It’s well known that startups are hard workers. However, startups can be easily misguided, mostly by themselves. This is a worrying thought, especially for investors. So we have compiled a list of things to look for which indicates a promising startup company.
The Entrepreneur Themselves
Of course, this is most certainly the most important aspect of a company. It’s the founders themselves. Over 98% of startups fail, and a large number of that failure is due to founders falling out. As an investor we always look toward the founder, or the founding team, and analyze their behaviour throughout their development process. Hard work, passion, level headedness, are all attributes which make for a potentially successful founder.
A startup will usually deal large amounts of pressure and stress upon the shoulders of its founder(s). In many cases founders break under this pressure and discontinue their venture, however, there are many who thrive from the pressure, and use it as a motivation to work harder, these are the founder we look for when investing.
The Product
It goes without saying, a large amount of startups are constantly failing to get to market. They waste a huge amount of time and resources on a product which just has no market fit. Startups mustn’t continue down this road of wasting time and money. Validating your hypothesis is the first thing all startups must do. Getting yourself to a POC is vital to your company’s growth.
Once you got yourself to a POC stage, you can begin validating the idea on the market. Begin researching the potential of the product by reaching out to your peer group. We see a large number of startups bypassing this crucial stage, because they ‘feel’ as though the market will instantly adopt their idea. This is untrue, if you’re going to unlock your true potential, you need to validate your ideas with the market you want to sell to. This post is sponsored by our partners Wigs
Meeting Market Demand
Meeting market demand is a difficult feat for all startups. But more importantly getting there on time is often a luxury many startups fail to achieve. We notice that founders give themselves impractical timelines which render them on the receiving end of bad press, or a damaged brand image. There are many ways in which to avoid these scenarios, by planning ahead and/or by outsourcing some of the arduous work which holds many founders back.
A prime example is hardware engineering. For this type of product development, a founder must source his/her supply-chain, find a place to build, locate expertise in certain areas of product development, manage and maintain a team, work on the software, etc… When you begin piling marketing, sales, logistics, and distribution on top of it, it all becomes overwhelming. That’s why outsourcing is a crucial part to unlocking a startup’s potential.
Conclusion
In many circumstances startups are too busy to contemplate many of the areas we have discussed in this article. However, it’s good as a program leader or even an entrepreneur yourself to be made aware of ways in which you can assist, scale, and/or grow startup companies. It’s good to look out for these attributes,
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