Entrepreneur! It is a lifestyle that is desired by many. Yes! Entrepreneurship is more than just a business. It is about bringing change within you and society. But the reality is far from our dreams. Some individuals don’t even make their first actual profit for years. Uber, Airbnb, or even Bangladeshi startup Pathao, suffered for a long time. However, in the end, they found real success. So what is the factor that worked for them but not for others? We are here to find out.
Idea
You may or may not have an idea to start a business. What matters is, can you solve a problem?
Consumers want instant gratification. That means you have to solve a real-world problem that is making them suffer. It can be a small issue, but you need to find a solution and consumer demand. Just how Airbnb found out rental issues of travelers and even generated an income source for people.
However, can you generate profit with only a good idea?
Team
What is a startup without a team! The team’s adaptability, patience, and willingness matter more than the idea itself.
Let’s take the example of Amazon and the “two-pizza” rule Bezos advocates for. The rule is no working group can be larger than the number of individuals that two pizzas can feed. In other words, you are losing productivity if your team is larger than 5-7 individuals.
But should we look into team building only?
Business model
You have got the idea and team execution. But how will it sustain itself in the market? It is the business model that will help you to strategize and implement ideas correctly.
So how will you do it? Get every aspect relevant to your business where you can expand it.
If you take the example of Grofers, they saw market sustainability in the grocery market. When the horizontal e-commerce sites such as Amazon India or Flipcart focused on fashion or gadgets- Grofers took this market analysis and made them sustainable.
But can an in-depth business model put you in the top position?
Funding
Healthy funding is crucial for a startup to grow. Where will you find it?
You need to pitch your startup in front of investors who can fall into either the equity category or debt or combination. It can be your friends and family or bank and lenders. But why will someone fund you if you cannot show them the profit?
If we look at ShopUp (A Bangladeshi B2B commerce platform), it makes small business retailers’ work more comfortable. With less work, these sellers gained more time to communicate with their clients and expand their business. ShopUp’s success on profit margin helped them raise a Series A round of $22.5 million.
Nonetheless, does funding decide your success?
Time
Time and tides wait for none, but perfect timing can create a one-of-a-kind opportunity. If you examine all the companies mentioned above, they all have one common factor. Time!
Airbnb came when people needed some extra money to pay their bills but could do it with less work. Amazon sensed the evolution of the internet where the stores would come near to people.
Grofers analyzed consumers suffering from time wastage in grocery shopping. On the other hand, ShopUp effectively changed the conventional way of Bangladeshi small retailers’ workflow when they needed to be digitized.
So what is the bottom line of these examples? Perfect timing is critical. When people are in desperate need of a crisis, your product or solution can be their lifesaver at that time.
Time changes and creates new demands. All these successful startups grabbed the needs consumers generated with the evaluation of time. If your startup is too early for its time, it will not sustain. You can learn this lesson from Google Glass. The company struggled to identify and validate the consumers and what challenges it fixed for them. But the real issue was the earliest of time where people didn’t need high-tech spectacles. If the market is not prepared for it, you should not be early with your solution- or be late when many affordable clone solutions are already open to the world.
