About this time last year, I wrote about my experiences as an entrepreneur. Another year has passed and also that Wishberg completes a year, I am sharing some notes I scribbled thinking about the time that has passed.

1. Having your own product roadmap is one thing. Building what users ask is another. Choose what the user wants.
2. Most successful products have very similar characteristics. Here are 15 Steps towards building a Great Product.
3. Scaling up is much simpler problem to solve. Concentrate on initial growth and traction. When you come to a stage where you want to scale, there will be enough money in the bank.
4. Ship Fast. Let things break. Often.
5. A bug is bug only when its noticed.
6. Focus on doing one thing right. That is enough. We decided to drop everything we did and focus on ‘wish’ for Wishberg.
7. Chase a vision, not an idea. When you have a vision, you will get 100 ideas to achieve that.
8. For success you need to try 100 things, one at a time. Make sure you have enough runway to try those. One of that will work. If you are lucky, that would be your first; if not then start-up life will test your perseverance.
9. Break your long term strategy in to multiple short term targets.
10. Spend over 30 minutes in shower everyday. You will never run out of ideas.
11. Concentrate on doing one thing right. You may still fail, but its far more better than getting distracted by trying 10 different things.
12. Growth hacks that have worked for other startups will not work for yours. Startups can’t be so easy. Find your own hacks.
13. Success is not easy. Don’t expect it to be.
14. Every week try to use your product as a new user who has not used it earlier and knows nothing about it.
15. Doing a startup has a huge personal opportunity cost, no one talks about. This too shall pass, I tell that to myself. Everyday.
16. Entrepreneurship is not sexy. I personally discourage people from taking it up. Specially the ones with a family to support.
17. Anyone can take decisions with data. And data may not be available always. Nothing new or ground breaking was ever built based only on data available. Trust your instincts / guts to do build something new. 
18. Try and fail, don’t fail to try.
19. Luck is important factor. Wishberg got funded the same month I was about to run out of money. I already ran out of my funds and savings long time back, I refer to the personal loans I took up to keep it going.
20. Startup as early as possible in your life. Debts, Loans kill your ambitions. Everyday.
21. Everyday will give you 100 reasons to close down. You need to have that one strong reason to keep it going.
22. Delegate. But be hands-on. You should know more about your business than anyone else.
23. Team is your family. Choose wisely whom you want to add. Genuinely love your team and be concerned about them and their well being.
24. Fight. Argue. Debate. Discuss. Don’t carry things outside office. It all should get over by the day.
25. Ignore 99% advice you get. The 1% that comes up again and again – think about it.
26. Funding does not make you rich. No matter how much you make others understand it, they will not. Stop wasting your time.
27. Everyone struggles. Even a start up without funding. Even a start up with millions of dollars of funding.
28. Funding just gives you a little more runway. To try out multiple things. Its just a little more runway.
29. Unfortunately funding is perceived as success. I received invitations to speak at conferences just cause we got funded. Damn! And no one ever called me for any discussion or debate while I predicted Indian startup scene so accurately. tl;dr – I’m not going.
30. Investors who take over a week to come back to you; who say keep us posted; who say lets keep in touch and so on – will never invest in you. Don’t waste time on it.
31. Investors who really want to invest in your startup will not take much time to do it. One of our investors committed to us over a Twitter DM in less than a minute. Another one on WhatsApp again in about 1 minute.
32. Investors fund / invest in you. You. And your ability to grow the product / company.
33. Don’t say no to money when it comes knocking your door. I said no to it twice (rather my ego said no it). Cash in hand is much better than perceived valuations.
34. Don’t choose investors based on the valuations. The best investors bring in value. The worst investors bring in just cash.
35. Build feature products (unlike what investors / advisors say). But build that simple feature as a freaking awesome product that everyone wants to use.
36. Check the history of acquisitions by Facebook or Google. Your feature product is more likely to be acquired if you build it right.
37. Choose team, advisors & investors with whom you can talk about life over couple of drinks.
38. Build something that you understand and believe in. Don’t build what will get funded or is generally considered hot.
39. Never understood why using foul words in startup ecosystem is considered cool. I don’t think its cool.
40. Let go of ego.
41. Anyone who says they will disrupt are just talkers. Just be willing to change and adapt.
42. Disrupt slowly. Unannounced. Feature by Feature. Before anyone realizes what happened.
43. Competition will exists, don’t be afraid of that.
44. One fine day Facebook, Amazon or Google will try to build what you are building. Its sounds scary, but its fun. Btw, I almost cried when Facebook launched a ‘Want’ button or Amazon started Collections or Pinterest tried to position itself as wishlist from a online pin board.
45. Meet lot of users, lots of people. Get their ideas on your business, product. Some simple things will amaze you.
46. Be Humble. Be Genuine. Its not very difficult.
47. Smile. Have fun. As many times as you can.
48. Build relationships. Specially with other startup founders. Some of them might be at the lowest phase in life, be there. At times they just need someone to talk with whom they can relate.
49. With more power, comes more responsibility. With more responsibility, comes more stress.
50. Do something to de-stress you. I try blogging, driving, and observing people when I travel by Mumbai Locals.
51. Spend at least 1 hour reading up everyday.
52. Spend one day of every month with your family and friends. Try to be away from the Internet on that day.
53. Every mistake should be made only once. You don’t have time to repeat it.
54. ‘Fail Fast’ is a buzz word. Failure comes with cost – money, time and spirits. So you can’t really fail fast.
55. Value money. Think 100 times before you spend even a single dollar. Negotiate hard. Every dollar saved adds up to your runway.
56. Don’t do anything or spend time behind anything (feature, update, task, product, or anything) that does not personally excites you.
57. The single most difficult task of a startup founder is setting priorities. If you get it right, your job is done. 9 out of 10 times you will go wrong. Don’t regret, keep moving.
58. Simple, short and sweet updates to your product bring the best results. Don’t over think or focus on too many big features.
59. Focus is about saying No. Stop agreeing too everyone and everything.
60. You learn most not from blogs or advisors or investors. You learn most from other founders. Connect and share your learnings with each other. We organized a #FoundersMeet in Mumbai.
61. People around you are smarter than you think. Learn from them.
62. The most important thing in life is not knowing everything, its having the phone number of somebody who does.
63. Stay away from events, conferences and pitching events. It takes up a lot of time and energy. Both are precious.
64. Be passionate. Be enthusiastic. About every new day.
65. Not just your startup, even you as a person should grow yourself every day. Learn at least one new thing everyday.
66. Have a bucket list for life, here is mine. Check it every morning, if you see things / wishes that are yet to be achieved, get back to work. Wishberg helps you build and manage your bucket list.
67. Plug-in your startup in every possible way. I just did that in above point. But no kidding, having a bucket list is actually very inspiring, I have one since last 6 years.
68. Every morning make a list of things / tasks you plan to finish in that day.
69. If you are out to achieve something, achieve something big. Don’t set mediocre goals.
70. Content or Commerce doesn’t go hand in hand. Most startups trying to do both get confused on what they really want to achieve. They really do. Focus on one.
71. MVP is More Valuable Product. Everyone wants a more valuable product, no one wants a minimum viable product.
72. Build your startup for growth. Not for exit.
73. Ask questions. Lots of them. No matter how silly they are to you or the person you are asking for.
74. Execution is everything. All ideas are equally great on paper.
75. Startups are not easy. Neither is life.
76. Build something awesome. Something that people will love to use.
77. Be thankful to everyone you has helped you in this journey. Make sure you help others in their journey so that they can say thank-you to you. It feels great!