Andrew Tosh founder of GameSim, and today he joins us to share the top three lessons he learned as an entrepreneur.
What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business, and if you could start over what would you do differently?
Manage cash flow | Understand company’s financial needs before taking on new projects
We needed to ramp up the number of employees as we took on larger projects. It would have been valuable to take the time to understand cash flow management in advance. This ended up being a major issue. I ultimately had to move a lot of retirement savings into the company to make payroll. Eventually, we were mature enough to get a line of credit, but I would have saved myself that stress early on by more closely looking at the financial needs of the company.
Don’t focus on revenue projections | Spend your time productively
I spent a lot of time trying to predict sales, which turned out to be a complete waste of time. In my opinion, it\’s nearly impossible to predict growth in technology start-ups, and the focus should instead be on putting your time and efforts into more useful outlets.
Know Your Customers
I don’t think enough time was spent understanding the customer needs prior to starting IR&D effort. A lot of assumptions were made as opposed to spending the time to really understand and examine their use cases. Really listening to your customer can help you develop better products, market more effectively and provide more thorough service in general.
Andrew Tosh | Founder | GameSim
