Learn HTML and CSS. And become good at it.
Build things. Playing around with (small) UI elements is one thing.
Read, read, read.
There's more to front-end development than building a website.
Know your tools.
Version control will save your life....
Be the middleman.
Do not rush.
If the users aren't paying enough, they still fail. If they don't have a positive cash flow, they still fail.
Which reminds me of an interview with a German logistics start-up recently. They are funded by 100 million €, a lot of cash for what is basically a simple forwarder. When the co-founder said, that they don't see any risk for them, because their run-way is somewhere between 12 and 18 months I was shocked They have customers, they charge a margin for every transport. Yet they seem not to be cash positive. And their burn rate is at the very least somewhere around 2 million per months.
Coming from that industry, I have no idea how that is even remotely possible. If the crisis would have hit 6 months later, their situation would have been a lot different. And that during a period where everyone is scrambling to keep transportation and logistics running.
Because the existing unicorns all have massive market share, and use that to dominate their field. VCs don't want slowly profitable companies. They want massive unicorns they can flip at IPO and get out before taking on long term business risk.
It kinda sucks, because I say it's healthier to have a large number of small, competing businesses than a winner-takes-all scenario.
Yes and no. There is one benefit to huge winners: they have the cash to invest in R&D. I doubt Google would be building quantum chips if they didn't have a massive cash cow or two to feed that.
Generally only governments and massive cash cow monopolies or near monopolies can afford to invest in basic research. That's because on any time scale shorter than a decade basic research is just setting fire to money. You need money to burn to do it.