Be Prepared Advice for Startup Founders

Startups may be different from traditional business schemes in many respects, but one thing is exactly the same – in order to succeed, a startup founder must carefully think everything through and prepare to all eventualities. If anything, startups are even more sensitive to mistakes made at planning stage – according to statistics, vast majority of startups fail simply because their founders miscalculated the market and delivered the product or service nobody needs. Thus, if one wants to create a successful startup, one should understand that the work done before it is launched is much more important than maintenance further on. First of all, every startup should have a solid underlying idea that will be the basis of its business plan. If you create a startup but don’t understand your potential customers, know not what they want and need, you will simply imitate a startup, only to find out that although the idea looked plausible in project, it just fails to deliver. An ideal startup idea is best described as something people lack but don’t know they lack it yet; after you tell them about your product or service, they should think: â€Å"Gosh, I can’t imagine how I lived without it all my life† – and immediately feel pain of not having it. That is what it supposed to be; and a lot of startup founders simply don’t get it. They are too enamored by the beauty of their ideas, by how sleek and dynamic their creation looks to stop and ask themselves: are there any real people who actually need this? In fact, overconfidence in one’s ‘brain-child’ is what brings about the downfall of many a startup: founders are so sure that their product or service is going to sell like hot pies that they neglect creating a proper amount of buzz about it. Thus, before launch you should create as widespread an online presence as possible. Join all possible social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other networks that may be relevant for your sphere of activity (Instagram and Pinterest come to mind), create a website. Speaking of websites – this element is especially important, yet a lot of startup founders seem to be simply going through the motions when it comes to this. Everybody says that a startup should have a website – and thus they make a website to place a tick in â€Å"To-Do† list. Instead, you may start a blog with interesting and useful content for potential clients. Blogs are especially effective because they allow you to publish new relevant content regularly and clearly show that the work is going on and the project is alive and well. What may this content be? Anything: industry news, details about your progress, fun facts, tips and tricks, anything your flight of fancy suggests. Think of people who may be interested in your project: influencers, authority figures or simply potential clients, and send them emails, inviting them to early access to your product or service. In other words: let as many people as possible know about your existence, your work, and your plans. Make them excited about it all, make them wait for you to start. Also, tracking the results of your activity via Google Analytics may be a good idea as well. It doesn’t help very much to do something if you cannot be sure if it is effective and to which extent exactly. By checking where traffic comes from, which pages seem to be the most interesting and so on you will get an insight into the minds of your clients. Startups exist in the realm of ideas, so ideas are what should work ideally when it comes to them. Make sure everything is arranged like clockwork before you make the first step – and success will be yours.