The pains of growing a startup: Watch this video

Done is better than perfect.

The biggest mistake startup founders make is trying to polish their product until it’s perfect before releasing it to the market. Ultimately, getting the product in front of users and getting the feedback is essential for startups, and feedback is much harder to take when the founder thinks the product is already perfect.

Kathryn Minshew, the co-founder of The Muse, thinks that it is really difficult for people who are still in the trenches of building a company to be really honest with themselves. That’s because the truth is that all companies start by sucking. If people are not honest about this process, they lose a lot of the opportunity to learn.

We’ve just added Kathryn Minshew’s talk at last year’s TNW USA Conference to our TNW Video site and you can watch it right now for free.

Kathryn, who is also an alumnus of Y Combinator, shares what it’s really like behind the scenes of a startup – not the airbrushed press version – describing the problems she encountered on her way. She learned that being insanely persistent is important – she met 148 investors, all said no. At the same time, it is incredibly important to figure out which feedback you should listen to.

Why did being part of Y Combinator almost send her company off the cliff? And what are other lessons she has learned? Watch the video to find out.

Watch more TNW Conference videos right now at TNW Video.