We’ve done a bunch of mistakes while building the company but there are certain things that we did right which I’ll blindfoldly recommend every startup to do because it has clearly worked for us 100%.

[1] Get a sincere office manager. At first it might seem like very little work for a full-time role. But an office manager position is like buying insurance. Only when the need arises, the true value is felt. If you’re running a company that has > 5 employees with 50+ customers, I bet you’ll feel the need at least twice or thrice a week.

[2] Buy a big TT table with good racquets. Working in a startup is very tiring that you definitely need a 30-min break in between to refresh yourself.

[3] Get a powerful laptop to all the engineers that can comfortably run a VM, chrome with 10 tabs and a music player. Buy matrox and ensure the development environment is really powerful. It increases productivity by a huge factor.

[4] Plan one day in a week to go out with the entire team – can be movie or lunch or anything that’s fun. Pick a slightly less busy day and get out.

[5] Get a cook who can provide at least two good meals a day. It’s okay if the cook costs 1.5x for a superior quality food, especially breakfast.

[6] Have a daily scrum for 20 mins on a time that’s convenient for everyone. Not only does it ensure everyone’s on the same page but also makes you work on something concrete. You know you’re being less productive when the scrum updates are very boring and generic. Fix the problem.

[7] If you’re a first time founder, get an advisor who will actually spend time with you and not just for name dropping. The advisor should be someone who has built a big company from scratch. And it is very very hard to find someone with those credentials. We were lucky! Mark is such an amazing advisor to us and we meet every week for 1.5 hours discussing the most critical issues that has to be fixed and how to build a great company.