7 mistakes of startup founder
Following only success mantra is not the only way to succeed. That’s why it’s very important to understand the failures and setbacks experienced by entrepreneurs and startup owners.
Every entrepreneur when starts a journey actual or even in mind reads a lot about the stories related to the success of entrepreneurs. It’s not bad at all but following the success-mantra is not the only way to succeed. That’s why it’s very important to understand failures and setbacks experienced by entrepreneurs, the following are some points to be remembered by each entrepreneur while starting their entrepreneurial journey.
1. Be in the game
As I and my friends founded Ezzyserve.com in Pune a hyperlocal startup for connecting plumbers, carpenters, Laundrywalas with the customers. This is one of the areas where there was emerging of large no of start-ups during 2015-2016. but few managed to take off in the business. After just taking off from the ground our business failed because I was still concentrating on my day job and part-time on my startup. Many people say that is the right thing one should not leave his/her job unless getting good no of transactions from your business. Maybe it’s right and that’s why I stuck to my job and it’s definitely affected our startup. I used to work in Mumbai and our startup is in Pune and I was used to going to Pune only on weekends. My scope of work was the development of web and Android applications. The second wrong thing we did has we hired a team for app and web development in Pune. Now I consider that we should hire the company from Mumbai so I can give more inputs to the team and get a better product. so according to me, we shall be IN the team for the start-up, not outside role performer.
2. Team plays all
One of the pillars of our startup was our product. nowadays it becomes the thumb rule that if the startup working in a tech background should have one co-founder from a tech background so it will become easier to develop things.
I am not saying you should always have a co-founder from a tech background but if your product is based on technology then you are considering co-founder then having tech background co-founder makes things easy.
3. Targeting the right customers also target the right investors
During startup, we think we should focus on the right customer base yes it is. But also it is become very crucial to focus on the right investor. We pitched our startup to three investors but out of that, no one is a reputed investor or no one is related to our business. and listing from them we assumed that our ideas don’t have much potential. Now the other start-ups who focused on the right investors made the big leap. so stay focused on the right customers as well as the right investors.
4. Be original
This is one of the important points every startup founder should know. During developing the product, we consider our competitors working this feature so we should use it. But I think these things are not going to help you to finish the competition. you should develop new features and capture the market rather than just copying things from competitors.
5. Efficiency and optimization
Every startup founder needs to be focused on the resources he/she has. Time, money, energy all should be effectively used for the growth of the start-up. Even the contacts you have to be used timely and effectively.
6. Don’t look for the share
The biggest mistake founders do is they look for the share in the start-up. Same we did and result in too much misunderstanding with distracted focus. Do not look for shares at all. Having 1 % in a successful start-up is way better than having 100 % in a failed startup.
7. Be a master of the account book
The fuel for the start-up is money and we had a start-up that is desperately looking for funding. We had some good transactions in the early days and the numbers were increasing but the bad thing about us that poor account keeping. Microeconomics, the flow of money, margin, and how and where the money to be used for better results are crucial things during the initial days of the start-up. Jeff Bezos rightly said ” Every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas” so keep it small and more efficient.
Having all of the secondary reasons there is the primary reason behind our failure was giving up too early. Now I and my friend cum partners talk about the start-ups growing in the domain we used to have we think if we kept faith in the idea and team then maybe there is a different story?
I have published this story on Yourstory also you can read here
You can share your entrepreneurship experience in the comment section.
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