• A Minimum Viable Team. You can outsource development. You can do a single co-founder startup. But. Many folks start something without a truly Minimum Viable Team. No chance without it. You have to be able to build, ship, market, and sell your product. • Commitment to Excellence and Constant Iteration. You can’t build it once, put it on a shelf, and wait. You may need 100 releases before you have a sellable product. And then 200 more to get to $1m in ARR. • Obsession. And you need to obsess about your business. Constantly. In the shower. On a run. You may only “work” 40 hours a week but you need to be thinking about your business 140 hours a week. Unicorns are usually built one way. But more broadly, successful startups can be built a lot of ways. 47. How do you survive your first year as a startup? To survive the full first year of a start-up ... you have to get rid of the non-believers. You have to get them out during the first year. There will be insufficient proof even 12 months in that it will really, truly work. Some won’t believe, and that will be logical. At first, it’s OK, maybe. But then, they become toxic after the first year, the non- believers. They may be right. You may fail. But -- get ‘em out. SAASTR.COM 43