Does anyone know where the startup industry is heading?

Faster, Higher, Better…
Challenges are an inevitable part of human existence. People strive daily seeking ways to make the world a better place by finding solutions for burning problems across all sides of human life. Startups play significant role in it.

My name is Andrew Tabit. I am a founder of SpecWriter.io, software product designer, software architect, the lean startup practitioner and active participant in “the startup industry” —by my definition it is everyone who helps startups succeed (VCs, accelerators, hubs, startup schools, tool creators, mentors, advisors, service providers, etc). I recently started thinking about what “faster, higher, better” actually means for this industry.

What does the startup industry stand up for? In fact, it helps startup founders identify problems and solve them in the best way. So, the motto “faster, higher, better” for this particular industry translates into “solving more problems, faster, with fewer resources”.

How can more problems be solved faster, with fewer resources?

We as the startup industry “recruit” a startup founder, educate her, and give her tools and resources. Then, she goes through a number of pivots with two possible outcomes — she either finds a problem and solves it or runs out of resources and stops operation — that sounds fair, right?

Let’s take a known failure rate of 90% for startups. Simply, If 100 startup founders start looking for problems, only 10 problems are identified and solved. If we as the startup industry want to solve twice as many problems, what should we do? Obviously, we can 1) reduce the failure rate of startups (this will be a separate discussion) and/or 2) possibly recruit twice as many startup founders — let’s explore this option.

Challenge (Version 1): Recruit more startup founders.

Alright, let’s try this out. Who would be the best candidates for startup founders?

The main thing for a startup founder is to be able to find a problem worth solving. What if we recruit people who already found such problems? Who would they be?

How about domain experts from different industries who know their industries first hand and see problems from the inside. Would our challenge look a bit different then?

Challenge (Version 2): Motivate more domain experts to become startup founders.

Let’s elaborate on this. There are quite a number of domain experts who are already running startups. Why wouldn’t all domain experts become startup founders? What does normally block people from starting a business?

Actually, it is the belief of many that starting a business:

• may require a lot of money
• may be too difficult
• may be too risky

Most will never dare to run a startup as they lack entrepreneurial mindset.

However, there’s a group in the middle who would dare but they need less pressure on money, less difficulty, and less risk for that. They are exactly the potential for the startup industry.

We as the startup industry should put more effort into making things cheaper for this group, making it easier for them to find problems and build solutions, and reducing their risk.

Make it cheaper

Open-source software, cloud infrastructure platforms, no-code and low-code platforms, offshore developers in software; 3D printers, robot kits, hardware labs in hardware — it all allows startup founders to do more things for less. But we still need to keep moving towards $0 cost and we can do it by automating things as the highest cost is labor and automation reduces labor.

Could a startup founder sit at home and build solutions on her own without hiring designers, developers, marketers, etc? That’s the responsibility of the startup industry to make it happen.

Make it easier

If a startup is well funded and can afford to hire the right people, it will definitely reduce complexity for the founder.

However, if you are a domain expert who has never run a business, never built software, and never raised money, then you are pretty far from being a well-funded startup with the right people — this makes things very complex for you.

It is our responsibility as the startup industry to provide tools for startup founders who have close to zero tech skills that would allow them to build proofs of concept, prototypes, or even fully functional products on their own right from their home offices without hiring anyone. The tools should NOT require much training.

A good example would be no-code platforms like Bubble.io and Webflow.com — but they are just a start. Think about an AI assistant who interviews you about the problem you are trying to solve as well as your vision on a solution and generates an app for you right away. It is definitely coming.

Make it less risky

The main risk for startups is to run out of resources before a problem is found and a solution is built. There are different ways to reduce this risk but I want to talk only about letting startups run cheaper experiments faster which gives them more attempts on a problem (pivots) and therefore, more chances to succeed.

As of now, a non-tech startup founder should first design a solution, probably create wireframes, hire a designer to design user interface, hire a developer to build the app. It all takes weeks if not months.

But software by its nature is intangible. You should be able to create and then change it in no time as soon as you think about it. Software should ultimately be created at the speed of your thought. This is another objective for the startup industry. Once this objective is achieved, startup founders will have way more attempts on a problem as they will be able to create MVP in hours vs. weeks and months.

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, the world is technically advancing with different stunning ideas capable of bringing us in the brave new world. The startup industry is a peculiar force behind this movement.

If you consider all the above, you can easily paint the future like this:

Non-tech domain experts sit at home in front of their computers and build solutions for problems in their industries just by talking to an AI assistant in no time without the need to hire anyone and spend any money.

I want this future to come and I am committed to it. Are you with me?