Entrepreneurship and startups are moving faster every day. But this doesn’t mean that you are too late. There are still lots of opportunities to develop new businesses, products, or services, or to create or discover new needs to be satisfied.
Where to start? First, start with an idea. But that is not enough. You have to make your idea happen. Maybe you will be afraid, you will have lots of doubts, you won’t know everything you should about your product or channels. But the only way to overcome those fears, doubts, and uncertainty is to try. So, let’s start up!
In this process of starting up, there are a few things that you should take into account to increase the probability of success. You have to be:
- 1) BETTER. Better than any other solution that is in the market. But not 10% better, you have to be significantly better, 10 times better. You need to be very clear about what your value proposal is, and for whom (your client).
- 2) FASTER. Speed is crucial. This is one of the advantages of being "two people in a garage," with flexibility and focus. This is an advantage in comparison to the big companies that have the money, but need to coordinate among big teams and units to launch an innovation.
- 3) LOUDER. You have to be known for ONE thing. And that thing you do, that one attribute you want to be known for, you have to communicate it loud. "Be known, or be nothing." And remember: it's about the customer, not about you. So that ONE thing should be the thing they want or care about the most.
- 4) EXPLICIT. Be explicit and short; make yourself clear to the customer (and investors). Use eight words or less to state your main purpose. Use a simple structure like "verb-target-outcome." Be simple, so everyone understands.
- 5) FOCUSED. Stay focused. Make the main thing THE main thing. You will have hundreds of ideas, but you have to let go of all of them, except for THE ONE.
- 6) NETWORKED. Stay networked. Everybody has strong ties and weak ties. The strong ones are usually the closest ones, your family and classmates, and they usually won't give you any new information. The weak ties are the strategic ones. They’re different from you; they come from other social or professional circles, and will provide you with different information and ideas that will add value to yours.
- 7) SMARTER. Take a look at the failures, not only the successes. You will learn more from failures, they will help you to do smarter startups.
- 8) RESILIENT. Starting up won’t always be easy, and you won’t always have fast results. Hold on, keep going, but make sure that failures are not fatal!
- 9) IGNORANT. Yes, be ignorant. Forget the brain rules, except the rule to stay in business, the rule of survival. Most disruptive ideas will be seen as crazy, impossible, useful. Many of them are successes today.
- 10) RELAXED. Be persistent and fast, work hard, focus. But remember to take a break and "sharpen your axe," so you can be more productive, more creative.
You have to start, no matter what others say. They will tell you that it's a crazy idea, that "there is only space for at most 5 computers in the market," that "no one will need a computer in their homes," that "the telephone will be an instrument that will die over time." Yes, people said that. You have to start, more than once if necessary, because the future is a renewable resource.
*This blog was inspired by Pascal Finitte’s talk at the I Congress of Exponential Technologies in Lima
Photo: Emprendedoras en WeXchange.