What Matters 

Get the product right. 

Find (low-cost) ways to make sure your product is right. The more anonymous and data-driven customer feedback can be, the better. You need to know if your baby is ugly, she says.

Benchmark it. 

Benchmark your product against others in the market. Find a way to validate your concept.

Get pricing right. 

Resist the urge to go too high, or make the mistake of going too low. Price is based on what people are willing to pay, not what your product costs you. You want to have a margin, but if you price your product wrong from the beginning, it can cause other pieces not to work.

Get the packaging right. 

Spend time and money here, and don’t settle for something you're not happy with. Changing this later will be painful.

Get the branding right.

For packaging, make sure your brand is clear - don't try to be everything to be everyone. Figure out how you want your brand to feel - is it Rustic? Bold? Casual? We settled on Sunny and Bold.

Create a financial model and prove the business is viable. 

This should go without saying, but you need a basic financial model where after reaching some basic efficiencies of scale, you can make money. Some things will cost more than you think. Do research to make sure your cost assumptions are valid.

Get your first customers.

This means you. On the phone. A lot. No matter how much you hate cold calling. It's you in the store, you at the trade shows. Think through how you'll onboard - and service - customers before you launch.

Rack up proof points.

When you get to year two, you're going to need to prove your business is worth it to investors, potential employees, and potential customers. Find a way to prove you're doing something neat.

What doesn't matter

Building out a big team.

Hire one, two, at most three employees. Stay nimble and very cheap. To build a great company, you're going to need exceptional talent on your leadership team - talent that you can't afford or attract in year one. 

Many startup entrepreneurs assume advertising will generate business. But, it's expensive and useless if the other points above don't work.

Aside from personal savings and convertible notes, it is difficult to fundraise without proof of concept, which in consumer products means selling well in stores or online. Plan to bootstrap and run lean in year one.

 Dividing up equity. 

Defer this conversation; 50% of zero is still zero. Shaving off equity when you have nothing can also give you less to work with when you really need to raise capital. 

Source: www.inc.com. For the full story, read https://www.inc.com/katlin-smith/the-cheat-sheet-to-year-1-as-an-entrepreneur.html