This article is written by Clinton James, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Starting a successful startup requires following some a process, and a good one at that and the article explores the steps of the process.
Find your North Star is working towards as well as the point of return when one gets lost. It is highly unlikely that you are doing something that has not been done before thus there is information that would be very relevant to you even through Google. Find out who else has solved the same problem and how they did it regardless of the market. Usually, solutions are adopted from existing ones but then customized for a specific market. This helps validate one’s ideas and know what will work and wouldn’t. Validate the current technology to assess if it would help you build your product.
After research they should consider building up their team made up of the founders and the key technical employees. This should not be the case since it will only bring about ownership issues. The sales team is another important team because whatever is being produced by a company should always have buyers or consumers. There’s need to consider hiring one or more individual with sales skills since they can’t move much as sales gets feedback from the market on what the consumers want.
The best understanding of legal platform could mean that the business should get a lawyer. The business should always consider protecting the intellectual property of the business such as patents, trademarks, copyrights and third party claims.
Raising money for growth is another key issue in starting up any business as startups fail not because of lack of money but because of focusing on funding before they need it. They need to look for it only when they need it. When raising these funds, the entrepreneurs should always raise more than 25% of the budgeted money for the purposes of paying salaries for the first month of operations as expectations are higher as the business grows. If they are unable to get all funds, how are you to raise the funds? Research and ask those who have done it. However, make them your friends. Monitor your work to see to your growth as you will have to report back your investors. Entrepreneurs should consider other genuinely recognized institutions, venture capitalists, crowd funding or angels for this kind of support and mentorship to grow their business knowledge and experience effectively.
Creating the actual business. The business should always be selling all through the year and this can be achieved if the company is pricing products appropriately. If the revenue is not increasing with sales then they should re-evaluate the process.
How to exit. From day one, you should think of growing the company to sell it for a lot of money and move to something else. Thus, setting a goal, team and structure on when the company should be sold and working towards it and not to exceed it, as it is important.
