How To Build A Startup In 2026 |
5 Lessons That Saved Me Years

If you want to launch a startup in 2026, I hope this saves you from the mistakes that kill 90% of startups in their first year.

I've built 2 startups myself and coached over 50 founders - and I've seen the same critical mistakes destroy great startups every single time.

So let me share with you those 5 harsh lessons and the exact frameworks to avoid them. No fluff, just the things I wish someone had told me, before my first startup.

Let's dive in.

Most founders I coach have 100 ideas on their list.

✅ Build more features
✅ Do more marketing
✅ Redesign the website

But having ideas isn't your issue.
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❌ The problem is not knowing which ones actually grow your startup.

I was guilty of this myself:
I remember working 12-hour days for 4 months straight.

→ In the morning I was building my product.
→ In the evenings I was rewriting copy.
→ Late at night I was redesigning my website.

I was hustling non-stop.
But here is the crazy part: My startup still didn't grow.

Not because I wasn't working hard.
But because I had no idea what actually mattered.

I wasted 4 months running in circles.
That's frustrating.

So here's the framework that changed everything for me:
Patrick Bet-David's Your Next 5 Moves Framework.

Here is how it works:

1. You write down your big vision – the big goal you have.
2. Then write down your next 5 big milestones.
3. And each week you focus on just those 5 milestones. Everything else is just noise.

When you know your next five moves, shiny growth hacks or the latest marketing trends no longer distract you. Because you know what's really important.

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This is one of the biggest startup killers:
Building non-stop without validation.

You want to make your product perfect.
And you're telling yourself: "Just one more month and it'll be ready".

In my first startup - we did the same thing - we built our product for 6 months. We were super excited and we thought we had something amazing.

And when we finally launched - guess how many customers we got?
❌ Zero. Not a single one.

We built our product without knowing if anyone would even pay for it.
Big mistake.

And this is what most founders do wrong – they build in isolation.
They assume that people will come. They won't.
‍
We had to shut down our startup.
Six months of building - completely wasted.
‍
The framework to avoid this pitfall is to build a demo. An MVP. A quick prototype. Something you can show in 2 weeks - not 6 months.

→ And then go sell it right away.

✅ Get sign-ups
✅ Build a waiting list
✅ Get pre-orders

And you don't need a finished product.
At this point you only need proof that people want it (and would pay for it).

And when you get your first customers and you know that people would pay for it, you can go all in.

Let me be real with you:  
If your business plan is "We'll figure out how to make money later" - your startup won't make it.

If you don't know how you gonna make money from day one, you're not building a business. You're building a hobby.

And hobbies don't pay your bills.
‍
I once coached a startup that raised €12M to build a blockchain chat app - like WhatsApp, but decentralized so nobody owns your data.

→ They spent two years building it.
→ They were convinced they were the future of messaging.

And they told me exactly that – they want to get users first and find out how to make money later. Maybe with ads, maybe with a premium subscription.

2 years later, they had 10.000 users, but zero revenue.
They had to shut down.

So, what was the big mistake they made?
They never knew how they could make money with it.
They were competing with free apps like WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

So they were doomed right away.

But if they had a monetization plan in the beginning they knew that it would be super difficult to compete against those free apps.

So here's the framework to avoid this mistake:

Before you write a single line of code, answer this:

→ How will I make money?

Not "Maybe ads" or "We'll figure it out."
A real answer.

Is it a monthly subscription, a one-time payment or a freemium model?
You need to be very clear about this right in the beginning.

Here's what I see all the time.

Founders launch their product, get maybe 2 customers organically, and then they panic. So they throw money at Facebook ads or Google ads, hoping that will fix everything.

I've seen founders burn €5,000 in their first month on ads.
And you know what they get? A bunch of clicks and zero customers.
‍
Here's the problem: If you can't get 10 customers organically, paid ads won't save you. You will just lose money faster.

But getting those first customers organically teaches you...

✅ What kind of messaging actually works
✅ What pain points your customers have
✅ How to talk about your product in a way that makes people want to buy

So here's the framework:
Get 10 organic customers first.

→ Reach out to your personal network and ask for referrals
→ Do content marketing
→ Post in communities where your audience hangs out

Whatever it takes.
When you hit 10 organic customers, you've proven two things:

1. People actually want your product
2. You know how to talk about it

And then you can scale with ads.
Not before.

This one is especially important nowadays – since AI is taking over.
Now, I love AI. It makes so many things easier and I use it almost every day in my business.

But here's the problem:
Most founders use AI for everything.

✅ For their emails
✅ Their landing pages
✅ Their social media posts

And they sound like everyone else. Let me show you what I mean.
Here are 3 real headlines I saw this week:

1. Unlock your team's growth
2. Discover new ways to drive dynamic growth
3. Scale with effortless impact

You've probably seen these exact phrases a hundred times, right?
That's AI slop. And it sounds awful.

Your audience can smell it from a mile away.
And when everything sounds like AI, people don't trust it.
People won't buy from AI slop.

The framework to avoid this pitfall is to write copy like you are talking to someone face to face.

Make it super simple. Yes, you can use AI as a starting point. But always refine it and make it in a way that people feel the human touch.

Remember this - people don't buy from perfect copy. They buy from real people they trust. And that goes for your website, your emails or wherever someone sees your stuff.

Now you know how to build your startup without failing in the first year.
But hey, if you want to grow your startup even faster, check out my Startup Success Bundle.

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