Don’t be a Lone Ranger…

Its not that you are not qualified enough or don’t have “it” to get a startup going but know and realize that you are not “God” and you simply cannot have it all. And that’s exactly how people (read as investors, potential customers, partners) will see you. Thus if you are indeed a one-man shop, stop wasting your time and get real.

Get yourself a trust worthy, reliable, dedicated-to-the-cause-as-much-as-you-are Partner. If you cannot, don’t work on the startup till you find one.

Your partner should compliment your skill set. (If you are an engineer, make sure that your partner is into sales or business development.)
Your partner should be your sounding board. (So that if hear eerie voices in your head at 3:00 am as you clunk away in your garage, ask your partner to drive them away!)
You and your partner should make the startup look complete, rounded and full.

Don’t be a Lone Ranger! Giddyup with a Partner!

It’s the team, stupid!

Have a great idea? Think you can do it? Got a garage to spare? Entrepreneurs just cannot seem to resist to this temptation. They would clobber away in the wee hours of the nights, joined by a few “hum-nashi” (hindi word which literally means “similarly intoxicated” and used in the context of referring to people bound together by passion around a common thing, usually love), chisel out a great business plan and a working model of the concept and feel that they are ready to take on the world.

And as the ad says, “life comes at you fast”, they soon realize that it’s just not enough.

No startup can survive without a working combination of the “Three Team” ingredient.

1.   Management Team
A good mix of business savvy players, technology understanding geeks and grounded operations folks all working together with mutual respect and understanding towards the common goal – to get the startup off the ground

2. Investment Team
Strategic investors who provide higher value than just the dollars that they put in.

3. Development Team
Experienced “been-there;done-that” team who can pull it all together

So, Entrepreneurs, go forth and build such a team before you give in to your temptations!

It’s the team, stupid!

Who Said It?

Got a bright idea? Think you can change the world? Feel that you have found the next best thing to sliced bread? Well, you may have them all but don’t say a word about it. Have someone else say it for you!

As entrepreneurs, there will be innumerable times when you may very well have the idea that can change the world. You may have everything that it takes to take this idea from its infancy into the light of the day. You may have all the abilities of actually creating a new business out of it. But if you have never been a successful entrepreneur before, don’t have a proven track record or have not made oodles of money for your VC’s, you may very well not talk about it to anyone else.

Else have someone else talk about it for you.

Grab a friend of yours who happens to know this ex-CEO of a big company. Make sure that this person has credibility in the area where your idea lies. Convince this person about your idea. Have this person relate to your idea so that the person starts believing in it. Let this person live and breathe your idea. Then let this person pitch the idea for you. Let this person talk to the VC’s, the media, the people-who-matter.

Then sit back, relax and watch your idea take roots.

Think Big But Take Baby Steps (Part 2 of 2)

And the truth is that you, as an entrepreneur sitting in your dingy little office can never really know your users. You cannot get into the minds of them to know exactly what they need, demand and would they pay for. So what do you do?

There can be many answers to this question but the one little trick that I found that works is to ‘release early and re-iterate’.

As an entrepreneur, you should have the big vision but to execute on that vision, you should take baby steps. That helps you, in managing the growth of the company, brings down the cost of creating the business, and minimizes the risk factor while substantially increasing the probability of success. It definitely increases the time to reach the market with your maximum potential but ‘first-mover’s advantage’ is no longer a holy word!

So, build your product, as simple as you can, as easy-to-use as you can and launch it as soon as you can.

Make your site ‘feature complete’ with useful and practical features.  Make sure that users can access these features quickly and easily and immediately see the value upfront. Don’t make them navigate through many pages or upload lots of data to finally access the features and realize its value.

Users don’t understand or retain multiple value propositions. They definitely understand and retain one value proposition. Thus convey that one value proposition very explicitly to the users. All that you need to do is to convince them to use your site for that one simple reason, again and again, everyday; then the rest becomes easy.

Make the launch, then sit back, relax and listen to the commotion!

Let your users tell you what they like, don’t like, want to see more, don’t want to see ever! Even if they don’t say it in as many words, tracking their activities would get you that information. Listen very hard and analyze all data. Therein lays your gold nuggets!

Once you have “heard” what your users are saying, then it’s back again to making plans for the next release.
Continue on this loop till you don’t hit your business objectives!

This is the mantra that I wanted to share today!

Think Big But Take Baby Steps (Part 1 of 2)

So you have the brightest and the biggest ideas! You think you can do it. So you set out with all your might, raise a big round and start plugging away. You build out the biggest and the best site that you can ever envision. You think you will be bought out in the billions by the biggies in a matter of 18 months!

But the users don’t come! The value which was so obvious to you is just not seen by them. Your USERS table doesn’t get filled up with millions of records. No on starts branding you as the ‘the-next-big-thing!’

So what went wrong?

Nothing but the simple fact that you DID NOT know your users.

You did not know what they want; what matters to them the most and why would they keep coming back for more. You did not convey the value proposition to the users properly. Even if the value was perceived by the users, they did not assign it much worth.

The sole purpose of a startup is to generate business; make money by the tons!  And you can only make money when you have users of your product. You can only have users of your product when you deliver a uniquely defined and easily understood value to your users.
More than ever, entrepreneurs, in all their bravado and earnest actions fail to ‘connect’ to their users. They fail to understand the needs, the demands and the psyche of their users. They fail to convey anything meaningfully and valuable to their users.

It’s true that the cost of floating a company has come down drastically but the cost of creating a successful business still remains and will always remain high!

To be Continued…