Startups | 7 Ways to Launch Your Startup Faster

“Starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In mid-air, the entrepreneur begins building a parachute and hopes it opens before hitting the ground.” — Robert Kiyosaki

After what seems like an eternity of preparation, it’s finally time to take your startup from conception to reality. Remember that speed is the key to success! Unnecessary delays can damage a startup before it ever has the chance to properly take off. Moving quickly enables you to get your product or service to market, while ensuring you secure the resources necessary to survive and thrive. Did you know that only 18% of entrepreneurs succeed in their first venture of business (Harvard Business School). However, some of the most successful entrepreneurs have a massive pile of failures behind them. So, where do you even start?

1. Just Do It!

The above seems like the most obvious statement in the world, but if you don’t actually sit down and start the process, you’ll never make any progress. It’s easy to find excuses to delay your start date, but remember there’s really no wrong way to start. Just begin the process, whether it’s registering your domain name, performing a rough product sketch, etc. One thing will lead to another, and it will get the ball rolling. Don’t be consumed with perfectionism in the early stages as this will most certainly delay things.

2. Get a Co-Founder

Having a partner in your startup will help you shoulder the early load of launching your startup. A co-founder also gives you support and someone to bounce ideas off. Perhaps even more importantly, partnering with a strong-minded individual may help balance out any of your own shortcomings. A co-founder should act as a powerful complement to your own skills, and bring an even greater hustle to your team, starting right from the top.

3. Hire the Right People

Try to ensure you hire the right people that are the right “cultural fit” for your startup. Startups have been crippled due to a series of poor hires, so you need to start with a strong interview process (read here for more on hiring talent v experience). Don’t just lead the candidate with a boring Q&A format, instead put them to the test by handing them the reins and see where they take the conversation. For those who don’t have time to manage new hires, consider hiring remote workers. The greatest talent isn’t always in your region, and building out a freelance team to complement your in-house team can go a long way to helping scale your startup.

4. It’s not all about $$$

This advice may seem counter intuitive, of course the end goal is ultimately to make money, and it’s essential to pay close attention to what’s going out the back door as well as what’s coming in the front. However, becoming obsessed over where the next payday will come from can slow you down and take you far off track. Instead, focus on the product and be ready to pivot knowing that a good product will always make money.

“Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.” — Sam Walton

5. Know Your Audience

One of the biggest failures of startups is not doing comprehensive market research to see where their competitors have failed and succeeded. It’s good to learn from your own mistakes, but wiser to learn from others. How can you expect to get customers if you don’t even understand who your target audience is? Find out who your competitors are targeting and what methods they are using. Once you figure out who you’re selling to, learn as much about that audience as possible and carry out a few test campaigns until you find one that scales. Once you discover your sweet spot, it will guide your design and marketing strategy towards something that your audience will be receptive to, and your startup will start experiencing growth.

6. Don’t Ignore Customers

Once you begin to understand the needs of your customers and start developing a loyal customer base, it’s important not to take them for granted. It’s natural to assume the best way to enjoy growth is to focus on customer acquisition, but if you are losing customers quicker than you are gaining them it will only result in disaster. Like I mentioned before, it’s not always about who is coming in, customers don’t just leave for no reason and if you can’t figure out why you may as well close the door. Customer retention is critical to any successful startup, so make sure you nurture existing revenue sources and build a solid rapport with your initial customers. Remember, investors love to see repeat business!

7. Don’t be afraid to pivot

Don’t get so caught up on your ‘vision’ that your product’s true potential is overlooked. I’m sure everyone knows how Facebook started out, and look how many evolutions it has gone through to become the empire it is today. You don’t have to get it right straight away, get comfortable with the fact that your product might go in a direction that you never anticipated. Accepting the fact that change is inevitable allows you to get your product out much quicker, so you can start to receive feedback and analyse data. You can start to make positive changes to your product more quickly than you would otherwise, which again leads to greater feedback. You’ll learn more about your market, investors will be pleased, and you should eventually experience greater growth in a shorter time.

In the word’s of my all time favourite Mr Bruce Lee, “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo survives by bending with the wind.” To be a startup founder you must be like bamboo, accept the fact that nothing is ever set in stone and embrace change as you go along. With a combination of intuition, preparation and a lot of hustle you’re on the path to startup success.