But when you start your venture make sure that you are going in the right direction. I agree the fact that every entrepreneurs makes mistakes but the adage “prevention is better that cure” is applicable here to avoid time and money loss. Having said that, when you start new venture, most of them makes mistakes, it is very good because each mistakes is an learning opportunity.

1) Unclear Goals, Mission & Focus

This is one of the common mistake made by new entrepreneurs, though most of the entrepreneurs come with an innovative idea and business model during its execution they fails to focus. There are several different reason for this. During the execution, entrepreneurs often fail to manage the cash flows, sales etc. This will bring them to focus more on the survival strategies rather than their main business strategy.

Most of the entrepreneurs fails to answer the questions like What is your Goal? What is your mission? What are your success criteria’s? These questions are very crucial for all entrepreneurs. If you are not able to answer those question you may end up with a tragic entrepreneurship story. So whenever you start a new venture sit down and write the answers to the question in a paper and read it often; I swear it really work.

2) Identifying Wrong Primary Customers

It is very important to identify the primary customers for all business ventures. Lot of new entrepreneurs identify wrong primary customers and they usually tend to identify broad customers are primary customers.

Let me consider an example; If someone ask who is the primary customers for McDonald, lots of people misunderstood it as customers who are intend to buy foods from them. But in naturality, their primary customers are customers who would like to franchise McDonald shop.

When you identify the right customers, your business strategy become entirely different. So identifying right primary customers is very important.

3) Early search of venture capital fund

Entrepreneurs usually start with search of venture capitalist or private equity firms or angels before starting the venture. By doing this, the chance for getting a investment become very less and might be end up giving huge equity to the investors. Investors often look at companies who proved the business models, they want to know how much sales have you done? What is the value proposition you are making?

4) Hiring people they like

When building up a team, entrepreneurs tend to hire people they like rather than they need. The team is very crucial for start ups. Each and every penny you invest in start up matters, so hire people who are crucial to business.

I have seen the tendency in universities and schools where friends join together to form company so that they can work together. So hire the right people not for keeping your friendship.

5) Becoming greedy

Having said about point 3, lot of entrepreneurs are not interested in giving out major pie to the investors. Always think about how much value that investment create to your business. If the value creation with an investment is more compared to holding majority of equity in hand then go for things that create value.

6) Thinking about selling the company before starting up

I know most of the investors ask about exit strategy. Everyone come up with exit strategy as selling the company to someone. So you have to think what can make you to reach the height of selling so that you will have the authority when you sell.

7) Not doing realistic self assessment

Some people are good at starting up but they might not be the right person to scale up and they are not ready to give up the power and role as being a CEO. I really admire Bill Gates for this, he is a great strategist who knows when to step down and step up himself.

Right self assessment is necessary for all entrepreneurs and identify your right skills.

Finally and most importantly, if you’re considering seed fund from relatives make sure that you are not messing up your relationships. Try to get money from relatives who are ready to give up that money if something happens for your business. All I want to say is that relationships are very important for human beings than any other business so keep your relatives away unless they are ready to throw away the money they invested so that they won’t be affected by your failure.

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Yesterday, I attended a session about protecting your idea in the pre-patent phase. Thanks to Alan who taught us an unconventional way without investing any enough money to protect the idea which was really helpful. Though it was not foolproof idea, but it was an idea that can worth try.

Finally, I found some interesting thing yesterday, the majority of participants were females. It was really interesting and surprising for me that more females are taking their career path as entrepreneurship.

This seems to be funny right, but this is one way to retain employees in start-up companies. May be the way is not ethical but somehow if your intention is good this is a simple way. This is advisable if the founder have the vision to achieve the objective but he is not able to make the employees happy during the maturity cycle.