Insights
What we’ve learned building companies.
Lessons from the businesses we’ve built with founders, and the ones that taught us the most.
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7 reasons your startup costs more than you budgeted“Just give me $500K and a tech guy and I’ll make this idea a success.” Here are 7 reasons your startup costs more than you budgeted… ↓↓ #1. You haven’t understood what the market will pay for. — First-time founders mistake enthusiasm for validation and leap straight to building a product nobody wants. If you do that, you’ll have to start over. #2. You haven’t listened to warning #1.Read the post →
Free, freemium, or pay upfront?Product owners, founders and investors: here’s a question I bet you can’t agree on. (TLDR: there is a nice rule of thumb that can help.) “Should you give your product away for free, or always capture payment details in advance?” ↓ ↓ Here are some common questions we get from our founders: How good to you make your free product? When do you ask users to create a profile?Read the post →
When you’re building a product, seek truth at all costsFounders, be careful whose advice you take. Your friends say your idea is great, but it isn’t. Your peers say “go for it”, but you shouldn’t. Your investors say don’t give up, but you should. Your board says it has your back, then fires you. None of these people are evil.Read the post →
How this finance exec built his own profitable company in 18 monthsThis is Patrick McGonagle a few years ago. Putting in the hours. Earning the big bucks. Cruising. But something was off. Was this… it? In mid-2021, a mutual friend introduced me to Pat. I was relocating from Singapore to Sweden the very next day, but we managed a coffee in Raffles Hotel before I flew. Patrick had a business idea.Read the post →
Why at DQventures we believe in remote workOur family office investor recently confided in me that he was surprised DQ was thriving. In fact, he was impressed we’re still operating at all. When the family invested, right at the beginning, all three founders lived in Singapore. But it was the middle of COVID and, for different reasons, within a matter of months, we’d all left. Arjun moved to Delhi. Oliver moved to Sydney. I moved to Stockholm.Read the post →
Should older founders go all-in on their startup idea?If you’re an older (dare I say ‘especially female’) person, with responsibilities like a mortgage, children to feed and elderly parents to support, it’s rarely a wise decision to go all in on a startup. So is launching your own business simply not feasible? 😶 Quite the contrary.Read the post →
What every startup can learn from gaming company, SupercellSupercell is a gaming company that makes £32M/employee. How is that possible? Well, for starters the team scraps 90% of its games. Wait, what? Yep. Ruthless. If a game doesn’t hit strict 30-day retention benchmarks, it’s toast. This approach is something zero-to-one founders would do well to take note of. ↓↓ Experiment widely.Read the post →
How a founder spend his life savings on an app with no usersHere’s how a founder in Singapore spent $200K of savings building an app with no users, and how to avoid doing the same. This is easier than you may think. A cautionary tale for those starting out.Read the post →
4 excellent fundraising tips you probably haven’t seen beforeA lot of fundraising advice on LinkedIn has been regurgitated umpteen times, but here are four excellent tips I haven’t seen elsewhere… ↓↓ The first two are from VC, Casey Flint: At the start of a meeting with a VC, ask what concerns or questions they have, based on what they know so far. ThisRead the post →
How the DQventures team can work from anywhereOne of my colleagues, Darius, just went to China for a holiday. He never came back. OK, I’m being dramatic… He decided to stop and work from Thailand for a while. The thing is… I actually have no idea how long he plans to be there. But, as long as he’s happy and getting hisRead the post →
How the best founders and investors play an infinite gameMany outsiders think Venture Capital is all about exits & valuations. But game theory suggests it’s about much more than that. The best founders and VCs play an infinite game, not a finite one. Here’s what I mean ↓ They use capital as fuel.Read the post →
Should you find a technical cofounder or outsource?Should you find a technical co-founder and give them 50% of your company, or should you outsource? Having now started or invested in >70 companies, here’s what I’ve learned… I believe I’ve tried all the options. I’ve had technical cofounders; Employed developers in-house; Outsourced to teams in… … Singapore … Vietnam … Poland … Ukraine … Myanmar …the U. K.Read the post →