Earlier this year I had a conversation with Lior Degani, co-founder of Swayy (now Similar Web after the acquisition) for The Entrepreneurial You podcast.

Here’s what Lior said in our conversation when asked about his top 3 mistakes during his startup phase.

1. We didn’t share our idea with anyone – maybe we were afraid anyone would steal our idea. We did this for a year. You should never be afraid of sharing your idea. An idea in and of itself means nothing. It’s about the execution, it’s about the people behind the idea. Even if someone thinks your idea is great and are going to do it themselves, if you believe in yourself you will do it better.

2. We were looking to raise money from VCs and Angels but we decided to spend on our own and quit our jobs. Although it seems like a great thing to do because it means that you believe in your start up, that’s wrong because you shouldn’t spend money on your start up because it really gives you no other option to live. It makes you more stressful and dependent. It makes your lifespan shorter. You cannot always spend time on your startup because you’re always worried about money. From a financial perspective, when you’re spending money from your own pocket, there is no end to it. There is no budget.

3. We wanted to build the best and most comprehensive product that the world has ever seen which is completely against any idea of lean start up. When we started, it wasn’t there yet where everyone knows about Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We just thought that if a product is not good enough, no-one would use it so we would rather build the best product we can, which is against any common sense.

When you try out something simple, the basic, the core of your product, you collect feedback from your users, you see if you can even get users. Why would you spend so much time building the best future if no one would use it? We built a super complicated and probably useless product which took us more time and more money.

Now can you identify with any of these mistakes Lior and his other co-founders made?

You can listen to the podcast episode here in the event you missed it.

By now you know I’ve created The Entrepreneurial You Virtual SME Conference & Expo happening 25th-28th September.  I’m bringing back some of your favorites from the podcast for 4 full days of rich content to ignite your passion.

Included in the line-up is of course Lior Degani. I’ve gotten to know Lior personally and I know he is going to inspire you as he shares story of his journey with you.

As mentioned earlier, Lior is Co-founder of Swayy (Acquired by SimilarWeb). He mentors at Google Campus in Tel Aviv to startups with Growth and Go to Market strategy as part of the Google Launchpad program.

He specializes in system engineering, growth hacking and data analysis, with over 10 years experience working in Telecom and Startup companies, as well as serving in the prestigious IDF unit 8200 – an elite intelligence unit which has spawned many successful Hi-Tech entrepreneurs over the years.
Lior lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sign up now or share with a friend. This is going to be EPIC!

Can’t wait to have you join us.