Before Starting Up

Running a startup is an arduous undertaking, you need to have an indomitable spirit. When running a startup you need to be accelerated, if your desire doesn’t have a sense of urgency then the desire dies and along with it kills the zeal. Before you initiate your startup, consider these 5 key points.

It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.

Always be prepared to face the crash. I am not being negative, but sometimes a slight error in your product or service can bring things down. In Noah’s case he was lucky, God informed him about the storm. but in real world scenario, that doesn’t happen. You need to make sure, in case of failure, you are not in a financial distress.

Research before you Start.

You think you got a million dollar idea? Did you research? Did you take time to find the demand of the product or service that you are going to bring out. you are going for creating some new social network or social media, then you are in an act of serendipity. Why i say that? just have a look at the number of social networks and social media sharing sites out there, its gone fatigue. Whatever product or service you are gonna bring out, make sure there’s some demand or market for your product.

Hiring the right people.

This is the most important feature of a startup. The people, these are your real assets. Always hire for culture fit and make sure the person is willing to put the efforts and hard work. skills can be taught, but you can teach the person to fit in the culture. why culture fit is so important? because this is how the company runs, your employees will be interacting and coordinating with each other daily, so the better the understanding the smoother will be the functioning of the workplace, and its good to keep the employees happy, but you also need to keep the employees engaged. You need to keep the employees connected to the company goals and values, so they understand what it takes to make the company successful and will be more willing to put in the efforts.

Move Fast Break things.

Once you have decided the product or service you want to bring out, start moving fast, have a meeting with your team, do the brain storming, (always make sure less number of meetings and more amount of work.), lay the foundation, decide the Database structure, decide the start, once confident, lock it there and there, and let the hacking begin. Work on the match strike principle, analyse every day on the amount of work done, that doesn’t mean, you exhaust your employees and kill them. The intention here is, ‘Make Fast Fail fast’. The faster you fail, the faster you vision improvements and optimizations, and the more better you understand the demand of the market.

Have a mentor.

This is an optional recommendation, but good to have one, a mentor can be your stress reliever in times of burnout. Find a Mentor, not someone who just give talks and philosophies, but someone who himself is an Entrepreneur or has been one, has gone through hardships, and knows the ins and outs of his domain. This should be the guy, with whom you can discuss your failures, evaluate yourself as an entrepreneur.

And a final note, remember this, success always starts with a failure, most of the successful products, ideas, entrepreneurs have train wrecks behind them. People learn by doing until they perfect the idea.

photo source: amfetakrom