What I’ll do differently next time

I’m not an unhappy guy. 

Lemon.io is in a great place right now — strong team, strong revenue, everything trending in the right direction. 

But getting here took nine years, and I made a ton of mistakes that slowed us down.

If I were starting over, here are five things I would do differently.

Learn from my mistakes. 👇

Focus on profit from day one

I literally lost millions of dollars because I was spending like a congressman to grow top line revenue, while completely ignoring the bottom line. 

And I found myself in a hole that felt impossible to climb out of.

The turning point came when I shifted my mindset, and started putting profit first.

We eliminated wasteful spending, cut unnecessary projects, and quickly turned things around. 

If I had done this from the beginning, we wouldn’t have wasted so much time chasing vanity metrics instead of sustainable growth.

Delay funding for as long as possible

In year two, I took a $60k investment for 17% equity. 

Dumbest. Deal. Ever. 

When you’re desperate for cash, it’s tempting to take whatever is offered, but you have to consider the long-term cost.

Now, I tell every founder I meet—

Bootstrap as long as you can. The more ownership you retain, the more control you have over your company’s future.

The 17% that I gave away for $60k is now worth millions.

Hire as a last option

Hiring shouldn’t be the first solution — it should be the final step after exhausting all other options.

If I were starting over again, I would ask myself these four questions before every hiring decision:

• Does this task even need to be done? 

• Can we delegate this to an existing team member?

• Can we automate it with software? 

• Can we outsource it instead? 

I didn’t follow this advice, then when everything came to a head, I had to make the brutal decision to lay off 10% of my team.

It sucked.

And it could have been avoided if I had only hired as a last resort.

Go back to in-person work

Hot take—

After 12 years of remote work, I’m convinced in-person collaboration is underrated. 

Remote work has advantages, but it also has limitations. 

In a remote setup, things take longer. Feedback loops are slower. Team bonding is harder. 

There’s a reason the most innovative companies have physical offices: speed, culture, and deep collaboration.

That’s not to say remote work doesn’t work — it does, and I’m doing it now. 

But my next company? It’ll be in-person.

I wouldn’t build another tech company

Being in tech, it’s easy to assume all the value is here. It’s not. 

Tech is great, but it’s also crowded, competitive, and often disconnected from real-world, tangible impact. 

If I start another business, it won’t be another tech startup. 

It’ll be something more fundamental — solving real problems for real people in industries that aren’t flooded with venture-backed competitors racing to the bottom.

—

That’s my list. If I had known all this from day one, we’d be way ahead of where we are today. Hopefully, this helps you avoid the same mistakes.

–Aleksandr

P.S. – What’s the #1 thing you’d do differently if you started over? Hit reply and let me know.

Catch you next Sunday!