Here are the five best pieces of founder advice I learned as a host of Found

After more than two years — and nearly 100 episodes — as host of the recently concluded TechCrunch Podcast foundI learned a lot about how founders approach building their startups.

I’ve heard stories about how founders know when it’s the right time to expand from their core product, how startups approach hiring, what got entrepreneurs to jump in the first place, and everything in between.

While I’m not a founder myself, some of the lessons and advice I heard at the show stood out more than others. I’ve compiled a short and sweet list of the five best pieces of advice for founders I’ve heard on the show that are both practical and philosophical.

Founders should lean into what they are not good at

While many founders talk about finding co-founders or making early hires to help fill gaps in their experience or knowledge, Rippling co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad Think founders should do the opposite.

Conrad decries the practice of hiring people to fill the role of a founder, or doesn’t want to.

“You should find the things you hate in the company, and you should run to them and embrace them and just accept them and focus on those things, because those are the things that are probably going to kill you,” Conrad says. Which you’re probably avoiding because it’s uncomfortable to focus on them. I’ve definitely seen it in myself and the things you really hate, like, that’s where you should spend all your time.”

VC is not always right

While the right venture capitalist can provide invaluable insight and guidance to a startup, good VCs are hard to find, and even the best VCs don’t always have the best advice for every startup.

While Ashley Tyner, founder and CEO FarmboxRxA direct-to-consumer produce box company meant to help solve food deserts, pitched to the VC, asking him to pivot to becoming a meal kit company, the hot trend at the time. He’s glad he ignored the advice and bootstrapped instead.

“Every VC we talked to, any of them that were actually remotely nice to us wanted to be our meal kit,” Tyner said. “It was not our focus. We didn’t want to jump on the meal kit bandwagon. Looking back now, I’m really glad I never raised any capital and we haven’t raised any capital to date. Most of the meal kits, you know, they slowly died.”

Instead, just a few years later, FarmboxRx was able to connect with insurance companies and start sending boxes of its products as part of patients’ prescriptions, a revenue stream that Tyner says has been really profitable for the company.

It pays off first

If you read a lot of PR pitches, as I do most days, a common thread is that many companies want to claim that they were the “first” in a technological innovation or a new market. But is being first always the best thing?

Jordan Nathan, founder and CEO of Non-Toxic Homeware Company CarrawayWould not necessarily agree. Nathan told TechCrunch that when he was getting ready to launch Caraway’s first set of non-toxic cookware, he wasn’t initially thrilled that it looked like they’d end up launching in an increasingly crowded segment, but it worked out. Nathan said the latest launch allowed the company to find gaps in the open market from those already published and allowed Carraway to cater directly to that audience.

“It helped us change our color palette, it helped us change our price point, what pieces we put in the set,” Nathan said. “And while a lot of those other brands did a lot of things right, we were able to carve out our niche in the kitchen [direct-to-consumer] In a world where others weren’t playing.”

Companies should try to go to market immediately, regardless of their long-term goals

While some startups create software that can start acquiring customers and making money within a week, the same cannot be said for startups looking to introduce innovative deep tech or moonshot companies. But that doesn’t mean these deep tech companies have to wait years to make money.

Joe Wolfel, its co-founder and CEO TeradepthA company looking to build autonomous drones to map the ocean floor, told Found that Terradepth was very intentional about establishing its revenue stream. While it still has a ways to go before its autonomous drones roam the ocean floor, the company is already looking to provide the same service to commercial and government customers manually and through a dashboard, as companies need information on the ocean floor now.

“One thing you learn very quickly in war is you can’t run something that isn’t moving,” Wolfel said. “Is there no alternative to on-the-ground learning? We’re eating our own dog food every day.”

We heard from a different approach to this same idea Paul HedrickFounder of Western wear company Tecovas. Hedrick told Found that he knew he wanted Tecovas to be a direct-to-consumer brand, but he didn’t want to just set up a website and wait for sales. Because of this, he started selling his boots at farmers markets out of the back of his car right away so he could get customer feedback and sales from the start.

Don’t forget to build a company around your product

When a startup is just getting off the ground, founders focus on building a product and getting said product to market — as it probably should. But founders should make sure they don’t forget to think about building the actual company around the product.

Gavin UbertyThe co-founder and CEO of chipmaker HD, told Found that one of the company’s early pitfalls was that they didn’t think about setting up employee benefits until it was too late. Uberti said the company only realized it waited too long when one of its employees broke their leg before setting up company health insurance — which wasn’t a quick process for remediation.

Uberti’s story was a good reminder that while founders are trying to move fast and break things down, it’s important for them to take care of the other elements needed to build a lasting organization that takes care of its employees.