Full article at http://www.hult.edu/blog/hult-alumnus-makes-forbes/

Luigi Congedo graduated with his Masters in International Business in 2013. During his time at Hult, he was actively involved in the Venture Club. Over the years, he has gained experience in business development and finance.

His passion, however, is startups. And he wants to contribute to their success on a global scale. Luigi’s latest achievement was being featured in Forbes as one of the TOP 100 ITALIAN LEADERS UNDER 30.

What’s your advice to someone wanting to launch their own company?

I am not a big fan of to-do checklists. And I truly believe that, even if there are many very good techniques for entrepreneurs today, in the real-world, building any business is much harder than how it looks in books. Every successful company will have different challenges to deal with and opportunities to chase.

Be an expert in your industry, and try to build a great team before you start building any product. 99% of success depends on execution. Without the right people in your team, it will be very hard to build anything big.

I also always like to say that starting or launching a new company is the easy and fun part. Scaling and keeping your company in business for many years is a completely different thing. Too many people focus on how to start, without thinking about how to scale.

“99% of success depends on execution. Without the right people in your team, it will be hard to build anything big.”

Silicon Valley has been an incredible school for me, and one of the most important pieces of advice that I like to give to new entrepreneurs is: do the things that don’t scale at the beginning. Do not build any structure on day one—keep experimenting before defining procedures and bureaucracy.

At the beginning of the journey, what really matters is asking yourself and your team the right questions, identifying the right go-to market, and staying as close as possible to your potential customers.

Define the pain of your customer, explore the solution, and remember that your product, market, and KPIs, will need to evolve over time. But your value proposition will stick around for many years. Focus on short-term execution, but develop your long-term vision based on your value proposition.