How to avoid the death of a startup in the bud

Original author: Yash Kotak
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How to avoid the startup’s death in the bud: 6 ways to prevent your ideas from dying in difficult times



“Damn! That was one of my startup’s ideas. ”

It was my instant reaction when I saw the news about a one-year-old startup that was purchased for $ 30 million a couple of months ago. I came up with the same idea for a startup 2 years ago, living in a hostel, while I was in college. Damn it, there are already a dozen successful companies based on ideas that were born in my dorm room and were immediately discarded.

And a few more ideas that were sharpened by the idea of ​​MVP (minimally workable product - approx. Translator), but were soon abandoned. I don’t even know if I should be glad that I have such wonderful ideas. Taken together, they would have pulled a billion dollars.

The fact that even a tiny fraction of this amount is not reflected in my bank account suggests that ideas that were not followed by appropriate actions to put them into practice are worthless.

I was surprised, but perhaps I was a little comforted by the fact that I was not the only one who killed ideas before they could develop and realize their full potential. I witnessed how my friends did it. Hell, Evan Williams himself sinned like that before he founded Blogger, Twitter, and Medium.

“After the closure of my first company (at 25), I looked back and counted 32 different projects - most of them were related to new products or varieties of products - I started them (and never finished) the previous year. I realized that this could be one of the reasons for my defeat. " - Evan Williams The

birth and death of ideas takes place in a similar scenario.

EUREKA!


Are you thinking about messy things in your soul or staring into an all-consuming darkness in the middle of the night when an idea suddenly illuminates you.



You pass it through your own, highly subjective filters of good and bad ideas. If she did not pass, she dies here and now, having not even received the opportunity to turn into something substantial. If it is approved, the real fun begins!

Now you are in a state of ideological euphoria. You cannot stop thinking about your last enlightenment. You can immediately predict how far your ideas go. And it seems that all parts make up a harmonious whole. It could very well be the next Google or Facebook!

You can't wait to discuss this idea with your friends. Many of them share your enthusiasm. You simply ignore others.

You have several people in your team, and you start creating a product around an idea. You want to introduce it to the world as quickly as possible.

MARKET PRODUCT RELEASE


OK, now the product is launched. And you expect the whole world to take down the roof of your invention.

You share information on a social network and see sparks of interest. You get a couple of hundred likes on your Facebook page.

You expose the product on Product Hunt, Hacker News and also receive some publicity. A lot of people try your product and give you feedback. Everything is going very well!

AFTER PRODUCT RELEASE ON THE MARKET


If your product is not Instagram, then an early interest in it is slowly dying away. Your excitement dies with it. You slowly get to the Trough of Sorrow.

After the initial euphoria has passed, and the glamor of the idea no longer dazzles you, cruel reality begins. After user reviews, you begin to notice serious gaps in your idea. And you do not have exact answers to the question "How to patch them?"

Your product does not fit the market. Heck, you don’t even know what it is or what it is eaten with. You do not know how to ensure a steady influx of new users.

At this stage, most startup ideas die. Their creators give up or become passionate about other ideas and change their strategy (which, as a rule, means promoting a completely different idea).

Ideas at their initial stage of development are similar to babies, they are not able to stand up and run on their own. They must be left with patience. They need time to go uphill.

If you patiently develop your product and idea, you can get a chance for success. If on the way there are difficulties, then try the following:

1. Try not to give up


It’s okay to think about putting an end to your new idea when everything goes wrong as intended.



Don’t give up because of problems - they are part of the “dowry” of every startup. You need to consider closing a project only when you have lost all faith in a startup.

2. Do not chase another idea


When your initial idea causes you problems in translating it, your ingenious mind will find even more attractive ideas to follow. And they will be completely deprived of insoluble, it would seem, problems that you are facing now.

I did it a couple of times. It is not surprising that each “ideal idea” gives birth to many problems as soon as you seriously engage in its implementation. The harsh Dunning-Krueger effect takes effect.

It’s better to pursue an urgent idea, of which you already know about the big pitfalls, than to chase a new one, whose problems may suddenly appear on the horizon.

3. Be open to making some changes to your existing idea.


Even taking into account the fact that while you should not turn to completely different projects, you should be open to making small changes to your idea or business model after each iteration (cycle) and receiving feedback from users.

Love your idea, but do not rush to marry it.

4. Resist the temptation to raise money to solve all problems


When you do not receive support from the market, then you might want to try to get it from investors. Given the current investment policy, you can quite successfully raise money, despite all your problems.

And you will be a little happier. Investors are not stupid people. Their faith in your idea will become a kind of test and guarantee of success, right?

Not.

Never confuse investor verification of an idea with consumer verification.

Since startups collect money for activities wherever possible, it is not difficult to confuse the accumulation of funds with success. In fact, everything looks different. Along with investments come high responsibility and pressure.

There are many examples of how startups were losing ground by raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Think of the Better Place, Webvan, and Solyndra projects.

At the same time, you must definitely raise money for your project if the runway length is not enough for you to experiment and bring the product to the market corresponding to it.

5. Resist the temptation to waste money on solving all problems


Going in pursuit of new specialists or throwing thousands of dollars in advertising to attract users, you will not make your product suitable for a particular market. Unfortunately, some problems cannot be solved by investment alone.

Users attracted by advertising can create a deceptive sense of security. And if your product is “not at all the same,” most of them will soon be gone. You will not be able to get support without doing your product well in the first place. As one old quote states:

“The worst that can happen to a bad product is good marketing.”

The arrival of a large number of people (more than the required minimum) is guaranteed to reduce the length of the runway and reduce the effectiveness of your team.

6. Treat yourself indulgently and give yourself time


At this point, your hands may drop. A premonition of an imminent failure hovers in the air.

The natural reaction to this is to get to work and work hard, stop sleeping and enjoy the time spent with family and friends. Often this leads to low productivity and exhaustion: both moral and physical.

You cannot find solutions right away. The ideological potential, unfortunately, does not have a power button. You need to give yourself time to experiment and find what suits you.



OK, panic, maybe not worth it.

Your mind must be at rest in order to provide creative solutions to your problems. I often noticed that relaxed walks are a better source of answers than hours spent in front of a computer screen.

EXIT FROM THE “SORROW VALLEY”


There is no single recipe for how to withstand ( and translate as accurately as possible - approx. Translator ) this phase, because each startup is unique and has its own unique set of problems.

The path is as obvious as it is not defined. By successive approximations, you must make your product suitable for the market. You have to move on. As Ben Horowitz says:

“It's like playing three-dimensional chess from Star Trek - there is always a move.”

Not all startups survive this stage and achieve success. But if you made your way, you have a good chance to witness how your project will go uphill. And for the sake of this chance, entrepreneurs live!

We are also now making our way through the Valley of Sorrow, and our current startup is FundaMine!

FundaMine is a community for professionals where you can find out what experts in their profession read and discuss. We also have communities dedicated to entrepreneurship, product management, Android development, and more. We will be glad if you visit our page, write a feedback and thereby help us in our battle!

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