Each day, hundreds of aspiring, talented and passionate entrepreneurs try their luck with the start-ups, unfortunately very few get to get the ball rolling.
Entrepreneurship is the new buzz word associated with freedom and a rewarding proposition. However, that’s not an easy road to traverse and only those who do embark on the entrepreneurial journey understand the struggles and challenges of the journey. The bleak reality of the start-up industry is the fact that nine out of ten startups fail to sustain through the first year.
If you think you have an entrepreneurial soul, the PASSION and willingness to reach the heights of success, you need to first comprehend the obstacles (cold statistics) of the journey and digest the bleak success ratio of startups. While I may sound regressive and discouraging, this blog intends to encourage entrepreneurs to become smart, so as to increase their chances of success. Remember, living in a tech-driven world, it’s the smart entrepreneurs that pluck all the success by outperforming others.
So, as a potential entrepreneur, your only chance to succeed in a rather hostile startup industry is by understanding the challenges beforehand and learn to survive through them.
Here are some pressing challenges that kill many promising startups and how you can deal and thrive by overcoming them:
– Product and Its Market
Perhaps the biggest and most important challenge for any startup is to understand their market and find the perfect product that fits into the demands of the market. In view of this, it’s crucial to conduct market validation for your business idea before committing to it. According to a recent survey by Fortune, failure to come up with market validation for their products is one of the top reasons why startups fail.
Remember, if you create products, which no one wants, you are doomed to success.
The key here is to conduct thorough and detailed market research to identify the potential audience, understand the consumers’ preferences and choose realistic competitors. Navigate through previous researches and gather as much data as you can get hold off, to validate your product idea. Just before you start production of your product, ask yourself if your product is really different from the rest of the competitors and does it offer real value to people?
– Human Resource Capital
Apart from the market validation, another big flaw that drags startups to the verge of extinction is the failure to hire and retain competent and relatable human resources. Two things are important here, the quality of the human resource as well as their ability to fit in your culture.
Startups don’t always offer the best of compensation or benefits to its employees, however, they do enable passionate and talented youngsters a chance to spread their wings and explore new horizons outside the strict protocols of large corporations.
Remember, teamwork is the essence of success in all professional settings, but it is all the more important for startups where you need people who are willing to collaborate, share and gain benefits of getting the business off the ground.
Also, retaining the right employees is just as crucial as hiring them. Most of the time, startups fall into complacency in terms of employee management, which results in employees switching their jobs. The key here is to keep the right employees engaged and attached to the goals and objectives of the company. A good way to keep your right employees engaged is by giving them a stake at the company, hearing their voices and listening to their grievances.
– Understand the Finances and Cash Flow Management
Moving on to more technical challenges, handling the finances and managing cash flow is amongst the top challenges that often drag businesses into oblivion. It’s certainly isn’t an easy task to put your money at stake to make money and you need to adapt the most pragmatic approach to budgeting to control cost, while not drying up the financial pool to assess new opportunities.
The two getaways in terms of finances are to either secure capital funding from investors or bootstrapping. If you are going with the investor funding, you need to ensure a practice, pragmatic and optimal pitching and convince them that you got everything covered to gain customer traction with seamless operations. On the other side, while bootstrapping is in itself a great challenge to overcome, it nonetheless saves you from relying too much on investors.
– Competition
Last but not least, it’s important for startups to precisely evaluate and assess the abilities of the competitors. To be able to gain any traction in the market, you need to have a precise understanding of your competitors’ standing. Look out for the products offered by the competitors and identify any loopholes which you can fill in with your product.
The idea here is to not follow the competitors, rather have an understanding of the market and evaluate the current trends of the market. You shouldn’t lose your sleep for the competitors, rather dissect everything they are offering and identify their limitations to leverage.
Final Thoughts
The entrepreneurial journey is no cakewalk, succeeding at it is even faraway achievement. However, the global industry has seen numerous miraculous startup success stories, which continues to inspire millions across the world. Remember, the modern-day industry is filled with hostile competition and deep pitfalls but at the same time, there are endless opportunities for those who are willing to learn and work smarter.
TAKE THE PUNT BUT CALCULATED….. FUEL YOUR PASSION BUT WITH CARE…
