How to become certain about what you’re doing is right? From a Founder’s experience.
We are used to seeing founders who run their businesses successfully and reach important milestones such as making an exit, receiving investment, a prestigious award, or key customers. However, we don’t know much about these people’s secrets of how they predict their success, especially when everything is uncertain.
I founded my startup when the pandemic hit the world. At the same time, I had changed the country I lived in and my daughter had just been born. My wife had just left her job, and I was just a PhD student. You might assume I have rich parents, but that’s not true. On the contrary, I had lost my mother and had very limited contact with my father and siblings. After being accepted into an incubator with a startup idea, one of the two mentors at that organization suggested that it might be better to suspend the startup, as I haven’t yet gotten any users for my SaaS product. In addition to all the issues mentioned, I was going to have a co-founder with a strong background in marketing, but changed his mind and didn’t resign from his well-paid white collar job. On top of all that, I lived in a country with poor funding opportunities for early-stage startups. Are all these arguments enough to show you how crazy I am? So am I crazy? Actually not much. I just continued to take risks in the light of the information, observations and experiences I gathered and I will present you an action plan.
Today, I am the co-founder and CEO of Pivony. We are a team of 10 full-time employees and 3 advisors. We have great corporate clients from the Telecom, Retail, and Banking sectors. Pivony bridges the empathy gap between companies and their customers. Companies using Pivony see a significant increase in customer retention and growth in the first few months. As you can see, it’s easy to talk about achievements today, but they all came after 2 years of devoted effort. The key question here is: Why didn’t I stop building Pivony despite dozens of challenges? Since I’m not a time traveler (otherwise I would have found many ways to effortlessly make money like winning the lottery), then how was I so sure that Pivony would grow up without any pivot? In the remainder of this post, I’ll outline the key factors and share with you how I found my path to success. Do not apply them without filtering them because every startup and founder has a unique journey. Take my advice to re-evaluate your current plans and progress. Additionally, you can contact me to share your own experiences.
Today, the war between Russia and Ukraine continues and the economic recession has turned our lives into a nightmare. The majority of people have decided to keep their current conditions without taking risks, which means only a few people leave their jobs to start a business. It is unfortunate that very talented people prefer to freeze time until everything is crystal clear. On the other hand, there are risk-takers who are not affected by external factors. This post is for both profiles, while the first profile may become more confident to get out of his comfort zone, the second profile may choose to minimize their risk.
A. Check out whether the market you target with your solution is big enough.
Having a big market size means that you are lucky enough to have space and time to grow. You probably have a niche solution, which is great, and potentially it addresses a large audience’s problem. Then you are on a good path. On the opposite, if the market is limited and all of your competitors are in a running after each other to win the same clients, then it’s better you pivot your business idea or take other important decisions.
How big is the problem you solve? Define your target persona, and identify how many users are there in the world from that persona.
B. How do potential customers solve their problems today?
Don’t make assumptions on your desk, and do not delegate this to your employees or sales partners. Listen to your potential customers directly as you are the founder.
What are they doing instead of using your product? What are their pain points, and what are their gain areas? How do they spend their day? By listening to your potential customers carefully, you should start building connections between their characteristics and your solution. Design your Value Proposition canvas for your customer persona, and update it when necessary. In B2B sales, it’s essential to know your customer’s business, but also their needs and trigger areas comprehensively. Do you take the smell any opportunity?
C. Check out the dynamics of your industry.
If you have no direct competitor, then you probably don’t know about your target market well. If you are aware of other competitors, then check their growth pace regularly. Do any of your competitors have been incorporated at the same time period as your startup? Did the old-school companies have started to launch new products that will become a potential threat to you? These are very good signs because it shows that the problem you are focused on is recognized by action-takers and they invest their money and resources to gain market traction. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were not the only people who predicted the future of personal PCs, there were hundreds of others who were in that field at the same time. The same is valid for electric cars. You may know about Tesla but there were dozens of other brands you haven’t heard of before that have similar technology to Tesla.
D. Validate your solution, team, growth strategies, and learning skills in very safe but also highly challenging environments.
Yes, I am referring to the incubators and accelerators. Those programs are open to applications at least once a year. As the Startup ecosystem grows fast, you will find many opportunities to do networking and learn from experts. They are trained specialists or business professionals who will listen to you carefully and give you the most honest and direct feedback. From your business model to your go-to-market strategy, your unique differentiation areas and unfair advantage, and more. They also have startup-friend mentors who are experts in their fields. Be open to getting challenged, and track your progress during these programs. If you are unable to pass to the next steps listen to their feedback and revisit your strategies.
Bonus: Be open to pivoting your business and your plans.
Many successful companies we see today had started their journey with different solutions than they offer today. Being a founder, you will talk to hundreds of potential customers already. During these valuable moments, listen more instead of speaking about your solution. It’s a typical syndrome that many first-time founders are addicted to their product, and they dominate the conversation by explaining every single feature of their products. Always listen to your customer, and pay attention to how many of them have similar problems. Remember, you have to talk to the same Ideal customer profile, otherwise, you cannot have valid results.
