For more than five years, I have collected, catalogued and collated the key learnings from hundreds of mentor and investor meetings into something resembling a book. I call it simply ‘The Playbook’, though it’s more like a 500-page encyclopaedic behemoth sitting in my Evernote account. The purpose of The Playbook is to have a go-to resource to consult in situations of business uncertainty. It is not exhaustive - every situation is somewhat unique, and it’s not my goal to document every variation of a business challenge. Rather, I have identified, and expand on, twelve recurring categories that most entrepreneurs will relate to in some way. I’m happy to share with you here the overall structure of the Playbook, the key categories, plus some areas that you should focus on in a ‘100 Tips for Building a Successful Startup’ mind map infographic. Whether you are a startup founder, company manager or an aspiring entrepreneur, I believe you will find it useful. And if you apply just a small part of it tomorrow, I bet you are closer to achieving your goals.

1. 100+ tips and habits for building a successful
startup I learned from 100+ mentors
Maintain safe cashflow
Plan yearly cashflow on -50% of
the realistic sales plan
Plan cash on doubled sales cycle
than in a realistic sales plan
Raise funds whenever possible
Investors often say you are either
too early or too late to raise, don’t
worry the right investors will be
eager to invest.
Founders to maintain equity and
voting majority through seed and
Series A at least.
Convertible notes for Seed / Pre-
Series A is convenient and fast
Raise Seed round pre-revenue to
avoid discussions over whether
current revenues are good enough.
Don’t spend the money from
investors on unnecessary
equipment and staff
Increased spend must follow
increased revenue within few
months
Lead by example
CEO updates entire company
continuously
Founders avoid being representatives
of just certain teams
CEO re-iterates and explains the
vision and reason of existence min
1x month
Support your team members
unconditionally or let them go
Acting otherwise damages culture
and performance
Travel and meet new people every
month
Get a fresh feedback and
motivation continuously
Share your progress and ideas to
receive feedback, new job
candidates, introductions
To business partners
To family and friends
Random people you trust
Divide clear responsibilities
between founders
CEO to build sales, partnerships
and get investors
COO to manage company internally
and keep morale high
When travelling often or working
across continents, apply following
habits:
Set smart goals with your partners
Make routine daily status calls
Respond early to emotions and
signals from the team
Get involved in daily topics via team
chat
Frequent report both successes
and failures to the entire company
Grow a relevant network through
introductions
Travel home regularly and have fun
with your colleagues
Continuously explore unique local
opportunities
Meet new friends, keep an exercise
routine and read every day
Build close investor relations
Communicate failures and under-
delivery fast and straight
Send monthly report to investors
and advisors
Keep investors involved on topics
that matter to them and can help
with
Ask investors for introduction to
prospects
Offer 5-10% commission
Prepare investors to help with
additional funds when needed
Don’t cold call, get new investors
only through current investor
introductions
Offer 3-5% finders fee
Deliver on key metrics
Set one key metric as a mantra in
the company
Booking revenues (enterprise sales)
or monthly recurring revenue (SME/
B2C sales) in revenue generating
companies
Set up secondary “Health check”
metrics
Product user engagement
Customer retention (churn)
Satisfaction (CSAT / NPS)
Improve goal setting every quarter
Exceed your goals sometimes to
improve morale and make investors
excited
Build stable legal basics
Incorporate British Ltd. or Inc. in
Delaware (USA) - investors like it,
customers respect it
Create 8-12% employee stock
option plan before first investor
round
Grant stock options to employees
based on:
Relevant experience
Strategic importance for a company
Job seniority
Job role
Vesting 3 years, cliff period 6
months
Document all your IP (code)
continuously, you will not have time
when investors demand it
Learn every day and inspire others
to do the same
Spend one hour a day on learning
something new
Define 3 learning goals for every
year
To achieve your work goals
To feel better every day
To fulfil your dreams
Choose the most appropriate
learning form for you and your
goals
Books
Audio Books
(Video) Lectures
Coaching
Find a mentor you
trust
Each founder to spend 1-2 hours a
month with a mentor or a coach
Offer stock options if you lack cash
Build advisory board early
Strong seasoned experts, each with
focus on one of following:
Finance
Sales
Marketing
Product Development
Strategy / Fundraising / M&A
Change members annually based
on the current needs
Meet 1-to-1 or in group via Skype,
no F2F group sessions necessary
To help to perfect your go-to-market
strategy
To receive a reality-check
To receive a relevant introductions
Giving stock options not necessary,
offer opportunity to learn, network,
being part of something big
Read a book every week
Read weekly in depth news and
editorials, avoid distracting daily
news
Build crazy buzz around the
company
Share successes and
announcements monthly
Stand out by language tonality -
use full spectrum of language,
appeal to emotions.
Share authentic stories
Share failures openly and how you
support “failing forward” attitude
Position your company as a
category owner
Position your CEO as a spoke-
person / representative of your
market category
Build customer-led product
development
Get a customer feedback min 2x a
year from 70% of your customers
Request testimonials and
introductions from promoters
Make turning key detractors to
promoters the key company priority
Don't get dependent on key
customers in product development
Build agile product development
early, make developers responsible
Ask leaving customers and lost
deals for feedback on informal 1-
to-1 basis
Insist on developers attending min.
1x demo or trial a month
Insist on all developers working
directly with customer support
feedback
Spend 10-20% of development
time on technical debt.
Ask developers continuously if
there is something in the product
leadership ignores.
Scale result-oriented marketing
Focus 70% of efforts on delivering
marketing qualified leads
Forget brand-awareness building
with no direct performance results
Attend / Sponsor only conferences
that bring sales qualified leads
within 2 weeks
Build close relationship with 3
selected journalists / market
influencers
Change them if they don’t cover
you continuously
Don’t pay analysts for featuring you
in studies, build a personal
relationships instead.
Hire right, fire fast
Hire sales hunters, not farmers, you
need to focus on new sales
Improve things based on early
feedback of a new hire
Hire senior engineers, there is no
time for training
Don’t create culture, it’s made by
who the founders and early
employees are
Let go if clearly set KPIs are not
met within 3 months + 1 “last
chance” month
Hire key people that can become
C-level gradually
Prioritise hiring the right character
and culture fit over hard skills
Focus on:
Coachability
Curiosity
Respect to Culture
Intelligence
Prior Success
Build aggressive and predictable
sales
Build predictable pipeline by
outbound sales
CEO to create and update the
winning sales methodology
CEO to ensure all sales people
qualify deals the same way
CEO to drive learning on repeating
sales successes and avoiding sales
dead-ends
Don’t ever take “No” from a
prospect for an answer.
A door was closed? Get in there by
window.
Create TOP 100 customers to win
and work on them fanatically
A prospect not interested? Amaze
him with a customer insight.
Build inbound lead generation with
minimum spend, prove ROI, than
increase budgets
Focus on month-to-month %
progress rather than absolute goals
Stay obsessed by productivity
Schedule your day into a time
blocks
25 min - suitable for most individual
meetings and statuses
50 min - suitable for most individual
activities, when you need to
product something
1:20 hod - only for workshops,
typically 50 min is more productive
Schedule 5-10min breaks after
each activity
Schedule a time for reflection after
every 3 blocks
How do you feel about the
progress?
Re-read notes
Think about how it went
Plan how to improve next time
Prepare what are you going to do
before you turn on your laptop
Redirect > Reflect > Finish later
when you get stuck
Envision how you team/customer
will be happy once you achieve
your goal
Say NO to most of the things that
are offered to you
Reward yourself for achieved goals
Small rewards for daily
achievements
Medium rewards for monthly
achievements
Big vacation or similar for a game-
changing successes
Apply strict prioritisation process
What are the tasks someone else is
waiting for?
What will help me to get closer to
achieve my current goals?
What simple urgent tasks I can
resolve immediately?
What tasks will I enjoy working on?
What tasks will help me to learn in
the area I am interested in?
Delegate: What are the tasks
someone else will do better?
Reflect the day before you go to
sleep
What have you done you have a
positive feeling about?
And negative feeling?
What are you going to change
tomorrow?
Vit Horky
Co-founder & CEO of Brand Embassywww.brandembassy.comwww.linkedin.com/in/vithorkyV 1.5, December, 2016