What makes a startup successful: Essential Tips and Key Steps
On July 24, 2025, the event “Yep! Accelerator” took place. It was a business event where nine startups presented their ideas and competed for the $25k non-equity investment. Check more details about the event and pitches analysis here: What do investors look for in a startup in 2025?
As a part of the event, Dan Tyre shared his experience on how to make a successful start-up company and which points new businessmen should pay attention to.
Mr. Tyre is an entrepreneur who contributed to six startups, including two scale-ups that surpassed $1 billion in revenue. He also has 17 years of experience in marketing, leadership, and executive roles as a former HubSpot employee.
Seven Ts of Successful Startups Investments
Dan Trye: “I get 100 inquiries a month for people who want me to invest. And so as part of the process, I got very specific about what is required for me to invest. I have investments in France, in the Middle East, and in Israel, so I’m not myopically focused on that. I want to find the right company that I can invest in in Ukraine.
I look for something called the seven Ts. This is a support for entrepreneurs, advisors, and investors to understand in 2025.
Team
Traction
Technology and Transformation
Timing, Ten-X (10x) & TAM
Number six is TenX (10X) [Author’s note: This means your startup’s product should be at least ten times better than current alternatives to succeed.].
Number seven is TAM, total personal market. Although in most cases, most markets that you see they’re all global, and so they’re easily a billion dollars.
AI Inclusion
Top Three Key Steps for Startup Success
Dan Tyre:
- “Number one, make sure you understand your competitive advantage. Today, you have to have a competitive advantage. There are 400 people doing everything that you’re doing. And you have to say, this is where I’m best, world-class, in delivering this type of product or information from this type of company.
- Number two, you have to have a plan, and that’s to be a written plan. You have to say: “This is what I’m going to do in July. This is what I’m going to do in August. This is what I’m going to do in September.” And then you’ll always have to be ahead of your plan.
- Number three, you have to engage with people in a way that gets the right results. That means you have to find those core folks. We always start with our friends and family.
There’s no shame in calling all the people that you know and saying, “I am looking for my first three customers. I need somebody to do this, this, this”, and then present this as the value proposition to give you $1,000, since now you make $10,000 of that, or this is the value proposition, all it would do. And then how do we get you involved?
The first three customers should not necessarily try your product or service at full price. The idea is to solidify these first three customers, and after you get a jump start, everything changes for your business. You have to support those customers. You have to share what they use. You will have a completely different perspective that will put your business idea in the right context.
Now, if you buy $10,000 of the value, then you’re subject to a potential competition or a disintermediation. This is “identify, connect, discover” advice. It’s somewhat new to many companies that work. But it’s certainly possible. Those who have been able to get those first few customers have gained that traction. It’s the single most important thing for all companies, but especially Ukraine. ”
Useful Materials and Startup Tips
Dan Tyre: “I have two programs, one from zero to one. And then one plus. Zero one is how you get your first, $10 to $10,000 worth of MRR. And one plus is the next stage of how you scale with repeatable scale with the process. There’s a great book called the Sales Acceleration Formula, written by my old boss, Mark Rupeyer, who runs Stage Three Capital. It talks about how you identify good-fit customers, how you understand and recruit a sales team, how you manage that sales team, how you scale the right technologies, and use them for sales
HubSpot is the greatest company I’ve ever been associated with. They make software available to scale-ups at a ridiculously low cost. The key to HubSpot is that it expands from start-up to enterprise.
There is also a HubSpot Academy for the last three years that I worked for HubSpot. And there are 400 free classes and lessons on sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, coding, on AI, on everything, just on HubSpot Academy.”
Startup Business Tips, Mentorship, and Networking
Dan Tyre: “We’ll talk a little bit about the role of mentorship and international mentorship for companies throughout the world. And why is cross-border important? The spot Ukraine has in the entrepreneurial community that I work with is amazing.
Business network is one of the things that we found, which helps us talk to startups and work with an entire angel. And what does a business under it? Somebody who understands more about the business, who understands the balance sheet, the income statement, understands the growth process, the tech process, and has operational experience working through problems.
The challenge of being an entrepreneur is that you’re faced with 50 decisions a day, right? And they’re all critical decisions. And if you have somebody who’s gone through it once or twice, or 30 or 40 times, and that can help you see around the corner, it makes it much, much easier.
Mentor’s role in successful start-up businesses
Now, the mentor doesn’t make the decision. The CEO makes the decision. We always make our CEO’s make the decisions. They’re the company. They’re closest to the customer.
They understand it better than everybody else. The mentor’s job is to talk about the different options and try to guide them towards the option that makes more sense to lead to a good result.
Importance of Networking and what makes a startup successful
In the Spring cowork, Rhett and Elena asked me to recruit some of the US mentors, if you saw it. And this is incredible. I’m fairly well-connected and have a lot of context. Of all the people I asked, I’ve got 100% positive responses about cooperation and investment in Ukrainian business. No one said no. I was honored that everybody was able to show their knowledge and their commitment. It’s inspiring. And it’s just the beginning of the partnership, right?
Once you have these connections, then you can call somebody up and say, “I talked to you in 2024. We talked about this.” Now, there are all of these connections between the Ukraine service system, the Boston service system, the Arizona service system, the Silicon Valley service system, and that’s super exciting for me.”
Motivation
Dan Tayer: “Motivation is pivotal for your business success. Without inspiration, you can’t achieve the set goals, handle drawbacks, and deal with obstacles. For example, President Zelensky, the pit of ice is courage, bravery, resilience, attitude, grounded core values, leading by example, supporting democracy in Europe and the world. And it’s for, for example, power and courage in Ukraine.”
Additional Business Tips for Startups and Services
Dan Tayer: “As part of my commitment to entrepreneurs globally, I run office hours. It works like this: I make my schedule available to any entrepreneur anywhere across the world. If you’re not in the city that I’m in, then I’ll get on Zoom, and then we can talk.
I do this 15 times a year, and it’s the funnest thing ever. I feel like the worst of all; people come to me and they say: “Okay, I got a problem here. How do I solve this problem?” I’m like, “All right, then we define the problem. What are your three options? Which one are you going to choose? How do I execute that?”
And you can go to the register link on my website, and then you have to send me the top three things on which you want to work. If I can help you, I’ll give you advice. If I can’t help you, I’ll go search for somebody else who’s an expert in that particular industry, just like we did with the mentors. And we’ll help get somebody who has the experience to handle the issues you’re dealing with.
But I make myself available to creating companies to be sent in my bandwidth, and happy to continue with it.
How to make a killer pitch
As part of the process, I coached hundreds of CEOs on how to do a founder’s pitch. And the plug-and-play people will understand, they’ve listened to millions of founders’ pitches. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. And so, being a data-driven board member, executive, and scale-up guy, I created this bad-ass spreadsheet that helps you understand the key attributes, helps you score how you can improve. And then I put it in the public domain.
So if you’re interested in understanding how to build a world-class founder’s pitch, and you want that, just reach the public version on my website. All right, that was that. Thanks for your time.”
About the Author
Kateryna Moskovenko
Financial Consultant with 14 years of experience in accounting, management accounting, and financial modeling; Founder of Fiscra; Author of courses and trainings in financial modeling, business planning, and entrepreneurship; prepared more than 50 financial models for startups.
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