5 Steps to Increase Chances of Success for Your Startup
With the digital leapfrog we are experiencing in Myanmar, technology is more accessible to everybody than ever. With over 33 million active SIM Users and 80% Smartphone penetration rate, the opportunity is there for entrepreneurs to use technology and provide services to the large group of people.
Now, startups are booming in Myanmar and almost everybody is dreaming to become Tech Entrepreneurs. However, most aspiring entrepreneurs never get to build a successful startups. Here are the 5 steps that anybody can take to battle against all odds and build a successful startup.
- Find a Problem That People Would Pay For
The most common pitfall for aspiring entrepreneurs is creating solutions before identifying a problem that people need and would pay for the solution. It is very tempting to jump on the idea you have but most people failed due to not having big enough market.
Does it something that a society (or even neighborhood) needs? Does it something you can do? Are you passionate about doing?
Those are the questions that you should ask yourself before jumping into the idea. The ideal business idea would be something that ticks all the boxes. If you are working hard to fulfill a need but if you hate doing that you will just end up resenting and quitting before you see the fruit you sow. Likewise, if you are working on things you are passionate about but there is no market for it, you won’t be able to generate any revenue or sales. Even if you have passion and market for your business idea, if you do not have the ability to execute it, you will just fail with your operations.
I would suggest you to write down any idea that you have without evaluating it. After you have the good list of ideas, just trim it down using the questions above and find the problem that you are passionate about, that you are best suited to solve and that has significant market.
2. Validate Your Ideas
Nobody is going to steal your ideas. Ideas are shit without good execution. In addition, if you are going to build a business around your idea, you are going to start in the real world with real people, not in your imaginary world. In order to do that you need real feedbacks from real people.
To validate your business idea, you should be going out talking to people who might care about your products. Most people make mistakes here talking only to those who they are close with. We all want to feel good about ourselves that most often than not we talk to our friends and family about our ideas knowing that it will feel good. In most cases, their feedbacks will be biased and they won’t even be our potential customers.
You should carefully choose your interviewees. They should be your potential clients, they should be someone who fit the profile of your ideal customer. Conduct 10 to 15 minutes informal interviews with them and get as much honest feedback and thoughts as you can. Lastly, review all your feedbacks and decide how you should implement your business idea.
3. Build a Winning Team
If you are to build a successful startup, you will need a great core team. They should be someone who share the same passion and keep you going ups and downs of the startup journey. All startups at some point will inevitably face a setback and a good team will stand by you through the test of time.
You should find people who will complement your competencies and skills. As human being, we tend to find someone who can trust and know for the long time. However, most of the time, they are not the people who will complement your skill-sets. You should go and find people who are smarter than you especially in their area of expertise.
It is believed that the startup dream team consists of Hacker, Hustler and Hipster. Hacker with his/her knowledge of coding, will turn the new idea into reality while Hustler will do business dealings and get traction. Hipster, on the other hand, with their flair and creativity make sure their final product is way cooler than any other products on the market.
However, getting a cofounder is like getting married. Know your partner well before the professional tie-up. To avoid any clashes later on, it is best to make sure that you guys share the long term compatibility.
4. Learn From People Who Have Gone Through The Similar Journey Before
Another step of building a successful startup is having a mentor who will help you through ups and downs of your startup journey. However, for most aspiring entrepreneurs, they do not look for mentors as hard as they do for co-founders.
Having a mentor will be hugely beneficial for your startups as they have already been there and done that. You would be able to learn from your mentor things that are never shared in books and their expertise and experience will help you overcome whenever you face a wall.
In addition, angel investors and VCs tend to invest in people who were introduced by someone they trust. Mentors have vast network of friends who will greatly beneficial to your business.
Self-confidence is highly necessary for startup founders and having someone who will practically guide you and share your worries will have positive mental effects on the founders. According to SBA, 70% of mentored business survived past the fifth year while 30% of startups failed within first 2 years while 50% failed to get past their fifth year.
5. Build — Measure — Learn
Most startups have to work with limited resources. Henceforth, money and time are the luxury that startup founders can’t afford. So the startups need to fail fast, learn fast and success fast.
In order to do that, you would need to get your product out as fast as possible. Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and shipping it out to your potential customers is the fastest way to get valuable feedbacks and learn from that. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development. The goal of MVP is to maximise learning, not to develop fully-featured prototype of the product.
The Build-Measure-learn method help startups be fast, agile and efficient. One of the component of Build-Measure-Learn is having a hypotheses and pushing out MVP to test those hypotheses. Before you push out your MVP, you need to identify measurable metrics that will help you test your hypotheses.
As startups you need to complete the circle as many as possible in short frame of time. You will need to push out MVP, test hypotheses and incorporate those feedback for your future product development as much as possible.
Those are the 5 small steps that aspiring entrepreneurs should take while building a startup. The startup journey is long and tough but it is not impossible. Keep working hard and be persistent even if you face hurdles and I wish you all the best in your journey towards making a difference.
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