You’re not just building a startup. The startup is also building you. Here are seven pieces of advice you won’t hear often but will realize as you grow:

Slow down. Being first didn’t help any startup. Uber came after Lyft. Facebook after Hi5, and many more examples. Be deliberate about your next steps, articulate about your grand vision, and make something great.

Don’t just chase more customers. Figure out deeply why your small/current cohort of customers choose you, and build off that. 100 high-paying loyal customers, is better than 1000 once-off transactions.

You don’t need a technical co-founder. You just need someone that can code, in the way you want, for the foreseeable future. This can be a director of engineering, a CTO, or even an outsourced consultant. Just show that they’re committed as you are.

Fundraising is a step, not a goal. Founders start chasing capital and lose sight of the real goal which is building something big, reaching lots of people, and changing lives. In fact, fundraising is an optional goal… maybe even give making revenue alone a shot.

Be nice to people. Building a startup is hard, so you’ll need people to help you on the way up, which will be the same ones that’ll keep you stable when you’re there. They make films about crazy CEOs like Neumann and Holmes, but the happiest and kindest ones they’ll never dare.

Be passionate. Maybe even be borderline paranoid, on why this problem you’re trying to solve exists. Building the startup shouldn’t be a choice. It’s not something you wake up deciding - it should be something you can’t sleep at night thinking about.

Think bigger. Every startups goal should be to stop being a startup. Figure out how this goes from 100 people to 1K, to 10K, and then to 100K to 100M.