reasons.

When building a company, launch earlier rather than later. 

By launching early, you’ll get feedback from customers sooner and will be able to make adjustments to improve the product.

Refine and refine your solution to better solve the problem your customers face

When looking for your first hires, you need to find people who are as passionate about solving that problem as you are

If you’re trying to build a startup in the software space but don’t have any coding experience, find a cofounder that does

Not every company has to be a venture-backed startup. You can build a successful small company that’s an awesome cashflow machine.

At a certain point, your company will be too big for you to do everything. That’s where delegation comes in.

If you’re too much of a control freak, you won’t let others blossom and you’ll limit the growth of your company.

When you delegate, you won’t get 100% of the results you want, but you will get 90% of the results with only 5% of the work which is an excellent tradeoff.

Why did James move from San Francisco to Los Angeles?

• James felt there were more creative individuals in LA than SF
• SF was an engineering-focused space that was very financially driven
• The relationships in SF tend to be more transactional than anything else
• The culture in SF was a serious city that didn’t value humour in people
• In SF, there are 200-300 investors for every great idea which lowers returns and makes it harder to get into a deal
• James believes that in 5 years, LA will become the creative capital of the world
• LA already has a lot of amazing companies such as Snapchat and Honey