There is no coming back from midway. You either start up something with all your blood & sweat, or you don’t. You either believe in your concept or you don’t. You can’t be unsure or doubtful about your own idea, because if you will be. How will you make other people believe in your concept?
There is a lot of strategizing, meetings,
money, time and caffeine that goes in setting or building a runway for your
startup to launch. You are constantly struggling and juggling with multiple
things at a time!
Either you build a brand that is for a
lifetime or you build a product that dies after a while. Here are few of the
reasons listed below that every startup should consider going through before
launching:
1) Market Problems
This is one of a major
reason that a startup thinks it is small in front of the big giants companies
already existing in the markets. A major reason why companies fail is that they
get into the problem of being little and having no market for the innovation or
the product that they have created. Here are some common symptoms:
The
market timing is wrong. You could be ahead of the market by years or it could
be that they are not ready for the solutions at that very moment. For example
when Snapdeal first launched their deal portal, people in India were new to the
online concept, and it took them some time to get used to buying products and
services online and Snapdeal to really
kick start their market into gear. Fortunately they had the funding to last
through the early years.
2) Business Model
Failure
One
of the most common causes of failure in the startup world is that entrepreneurs
are too optimistic about how easy it will be to acquire customers. And it is
all based on the assumptions that they will build an interesting web site,
product, or service, that customers will beat a path to their door. That may
happen with the first few customers, but after a while, it instantly transforms
into an expensive task to attract and win customers, and in many cases the cost
of acquiring the customer is actually higher than the lifetime value of that
customer.
Another reason that
companies fail is because they fail to develop a product that meets the market
need. This can either be simply due to the execution or it can be a problem in
strategizing ultimately resulting in a product failure/ market fit. In the best
cases, it takes few revisions to get the product/market fit right. In the worst
possible cases, the product will be way off base, and a complete re-think and
revamping is required.
3)
Poor Management Team
An incredible common problem amongst all is a weak
management team. A weak management teams make mistakes in multiple areas:
- They are often too weak on strategy; building a product that has no need or demand in the market
- They are usually poor at executing the ideas in the right way, which results in issues like the product not getting ready correctly or on time, and the go-to market execution will be poorly implemented.
4) Running out of Cash
A fourth major reason
that startups fail is because they run short of cash and they don’t get funding
to back their original ideas. A key job of the CEO is to understand how much
cash they are left with and whether that will carry the company to a milestone
that can lead to a successful financing.
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