Mistakes I did while starting a new business which buried it to the ground.
I know the feeling when most of us are tired of our daily jobs and would want to pursue the path of entrepreneurship. Who doesn’t want to be independent and take charge and be the boss? You’ve already done research on the best way to start a business.
However, this excitement can sometimes inspire us to take the short and the wrong route. Yeah, there are shortcuts but we can’t just take it blindly, can we? It could be a dead end. Remember shortcuts may cut the time but there’s more cost to it and losses if we don’t study it.
So, let’s quickly get to the list of mistakes I did while starting a new business and what lessons I took from them.
Following your gut:
This is something we hear often. Well, it only sounds good in motivational speeches and talks. You should follow your guts but not start by it. There’s more to it and the gut stands last in the queue.
You wake up in the morning and suddenly the best business ideas kicks in your mind. You feel excited about it. Your guts says it will be a game changer and you have already started imagining yourself giving talks like the next Jeff Bezos or giving interviews in your huge office.
Well, this is the time to hold your horses and take a step back. This points us to the next mistake.
Assuming:
Well, the best business ideas of yours maybe solving a huge problem and even you are convinced with it. Here, we assume that if we need it the world needs it. There could be many people going through the same problem and they would like what I am selling.
I am afraid to tell you. The market is a beast and it won’t mind biting or crushing you.
Sounds harsh but it’s the truth. So how can you be a little sure if the market is ready to accept what you are offering?
This bring us to the next item in the list.
Market Research and Validation:
Entering with your product or service without market research or market validation can cost you a great deal of time and money.
You model your business truly based on your assumptions and guts. Doing what you feel is fair and good without understanding the needs of your users. In most cases, only to realise that you’ve burnt your hard earned money and the market is not accepting it.
You also loose time to design a product or service totally based on what you think the users need. This can break your motivation and enthusiasm if things don’t turn out like you’d imagined.
Start by doing a market research which shall give an answer or a huge hint if there is even a market for what you are offering.
You wouldn’t jump in water without first learning about it, would you? Information like depth, is it safe etc. Same applies to your market. If there are really people looking for your solution. If there are then what are they willing to pay, your competition and how they are performing. Your competitors revenue can give you a glance about the scope in the market for your product or service and how the current market is reacting to it.
This will also help you make good product decisions because instead of assuming what you think, you have realistic data.
Now if there’s a market, you need to validate to understand how much of it is true. In our water example, this is the time where you step into the water to test your research.
Market validation is a technique wherein you get your idea out there to your target audience, and try to get the actual numbers and data. For instance: People who are actually ready to listen to your offerings.
This can be done through a basic working prototype of your product or even a landing page.
You can ask for visitor’s email if they are interested. If they share their emails then the chances are more where they may open up their wallets for you too.
Relying on team members:
As we were working on one of our products, I told my co-founder that I have a tester and he committed a business development person from his end. We relied on them and they said they were ready. We knew them personally.
When the MVP was ready which took us a while and efforts. The tester stopped picking calls and replying to communications. The co-founder later barged in with the news that the business development guy has stopped responding too.
Don’t know about the tester and still no communication yet but the B.D. guy later replied and said he was out with his girlfriend. We had to drop him.
We were left with no tester and B.D. as he was supposed to take it further from here.
Lesson here is never rely too much on anyone and learn some of their work yourself so you can manage it when you get caught up in such situations. Another point to take away is people do abandon the project when there’s no money running in.
They have a short vision and don’t realise that these things take time to get the traction you expect. There is a lot of effort and years of work even behind the overnight success stories we hear.
I hope you’ve got some takeaways from my mistakes and they were helpful to you.
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