Brooklyn founder lists 7 deadly startup sins

Bae’s Brian Gerrard has seven deadly sins for startup founders, some of which may sound familiar and some of which may be counterintuitive to you. 

Gerrard is the founder of Bae, a dating app like Tinder for people of color. Gerrard and his brother, Justin, cofounded the company in 2014 and have seen it grown nicely. When we interviewed him in May, Gerrard explained the company’s place in the crowded dating app scene.

“The idea came to us in a lot of ways,” he said in the interview. “We saw that it’s faster easier and better to meet people online because it’s a little more efficient. We saw that from looking at the data and just Black experience on Tinder. I talked to a Black friend who said he’d swipe thousands of times and he’d only get five matches. A comparable white guy got about 50 in the same time.”

But now having been through much of the startup lifecycle — the business development, the fundraising, the marketing — he’s got some wisdom. Gerrard shared it recently in a LinkedIn post: The 7 Deadly Entrepreneurial Mistakes.
According to Gerrard, they are:

1. Confusing “do-porn” with doing something
2. Getting caught up in the numbers too early
3. Doing it to be happy
4. Fearing failure
5. Thinking the customer is always right
6. Thinking press matters
7. Forgetting about February

Read the full story