Know What You Don't Know

Know what you don't knowJune 19, 2025

Know what you don’t know

One of the most dauting parts of starting a business is owning up to what you can and can’t do. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. It’s no good pretending you’re a new business sales king if all you’ve done is manage some accounts for an established brand with a great well established product and you’ve grown them by 5-10% a year. It’s also no good pretending you’re an experienced CPO and  can build and develop products from scratch when all you’ve done is add some features to an existing product line based on a set road map. You have to be honest. If you back yourself to make the leap in the skills gap then that’s fantastic but this is where co-founders come into play.

I’m a huge fan of co-founders. With all the writings about ‘solo-preneurs’ and everything you can do with Gen AI you might be tempted down that path but I would recommend caution in certain  key areas. Co-founders can and should bring complimentary skills but they provide a lot more. I’ve written a lot about the mental stress and exhaustion of the startup journey Beware founder tourism and the myth of martyrdom | LinkedIn and a co founder, as well as being a partner in crime, is another pair of shoulders to share the burden. It’s incredibly hard to talk to friends and family about what’s going on as they simply have no point of reference or understanding. Co-founders are in hell with you on the same journey and also provide a great sounding board. On the question of how many it’s up to you and dependent on how many critical skill gaps you have and need to fill from the get go. More than four or five and it starts to look like a college band as opposed to a startup but you need to decide. The question is what are the critical skills that you can’t do without and can’t easily learn or teach yourself.

 Like a lot of things there is a perfect triangle or triumvirate you need; sales, product and finance. Let me be more specific.

You don’t just need general sales you need to be able to cold call, sell a product that doesn’t exist, take constructive feedback on it while it’s still being built and tested and accept a level of rejection you’ve never previously conceived of. Having said all that I firmly believe founders are the best people initially to sell their product- it’s their dream, their passion and they are the ones who’ve spotted the problem that needs solving. People buy people so with some basic training this is initially a skill you can develop although it might slow down your path to sustainable growth.

You need someone to build a product- don’t outsource this however tempting it might be. You have to build the product, take on feedback, iterate and then once you have fit you need to continue to evolve it. Its never ending at the start and again requires a thick skin, determination, resilience and persistence.

Both of these roles are fundamental to any start up getting up off the ground.  As well as exhausting and incredibly stressful, they can also be soul destroying as you struggle to get product fit so ideally both should be handled by a founder or co-founders.

The final piece is finance. You don’t need to be able to build your own P&L- that can be outsourced. However you do need to be able to understand it, run it and use it to drive growth and profitability. Fractional CFOs are everywhere at the moment and are a good solution at the beginning. At a basic level you have to understand if you’re making money and having someone model the business financially is an important step. You don’t want to kill yourself for 12 months only to realise it was never going to work financially anyway!

 If you’re drowning in venture capital then the temptation is to outsource any gaps and lots of VCs will either push for this or claim they can provide it. As a bootstrapper my inclination, even if I had funds, would be to avoid this as it just increases the risk to your business. As a founder you want and need to control these three crucial elements as much as possible. Outsourcing doesn’t allow that. So what to do?

Every founder I interview says the same things- leverage your network, reach out to founders and teach yourself. It’s amazing what you can learn. There are free training and ‘how to’ videos on every part of the process. If you can’t find any then check out mine – they’re all free😊

Between online learning, evening classes and short courses you can get the basics covered. Reach out to other founders. I don’t know any founder who won’t take the time to share their hard earned experiences and offer advice. The late Steve Jobs did this both when he was starting out and continued to do so after he was successful and  recommended it constantly to any potential founders. Finally leverage your network. Reach out and see who can help. People love having conversations – some will help, some may not but will lead to ones that will and they will all be interesting.

 Most importantly though is to know what you don’t know. If you pretend to yourself you know something when you actually don’t then it’s going to be a painful crash to reality and the only person you’re kidding is yourself.

So know what you don’t know, work out how to plug the gaps and you’re ready to go!