If this is your first time reading, I recommend you start with my 6-month challenge and table of contents of weekly posts for the past 12 weeks.
tl;dr Now marks the end of the third month of my six-month challenge. I’m satisfied with my overall progress so far but unhappy with the speed at which I’m moving.
It is now the halfway point of my six-month challenge. The past three months felt like three days, and I’m shocked at how fast they flew by.
I wanted to have launched my MVP by now, but after talking with users and watching them interact with the app last week, there are things I still need to fix and tweak for another week or so. Not to mention just getting things ready to go, so that’s still a work in progress.
I’ve set some ambitious goals for myself the next upcoming months, so I am excited for that.
I. What I’ve accomplished so far
II. Top five lessons learned
5. Persistence Is the Key
A lot of founders were surprised how important persistence was in startups. It was both a negative and a positive surprise: they were surprised both by the degree of persistence required
Everyone said how determined and resilient you must be, but going through it made me realize that the determination required was still understated.
and also by the degree to which persistence alone was able to dissolve obstacles:
If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control (i.e. immigration) seem to work themselves out.
Several founders mentioned specifically how much more important persistence was than intelligence.
I’ve been surprised again and again by just how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence.
This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and that’s why so many people said character was more important in choosing cofounders.
– Paul Graham, What Startups Are Really Like
[Read more…] about Monthly Review #3 – Halfway in, what I’ve accomplished so far