How to Launch A Successful Startup Business

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pushtostart

4 min readFeb 12, 2019

First, the bad news: despite all the hyped-up stories you might read about “the secrets of success,” there is no magical template that works for every startup business. Every business is unique, and a lot depends on being in the right place at the right time. But now the good news: there are certain fundamental attributes that all successful startup businesses share in common. It’s sort of like the famous quote from Leo Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So if you want to join the family of happy startup companies, keep reading…

A relentless commitment to continual improvement

Good companies create a good product and keep selling that product until customers no longer want to buy it. Great companies, on the other hand, create a good product and keep on improving it until it is excellent. Along the way, they learn to anticipate future customer demand and make subtle product changes that keep things fresh, relevant and new.

A focus on the end customer

Don’t be fooled: all companies claim they are customer-focused, but only a small fraction of them are. (If all companies were customer-focused, we wouldn’t have automated phone trees where the sole goal of the company is to prevent you from speaking to a live person.) One way to show that you have the end customer in mind is to provide plenty of options for customization and personalization, so that they get exactly what they want, and not some kind of one-size-fits-all solution.

A willingness to blow things up

At some point, if things aren’t working as planned, you have to be willing to blow things up. Not literally, of course, unless you happen to be running a demolition business. But you do have to be ready to “pivot” to new ideas and new business models if you aren’t making money. The tech world is filled with examples of companies that started out doing X, and ended up doing Y.

Dedication to an overarching mission or goal

Here’s where things get a bit tricky — it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of just chasing the Next Big Thing. There are far too many examples of companies simply inserting trendy terms like “blockchain” into their business model (or even their name, as in the case of Long Island Iced Tea re-branding as Long Blockchain Corp.), all as a way of getting a higher valuation. How many times have you heard a company say something like, “We’re just like Netflix, except we sell widgets’? So one way to keep your startup company on the path to growth is by keeping in mind one central mission or goal that can help to motivate you and your employees.

A careful eye on cash flow and financial performance

At the end of the day, you need to bring in more money than you spend. And that means you need someone on your team who can make sure that you are spending money wisely, and that someone is monitoring how much cash is going in and out of business. Always know your burn rate.

Launching a successful startup business has a lot of moving pieces. But if you are passionate about continual improvement and customer satisfaction, and if you have a vision for where you want to take your company in the future, then it is likely that you will achieve startup success.

Hey! I’m Tomer, an entrepreneur, and maker. You might know me from Mevee, Crane, and Shots, and now Slides among other products I’ve launched! This article is a part of a more extensive series I’m writing mostly based on my experiences and is mainly made of me and my team’s opinions.

I hope this helps you to avoid making the same mistakes I did, and remember to keep shipping!

This article is part of a series to help you with your startup launch and capital raise :

How to Launch A Successful Startup Business

Written by Tomer Dicturel