How I Sold My Startup

Some years ago I sold my second startup, and I thought I'd take a few minutes to share a few things I learned. My hope is it helps a few people out.Some context: My first startup was a failure. I spent every dime I had on it, thought the idea was great, and I jumped into product development and marketing. I ended up not having a focused enough product (it was not tailored enough to target a small audience and then grow from there), and I ended up calling it quits on that one about a year into it. It hurt, financially as well, but I took away some lessons from it.I started my second startup a couple of years after that, with some lessons learned in my back pocket. Here's what I did:I built a product roadmap, including what features I'd have in version 1, version 2, etc. For each version, I identified the target audience, how much I'd spend on development, marketing, refinement, and overhead.I build financial projects for 1, 3 and 5 years out. I took my projections, cut them in half, and doubled my expected costs. I made sure my business model still made sense with those numbers.I learned everything I could about marketing, SEO, my target audiences, and buying behaviors.I hustled. I spend every waking moment sending emails, messages and doing outreach to get as many people as possible to find out about my product. Most people rejected the outreach, but I had enough interest that it kept me going.I fine-tuned my marketing spend, figured out which channels worked best, and re-invested my income into those channels.I didn't get ahead of myself. A good month doesn't mean anything.I made time for myself when I started to feel burned out. Can't be successful if you're mentally battered and bruised.I built a world-class pitch deck for investors. It took me 60-75 hours of effort to build it, can't cut corners here because investors know the difference between a quality pitch and one that has been thrown together.In the end, one of my original investors offered to buy out the business from me. I accepted the offer.It's a tough slog, but it's possible with the right amount of work, luck and planning. The key is planning. Plan everything, don't go into it blind. Do your research.Hope this helps some of you. I'm happy to answer questions, and feel free to reach out to me if I can be of assistance. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy