Here are a few lessons I learnt while running my online branding & web development firm Digital Max Solutions (DMS) in Nepal for nearly 10 years now. Some of the lessons are site specific and technology start-up specific. Enjoy!

1. Be directly, personally responsible to the client. Otherwise chances of success in your project is low.
2. Ensure quality yourself. If you personally don’t do quality checks on your products or services, make sure the person who does it, has your 100% trust.  (Otherwise it will come back to haunt you)
3. Delegate but teach. If you delegate project communication to your developer (employee), teach him/her exactly how, what, why and when to communicate.
4. Train your employees.  Do not expect them to solely learn by their own or by internet. Understand the concept first, yourself.
5. Employees value what they can learn from you personally. Substituting respect from them by friendship with them, may not work.
6. Repeat yourself. Over-communicate. Your employees may not understand the first time around. This happens often. Ask them to paraphrase (To repeat what they understood.)
7. Client is always right (but only at the end). Do ask them a lot of questions before the project starts. Over-communicate. Have written approvals from clients on exact requirements before starting. If something goes wrong at the end, blame yourself.
8. Believe in numbers when confused. Make sure you record and then pull up past project history, client history, project hours, efficiency etc regularly. Track everything!
9. Lead by example. Change yourself first. Learn yourself first. Show them yourself first. Learn first (if its technology you want the company to adopt.)
10. Groom people with exceptional attitude. If you find such a person in your team, help them, mentor them, train them and partner with them; i.e groom them to lead. They will return in kind (and more). Don’t worry about them leaving. You reap, what you sow.
11. Always decide. Don’t “decide not to decide” or leave it for fate to decide for you. Your in-decision will turn into sleep-less nights for you. (I am guilty of this myself)
12. Fail fast. Let your team experiment with a lot of ideas but make sure you do it small. This way you can fail fast. And if you succeed, you have a new way to generate revenue 🙂 !