The Fighting Startup Quick Guide

By Ignacio Chechile

This is a brief text. Mainly, because I don’t have time to write it. I am part of a seed stage startup, which is supposed to ship a product soon. Now, some good and bad news for you. I am not your typical author, so please lower your expectations. I am not a guru, I am not even remotely wealthy, I am not popular: last time I checked I had 20 followers on Twitter, and decreasing. If anything, the value of this book lies in the fact these lines come from a place which is, I assume, not that different from the place you currently are at the moment. I do not have any magical advice, nor a recipe to get your startup out of the rabbit hole it is in, which I feel is what brought you here in the first place. Recipes are only for cooking, either mac and cheese or meth. There are no saviors. Your startup will get out of the hole only by your and your team’s ingenuity, perseverance and fundamentally cohesion.

Or it won’t.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignacio Chechile
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005242633

Ignacio Chechile

Ignacio Chechile is an engineer and writer living in Helsinki. He has published a book titled The Fighting Startup which dives in the depths of running tech startups, another one titled NewSpace Systems Engineering (Springer, 2021) which tackles the challenges of creating complex technology in the context of early stage startups and another titled "La Ciencia Dura" (only in Spanish) which talks about the beauties and the pains of studying engineering.

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The Fighting Startup Quick Guide

Ignacio Chechile

Copyright © 2021 Ignacio Chechile

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Intro

Mind Going All The Way

Mind Persistence and Moderation

Mind Your Ego

Mind Storytelling

Mind The Big Question

Mind Your Step

Mind Shocking Your Audience

Mind The Wheel Already Exists

Mind Tango

Mind Not Losing a Heartbeat

Mind Choosing Wisely Your Partners in Crime

Mind There is Safety in Numbers

Mind You Are Playing Dice

Mind Taking Proper Notes

Mind the Long Tail

Mind The Rich Getting Richer

Mind Collapse

About the Author

Notes

Intro

This will be brief. Mainly, because I don’t have time to write it. I am part of a seed stage startup, which is supposed to ship a product soon. Now, some good and bad news for you. I am not your typical author, so please lower your expectations. I am not a guru, I am not even remotely wealthy, I am not popular: last time I checked I had 20 followers on Twitter, and decreasing. If anything, the value of this book lies in the fact these lines come from a place which is, I assume, not that different from the place you currently are at the moment. I do not have any magical advice, nor a recipe to get your startup out of the rabbit hole it is in, which I feel is what brought you here in the first place. Recipes are only for cooking, either mac and cheese or meth. There are no saviors. Your startup will get out of the hole only by your and your team’s ingenuity, perseverance and fundamentally cohesion. Or it won’t.

Then, you may say, why even bother to read? Well, I speak from my own rabbit hole, so my experience, although different, may still help. I aim to provoke some thinking. That is all. Thinking is key, you’ll see. Perhaps the most important thing. There is no possible way out of the shit hole you are in without thinking. Thinking of the biggest picture you can think of, thinking how to connect the loose dots. Unless you expect some Deus ex Machina¹. If that happens, call The Vatican, or an exorcist.

Instead of waiting for a miracle, maybe take a quick look at these chapters, you may find something. The clock is ticking, I can hear it, you can hear it. So I will keep it brief so we can go back to work and sell stuff. In the meantime, avoid the dilettantes who write from their offices at Ivy League business schools those nice looking 700-page books about how to run a startup. They don’t know; they speak from comfort, which we lack. Avoid the troubled young millionaire with an existential crisis who writes about how he made millions and lost everything being reckless, but is still awfully rich. Avoid the best-selling guru who puts his face on the cover of his book about leadership, hand in chin. Stay away from all that bullshit. Sounds good, doesn’t work. At least I am being honest here: I have no clue what I’m doing in my startup, but I’m trying. I’m in the arena. I have tried some things that worked, and some others which didn’t. I’ve learned a thing or two in the journey, which by the way is far from being over.

I thought it would be more adequate to publish all this from foresight, before knowing if my startup will ever make it or not. This book is called The Fighting Startup so I figured I should be genuinely fighting, otherwise it would be like a war correspondent reporting from a spa. Too many things are written from hindsight. Not this one.

If my startup will succeed, these lines will become a validated set of things to consider while running a company. If it won’t, you’ll see this as a paper trail of the hill I chose to die on. These lines happen to emerge while the uncertainty is at its peak, when comfort is zero. When we are discovering the product. When we are actively searching for customers.

Every chapter in this book aims to be a sort of reminder. An earworm, playing in your brain at all times. Or a gadfly, buzzing. That’s what I aim for. To pick your brain. I hope you will end up hating me because you just cannot stop remembering the things I am telling you to mind in the incoming pages.

By the way, I am a technical guy. I have been doing software