23. Kapil Kale

Co-founder: GiftRocket

“Ideas are great, but it is extremely important to think backwards from distribution. Ask yourself, who would use this, and how would they hear about it?

A lot of times, that will uncover the critical features you need to build into a product to make it useful enough for a user to tell their friends about it.”

22. Rami Essaid

Co-founder and CEO: Distil

“The one thing I wish I knew before founding my first startup would have been how to set clear and measurable goals. The problem with any startup is that there are a million unknowns. As you go through the journey of creating your company, you try and answer as many of those questions as possible and once enough are answered, you know you have actually created something. Along the way, it is easy to get lost. To make sure you don’t, you need to be able to set clear goals and measure the success of your actions. If you see something isn’t working, it is imperative that you recognize it as soon as possible and fix the issue or change course quickly. Goals and metrics are the only way to do so.”