Anjan Pathak — May 20, 2020 The year 2020 marked the end of an amazing decade. A decade where we all witnessed the emergence of new businesses that changed how we humans functioned. Be it related to how we worked, how we traveled, or how we bought our daily amenities everything became interconnected and much more efficient. And all of these were made possible by some brilliant entrepreneurs across the globe.
These entrepreneurs have inspired many to transform their ideas into reality aimed towards solving various problems for the greater good. And this very point sets an entrepreneur apart from a businessman.
Being an entrepreneur may sound really cool. But the truth is far from what you can think of if you still haven’t started moving in that direction.
Many may argue that initiating a startup is easy when you have got all the necessary resources. However, there are many instances when once counted as the most potential startups a few of them have tumbled down.
As a co-founder myself, I have come to realize a few points where most of the mistakes are made while building a startup.
Here are those 7 mistakes that every entrepreneur must avoid for healthy growth and stability.
Market Opportunity and Competition
The success of a startup or any business is directly proportional to the market opportunity for their products or services.
In today’s date, we can see a lot of startups providing identical services and competing with each other especially in the B2C domain. This eventually creates a lot of options for consumers to choose from. And here it becomes a tough job for any new player to generate demand for their services or products amidst the already existing crowd.
Therefore, it is highly advisable for every entrepreneur to do an in-depth study about the market opportunity and the competitors in their specific area of business.
Not Understanding the Scalability Factor
The next factor that comes is scalability. Making your startup thrive is all about how efficient your business model is. For a service-based business model, it means how many clients can your services absorb and cater to at any given point of time. And for a product-based business model, it means how efficiently you can increase your production capacity without putting much burden on your existing resources.
One cannot build a thriving startup with a “Go with the flow” attitude. Everything needs to be pre-planned keeping in mind all the possible scenarios that you may come across.
Another thing which this point engulfs is the efficient use of investments. Scaling up a business to meet increased demand does require investments on several fronts. Hence, one must keep a close eye on the spendings and must immediately take action on the surplus expenses. Thus, saving up for future business expansions.
Overlooking People Management
A new entrepreneur focuses more on making money after launching a world-class product or service. In this whole cycle, they often overlook a very important aspect and that is people management.
People management in business has two sides – one counts your own employees who are responsible for all the amazing work that goes around. And on the other side are your consumers who will benefit from your products and services.
Both sides are very well interconnected as satisfied employees result in better customer experience.
Here, entrepreneurs can surely think of introducing the concept of employee engagement in their startups right from the beginning. As well as, one must also think and implement all the possible measures that can make your customers stay loyal to your brand and contribute towards long term growth.
Going Low on your Marketing Efforts
Expecting consumers to come right after you’ve launched a certain service or a product is not at all going to happen. Your startup may have created something really remarkable but it is not going to bring customers until you reach out to them.
Focusing on marketing is a quintessential part of every business whether big or small. It is true that marketing efforts take a toll on your resources in both monetary and non-monetary ways. But it shouldn’t stop you from creating awareness about your product or services through various marketing campaigns be it through digital or mass media.
Any new startup that may not find it viable to spend huge on their marketing efforts can still use various cost-effective mediums. Some of these mediums include web content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, etc.
Not Being Transparent
Staying true to your business and everyone associated with it is the prime rule for ensuring sound growth and stability. Like I have said in the very beginning how many successful startups have come down and one of the top causes behind this is not being transparent.
Maintaining transparency in business doesn’t only mean keeping all your figures intact but it also speaks about being honest to your goals. Adopting unethical business practices for the sake of generating more revenue should be avoided at all costs. Moreover, it also negatively impacts your team morale which is not at all desirable.
Hence, it would be a piece of advice to all the entrepreneurs both new and experienced to always abide by their core values right from the nascent stages of their startups.
Bad Hiring Decisions
There are many things that entrepreneurs need to take care of while creating their startups. One amongst them is hiring the best people on board for turning product ideas into a reality. However, most of the time new startups have to deal with limited cash due to which getting the best talents onboard becomes very difficult. As such, these entrepreneurs have to settle with a low and inexperienced workforce.
However, if you have to win in today’s highly competitive market then you need to efficiently invest your money. And getting some experienced people on board is definitely one area where you should invest in.
Not Adopting Cloud-based Systems
The advances in the field of science and technology have ushered businesses into a whole new era where being efficient is the only thing that matters. Especially, the availability of many cloud-based systems has redefined the way everyone used to run their businesses. It has allowed entrepreneurs to streamline their business operations and enhance their growth rate. Right from engaging your customers to allowing your employees to collaborate virtually, cloud-based platforms have become the need of the hour if you want to survive in today’s competitive landscape. Hence, I would really suggest all my fellow upcoming entrepreneurs not to ignore this fact and adopt cloud-based platforms as per your requirements at the earliest.
So these were some of the points where I guess every entrepreneur makes mistakes during the initial phases but also learns from them. But now in this fast-moving world, one cannot afford to make those same mistakes but learn from the experiences of other like-minded individuals. However, if you want to discuss any point which you think I have missed then feel free to connect with me.
This article was originally published in Readwrite.
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