The title surely sounds weird, especially coming from a founder of a tech start-up. Or as we like to call it these days, a company. Just to clarify, I’m not advocating against pursuing your idea and starting a company. I’m trying to warn you of the pitfalls on the way to becoming a successful business. And the largest mistake one can make is falling into a spiralling roll of the eluding start-up world.
The Euro Start-up scene
To make few things clear. The start-up world is quite different on this side of the pond. With that in mind, some things may not translate for you readers from other continents.
A combination of factors has created (or is still creating) a booming start-up industry around here. And by industry I mean bunch of advisers, mentors, consulting companies, accelerators, and people that just like to hang around. Among the leading causes for this is the EU funding, being shuffled down by all sorts of incubators, accelerators and VCs. Like with all things in life, there’s good and then there’s less good in this mix.
The challenging part for the newcomers is spotting the difference.
All this money is attracting people trying to get their share. Which means you suddenly get a lot (and I mean A LOT) of co-workings, conferences, meet-ups and similar activity all over Europe. Events where semi-launched products are being pitched as the hottest thing and where “experts” offer their freshly googled opinions on all things start-up.
I know, it all sounds very Silicon Valley, but the hard reality is, it isn’t. Smart money is really hard to find, there’s no single market to attack and grow fast, even the press coverage is limited. And in the end, you’re just pitching your idea to the same people all over again. People who are neither your customers nor your investors. But they will gladly give advice. And take your money.
The walk
Let’s start in the beginning. So you get your own unique and brilliant idea, whatever that might be, discuss with some friends and decide to throw the safe future out the window to pursue the start-up dream.
The obvious place to visit first is your local co-working, or perhaps a weekly start-up meet-up. Where you get to know the people, do some market research (or at least that’s what you think you’re doing) and generally have a great time mingling with the awesome crowd of like-minded youth.
Skip ahead to few months later, you’ve now perfected your pitch, found the team and are ready to go on pitching events. There’s no shortage of those either nowadays. It’s probably your first contact with investors and judging panel. And you probably did worse than you expected. But that’s ok, because there’s plenty of chances to try again.
Right around here is where it gets tricky. To really achieve something, you should focus on the users, getting the product-market fit, testing, talking to customers (you know, the people prepared to give you money). But instead the flashy start-up world gets so many founders caught up in the illusion of progress. Going from conference to conference, from pitch to pitch, isn’t progress. It’s wasted time. Time you should be spending talking to users. Time you should be spending improving your product or service. Time you should be looking for money.
The advice
If you find yourself wandering from one event to the other, stop (unless you’re making money organising these events or talking at them, in that case, good job).
The hard truth is, you will not find the solution for your business there. Those who have it, are working on it, while you’re mostly wasting time.
Maybe, you’ll miss out on meeting some great person. Perhaps you’ll even pass on some minor investment opportunity. But you might get something much more valuable. Paying customers.
Step out of the start-up mingle awesomeness and start selling.
Best money is the one earned on the market. It’s also the cheapest money. After you’ve visited your fair share of events, met everyone there is to meet, take a pause from it. Focus on your product, your team, your users. Try and build a business. As Arthur nicely put it, run a business not a start-up.
After you’ve done that, you can always go back to those events. This time they’ll even invite you. Perhaps as a speaker. Because you know, there’s not really that many companies that actually managed to transition from start-up to profitable business.
In the end, the path to success comes down to two things:
- Stop the endless stream of mingling with people who are not your target customers.
- Start talking to actual users and selling.
Bonus advice: Don’t take advice from people who haven’t built their own company before. Their knowledge only comes from books. Old books.
If you enjoyed this or share similar thoughts, please share, comment and press “recommend” below. You will have my eternal gratitude.
