– Mansi Mistry
A Start-up (new venture company) is usually a young company that is just introduced in the competitive market and is beginning to develop. Start-ups are usually small and initially self-financed and operated by a handful of founders/CEOs or just one individual. These companies offer a product or service that is not currently being offered elsewhere in the competitive market, or that the founders believe is being offered in an inferior manner and suggest something innovative for the customers. A startup is an innovative and
an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly introduced, fast-growing business that aims to meet a market and customers and its need by developing a different business model around an innovative product or service.
Launching a new business isn’t easy. It’s a lot of work and nobody can promise you it will
end well. Silicon Valley is as much an entrepreneurial incubator as it is a graveyard.
If we want to hedge (predict) our bets against failure with regards to a start-up, these are the
few points we need to learn, a few lessons from start-up history which were creative
innovations paired with mistakes, which also feature some of the main reasons why start-ups
are successful in this competitive world. Here are some:
1. Well Planned and Sound Business Model
Successful start-ups understand the way the market functions, the new and existing customers and their fierce competition which they have to win. In fact, that’s where they start. They look for the need (of the customers), decide if another company is trying to satisfy that need (which mostly doesn’t exist), evaluate whether the audience/customer for that need is having a sustainable profit and then determine the best product or service to sell. Henry Ford understood that nearly every single adult in America could be his customer. How could he and his company reach and dominate that particular market with the current
underdeveloped manufacturing process? He couldn’t. He had to build a decent car faster. Sam Walton lowered his prices and catered to a lower income bracket of customers, which happened to be enormous and just as spend happy as the higher income bracket/customers
2. Sound Revenue Model
After a sound business structure, a start-up needs to figure out how to make cash inflow into their corporate account. It doesn’t come because they’ve got a great idea. It comes because they will give people want they want. And the customers are willing to pay for it. This is sheer speculation and risk, but McDonald’s may not have been the empire it is if selling burgers and fries provided the bulk of its cash inflow. That’s high volume at low-margin, which can be a profit problem, not to mention put a stoppage on growth. Instead, McDonald promoted expansion through its franchise models in and around the country that in turn poured revenue back into the company.
The company – Google figured out its total revenue through – AdWords, which turned out to be an amazing method to generate cash (income). On the other hand, Facebook shadowed Google with its ad networks, which is proving to be not only qualitative in nature but
successful as well.
3. Product and Service Charged Appropriately
Often new businesses reduce the rates of their products in the hopes people will beat a path to
their door. Not the case. Low prices don’t always attract the crowd. Apple maintains its products superior quality and sheer hip appeal through their high prices. The University of Phoenix also markets a superior product (and validates their accreditation) by pricing programs and degrees competitively with private colleges. On the other hand, charge too much and you could flounder. Southwest understood this. Mr. Keheller saw different airlines offering perk after perk to justify their airline’s high airfares. To deal with it, so Mr, Keheller thought, and reduced his plane fares down and charged a low fare based on the observation that some people didn’t care about first class and luxury but the necessity. They just want to get products and services somewhere cheap, not only cheap but affordable.
4. Budgeted for Marketing
Marketing always seems to be an afterthought for start-ups. Sometimes it’s just flat out confused with sales. Both situations can cause you problems. There’s a reason the University of Phoenix spends more on marketing than other expenses: exposure to the market comes before people will ever buy your product.
In fact, it could be said about all the companies above that they spent a substantial amount of their budget on marketing. From protecting the company’s patents and logos to buying advertisement segments on TV, they knew that to effectively sell a product the audience needed to know why it must have one in the first place.
5. Develop Systems, Procedures, and Policies
The scale is always a problem for a company. One of the consequences of growth slowdown are the people who work for you start to suffer. This is where you have to start thinking about job performance, benefits, promotions, sick leave, vacations and company culture. HP stands out on this front with its HP Way: make a technical contribution and meet customer needs. In other words, take care of your people and demand results, which also increases the productivity of the employees. This is where the internal and the external
balance is maintained.