Ozan Sonmez,a startup mentor at New Ventures Accelerator,KAUST, highlighted these ever present pitfalls during a talk at Startup Istanbul. We picked it up and illustrated it with some gifs. Take a look and learn a lesson or two.
1.Do you know what you think know?
When you trust yourself so much, when you think you know enough, you tend to fail.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fffbf00e2-a784-4ad3-95d6-61bcafa13e14_500x213.gif)
2.Never love something that won’t love you back.
Simply build stuff that people need. Listen to your users feedback.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62655068-f202-47d3-9978-67420941e3c3_500x313.gif)
3.Hiring poorly and wrong co-founders.
Hire people smarter than you to do the job. If you can't, just do the job yourself.
![](http://imagesmtv-a.akamaihd.net/uri/mgid:file:http:shared:mtv.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/self-starter-aaron-paul-breaking-bad-gif-1433351129.gif)
4.Money: Too Much Too Early Too Late Too Little.
Especially at seed stage if you don't need money people love to give it to you.Be careful!
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe2f93b81-2c43-4f4e-a723-26fd277f8a14_512x288.gif)
5.Doing it for the wrong reasons. Don’t do it.
Are you doing your startup just for the money? Please don't. Do it to add value to people's lives.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F602ecf7c-0e50-432a-8a16-f74ba9a19131_576x324.gif)
Watch the whole talk on this common mistakes here.]]>