01
Validate first
He wasted a decade building things nobody needed. Incubators and VCs felt like validation; only paying users are.
Ten years. Twenty startups.
28 startup lessons learned by sweat and tears
John Rush failed for ten years across twenty-plus startups before building a holdco with almost a million users. He wrote down the 28 things he wishes someone had told him before his first one. Here is the full list, summarized.
02
Kill your ego
It is not about you. Your taste doesn't matter; the user's expectations do. Build what they want, not what you want.
03
Don't chase investors
Chase users and investors chase you. His VC interest peaked exactly when he stopped caring about it.
04
Never hire managers
Until PMF, only hire doers. Plenty of people can manage; very few can get things done barehanded.
05
The landing page is the least important thing
Template, one hour of edits, one page, obvious signup button. Optimize conversion only once traffic is consistent.
06
Hire only fullstack devs
Nothing is less productive than a team of specialists on an early product. One fullstack dev builds the whole thing.
07
Go global from day 1
If the product is good it works globally; if it is bad it fails locally too. Same effort, 100x the upside.
08
Do SEO from day 2
His biggest regret after 14 years of skipping it. Ten low-competition keywords on the homepage, one blog post a week.
09
Sell features before building them
He DMs 10 to 20 users daily about ideas and only builds what resonates. No audience? Ask on HN, Reddit, or X replies.
10
Hire only people you would want to hug
If you would not hug them, some animal-level dislike is there, and it surfaces as conflict eventually. Startups take years; pick people accordingly.
11
Invest in your startups and your friends
Of ~70 friends' startups he could have backed, 3 became unicorns. Since 2022 everything goes into his products, friends, and network.
12
Post on X daily
His primary source of connections and growth. The only regret is not starting earlier.
13
Don't partner with corporates
Big promises, millions of users, and every single time: nothing. They burn your time and focus and bring no one.
14
Don't get distracted by hype
Crypto cost him 1.5 years and several friendships. Stay on your mission when the gold rush passes through.
15
Build B2B, not consumer
Consumer apps are a lottery with a monetization problem even when they win. He spent 4 years there and regrets it.
16
Kill bad projects within a year
Some ideas cannot be pivoted and some teams cannot gel. Dragging it out for years is the real loss.
17
Skip tech conferences
Money, energy, and time for a room of corporate employees on a loyalty perk. The makers aren't there.
18
Scrum is a scam
If a team needs daily nagging like kindergarten, it fails anyway. Grownups sync over chat on goals and plans.
19
Outsource nothing until PMF
External hands give the product no love and no creativity. It is just another assignment in their boring job.
20
Bootstrap
He raised 10+ times; each round was a 3 to 9 month project of meetings and distraction. He could have afforded not to.
21
It may take a decade
He postponed family and kids for an exit that took far longer than planned. Do not put life on hold for the startup.
22
No free tier
Free signups became his KPIs and his feedback loop, and the product became a perfect free product. Paid-only until validated.
23
Don't be the cheapest
The $5 customer is never happy, never refers, and leaves in 4 months. The $50 customer gives real feedback and becomes a fan.
24
You will fail. Plan for it
Almost every startup fails, so fail faster: get to the second iteration, then the third, until something works.
25
Use boilerplates
He burned years and VC money rebuilding sidebars, dashboards and payment flows out of pride. Your product isn't special there.
26
Spend time with family and friends
He missed every best friend's wedding. Giving life 10% of your time costs your startup practically nothing.
27
Build for an audience you love
He had no love for corporates, consumers, or devs. Switching to indie founders multiplied his joy by 100x.
28
Write every single day
A teacher's red pen silenced him for 15 years; a spellchecker brought it back. Writing daily is how the audience compounds.
Summarized from If only someone had told me this before my first startup by John Rush. Read the original on X for the full story behind each lesson.
Lesson 12 was
post every single day.
Viraloop is how founders actually do it: on-brand short-form content, generated and published to TikTok, Reels and Shorts daily, on autopilot.