A contribution from deutsche-startups.de
Founding a startup faces many challenges, many decisions, and many ups and downs. We asked five founders: "What was the most instructive or best mistake you made?" Our thanks go to Philipp Götting (WirNachbarn), Alexander Graf (Spryker), Christoph Huebner (exmedio), Magnus Schmidt (scoo.me), and Sven Zuschlag (SmapOne) for their honest answers.
What was the most instructive or best mistake you made?
"I find most of the mistakes my co-founders and I made very instructive. The most exciting are certainly the mistakes you make repeatedly, such as delaying personnel decisions, etc. You learn a lot about yourself and your environment in the process, and eventually you can better assess in which areas you are strong as an entrepreneur and make good decisions, and in which environments you should let other people make decisions. The truly intense crisis situations, which sometimes lead to sleepless nights, were certainly the most instructive."
Alexander Graf, Spryker
"I allowed myself to be doctrinated by the (5-year) plan madness for too long, and thus clung to the original plan as a roadmap for too long: The (5-year) plan is not the plan, but the insight dictates the plan: Trial and error is a key success factor! And you have to react to that quickly and, above all, consistently, unfortunately also in the form of constant plan updates."
Magnus Schmidt, scoo.me
