Sharing stories and lessons from two decades of building startups with Diane Tarshis, founder of Startup Distillery (S3E3)

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https://weardulo.com

Diane Tarshis is an experienced startup consultant who started her career in the middle of the dot-com boom and is now the founder of Startup Distillery, where she works with companies to help them navigate the muddy waters of their early days.

With two decades of experience from the entrepreneurial trenches, working with founders from all walks of life and industries, we wanted to talk with Diane about the messy beginnings of small businesses. We covered important lessons around launching a startup, such as the importance of having a roadmap and doing extra homework in preparation, we discussed the pros and cons of self-funding versus raising venture capital and when is it a good time to rely on each. We also touched on the topic of marketing and messaging - a topic near and dear to us, since we are in the middle of figuring out how to talk to our target audience.

Topics we cover in this episode:

01:53 - Who is Diane and what she does

04:56 - How Diane approached her first clients

06:36 - How to figure out what to charge

09:20 - The most common problems startups get stuck on

11:05 - The importance of having a roadmap before launch

12:55 - How to convince a stubborn founder to change direction

16:00 - There's always another way

17:21 - Bootstrapping versus Venture Funding

20:32 - The argument against going all-in on building a business from the start

23:33 - The myth of stress and the blessing of constraints when bootstrapping a side-business

27:20 - The DULO journey so far

33:05 - What to do when your business plateaus

37:41 - Can you apply lessons from one business into a new one

43:27 - The need to appeal to the head and the heart when marketing your business

45:34 - The importance of a clear and succinct message

49:10 - Future plans and project

54:29 - Get in touch with Diane

FULL LIST of Useful Resources and Links: https://weardulo.com/blogs/the-early-days-podcast/startup-lessons