When you’ve formulated a new business idea in your head, where do you go for advice on how to make your dream a reality? Your parents? Best friend? Google?
1. On Following Your PassionThe only thing that will get you through the tough times of being an entrepreneur — and there will be many of those — is being very singular and passionate about what you are doing. If you’re not, if you’re chasing money or anything else, then the highs and lows of startup life will absolutely wear you out.
2. Having a good business ideaSimple, right? One of the foremost requirements to becoming a successful business is having an idea that can both appeal to (at least a portion of) the general public and offers an obvious way of making money. Think about the unsexy stuff too - how you’ll scale, how you’ll monetize. “I think it makes a lot of sense for companies to think about it as a business first because in the market overall what I see is that people are building a solution that’s looking for a problem, rather than coming up with a solution for an actual problem,” says Reijo Pold, director at BGTA, an accelerator for tech companies from the UK, the EU and the US in China.
3. Communicate the idea wellIt is much important to communicate what you have in mind to the investors next to you. How much traction your initial idea gets is down to how well you can communicate it to potential investors and members of the public alike. “While pitching for advancement it’s really important that companies have a clear concise pitch and documentations to back it up,” says Pold. “There’s a huge difference between companies who have trained and have a polished up process and companies which, while they may have a very good product or a company behind them, can’t communicate it in a concise way”.
4. Understand your marketThe ying to any great business idea’s yang should be a conceptualization of who we are targeting for the business. And one of the biggest mistakes new founders can make, according to the experts, is misunderstanding the size of or other details about the market for their idea. “People might find a really good idea for a great product that some people will like, but once they actually get it out there they realize those people in the world are 1,000 not 10 million, and you need a much bigger number to build a business,” says Rob O’Donovan, co-founder and CEO of CharlieHR, an HR platform for small businesses.
5. Surround yourself with the right peopleWhile this one may seem obvious, in practice it can be trickier. The people you surround yourself with in your personal life may not always be the people best suited to carry a business idea forward. Getting on well with people at the startup stage is important, but their skills in business and what they can contribute to the startup is more so. Look for people who will behave in a way that excites people and inspires people, not in a way that sucks energy from the room. Try to look into the future and decide what kind of environment you would want your company to have. The people you hire at the early stages can define how your company evolves so be careful about who you bring on.
6. Look for the right fundingSome startups with an idea for a popular consumer product may seek out funding through crowdsourcing, some may seek angel investing and some, more mature startups may instead seek funding from venture capitalists. It is important to keep in mind however that funding from the latter is usually tied to stringent expectations about high rates of growth and returns.
7. Be adaptableIt’s rare - perhaps even impossible - that a startup idea will run smoothly from inception to fruition. It’s inevitable that you will hit stumbling blocks along the way, but it’s how you react to these that’s important. The only thing you could be sure of is that it is wrong, and it was just a matter of how wrong, and how one reacts to this that mattered. 8. On Talking to Your CustomersIf you haven’t spent at least as much time talking to your customers as you have building your prototype, stop and go have as many conversations as you possibly can. Ask open-ended questions about people’s experiences and challenges and listen very carefully to the words they use. You’ll get more game-changing insights about your product, messaging, positioning and sales strategy than you could ever learn from reading business books.
9. On Hiring a Great TeamNever, ever, settle on a co-founder. If it’s not right, take a pause. Even if you have to drop the project entirely for a while. Even if you fall far behind. Because a great co-founder will just take you to so many amazing places, so much faster. Get great at recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and on boarding. Building a world-class team is perhaps the single greatest talent a leader can have, but in my experience, few new entrepreneurs recognize it — let alone work deliberately to develop their skills in this area.
10. On Nurturing Your Company CultureCulture is something that you should manage intentionally. Culture is not a ping-pong table, beer, and a dog-friendly office. Culture is a competitive advantage and it will be the thing that helps your employees delivers great work. Start by taking the time to identify your values as a company. Then write them down, post them on the wall, and revisit them on a quarterly basis. “Anywhere that you see a company die, it tends to be in my view, from a culture issue,” says O’Donovan. “If you have a really strong, really adaptable, high performance culture and business, you just tend to find a solution. For example, for the original idea that they launched with, maybe it turns out that the markets too small, or they can’t develop the technology that they believed they could. But if you’ve got the right people, you tend to find that they can find another opportunity somewhere else.”