[Smirnoff]

After working for a big multinational pay company, an investment bank, and a year-long internship at a VC firm, and now starting my own business, I really appreciate the experiences that I got from BigCo, especially when it comes to operations, managing customer service, and doing lots of manual work.

Here are my lessons: 1. MVP should be very minimal. Do not bloat it with lots of automation. Just let a human deal with it. That's when you get real user feedback, which you can later automate.

2. Track your interactions with customers (investors, angels, partners) via "Saleforce"-like software. There are cleaner and easier versions out there, which can integrate with the web or mobile apps, and the customer will not even know he or she submitted a ticket or has some reference number.

3. At startup things go really fast, however the tech is being slow to release.