There are many things that are difficult and challenging as an entrepreneur. Coming out of Halloween, here are three things that can be really scary for entrepreneurs.

Somebody stealing your idea

I meet with some entrepreneurs who are scared that someone will steal their idea. They tend to focus on having people sign NDAs to speak with them, explore many types of patents, and hold back describing their full idea. As I have written before, for most startups stealth mode is not a good idea. Someone, somewhere else in the world has the same idea. It is all about the execution. Early on, many pivots are required and the more feedback you get early on, the faster you can make those pivots into a better position. When you keep your idea locked up, you miss out on the key learnings that help you iterate.

Finding out nobody likes my idea

Entrepreneurs are looking for validation of their idea and are scared about being told no. They want to know if everyone likes their idea, tell them they would use the product and pay for it (hint - this may not be true, read The Mom Test). They often start building a product (before selling) to show off all the cool tech features. Unfortunately, this just pushes the hard conversations about buying down the road and you may ultimately find out (after spending more time and money) that nobody will buy it. I encourage entrepreneurs to test willingness-to-pay very early. In our Studio we don’t launch the business until potential customers will pay for a product that doesn’t exist yet (and then we go start building together with these design partners).

Running out of money

I often meet with entrepreneurs who are fundraising, but will run out of cash very soon if they don’t get funding. You want to raise money from a position of strength: have already built trusted investor relationships, profitable or enough runway you don’t immediately need cash, and passionate, paying customers. When you are scared about running out of money (which is a real concern) that affects your ability to focus on selling more customers to grow the business, negotiating a good fundraising deal, and retaining key employees. Make sure you build your business and manage cash at a sustainable pace.

There are many other things that are scary as an entrepreneur, but I love the control you have to tackle these and other challenges and chart your own course.