Your Gambit

One of the scariest things for a wantrepreneur or a young entrepreneur is not knowing where to start or how to start. There could be certain road blocks like, having an idea or a product but not knowing what to name it OR just knowing you want to start but not knowing how to identify what you’re going to start. These are common situations for every wantrepreneur/ entrepreneur.

Ideally, the first thing you’d want to do is find an Industry or sector that you’re most passionate about or are closely related to considering the amount of time you would be spending on your new venture, you’ll certainly not want to do something that doesn’t excite you or resonate with you. After you find this Industry, like an ocean it will inevitably be huge with a big market to cater, the next thing is breaking down this industry into a suitable niche for your startup. A niche is a smaller part of the market. It will be your Focus point. Most startup founders try to cater or make a product that would be relevant to the whole Industry! And this is how they end up with many variations of the same product or a huge number of SKUs, or a very complex product that might not be easy to use, leading to operational problems, finance problems, scalability issues and so on and so forth. As a startup, remember that picking a Niche and starting from zero are your main factors and serving the industry as a whole could be a part of your future expansion plans. As an entrepreneur remember that you want to be a risk mitigator, be cautious, everyone loves a 100x growth but if it is at least 75% organic growth for a simple and easy to use product or service then it is more likely to be sustainable.

Finding a suitable niche will help you define a potential problem statement and that problem when broken down will help you identify the potential solution, that could be your potential product or service.

After you have found your potential problem statement and if you have a potential product in mind to solve it, the next step would involve ideation and planning from zero to 1 and then 1 to 10 and so on. We all have the biggest dreams, the most important part is remembering to break it down into smaller portions. If you are not sure about your product or your problem then the next step for you would be networking and actually reaching out to people who are at the core of your potential problem statement and those who could be early adopters of the product, that is, the solution.

Once you’ve found the product then comes your research for GTM (Go-To-Market) strategy and pricing, competitor analysis and more. Depending on how intense the problem and solutions is and if you have the first mover advantage you may want to get your patents, copyrights and trademarks sorted and then approach influential people in your Industry and niche boost your GTM instead of growing organically. If your product is an already existing product but better, you may want to figure on competitive pricing or premium pricing or mix strategy here.

After this, you may want to keep a close track of essential financial aspects and business metrics and think about sustainably growing from a one-man/woman army to a two people or more team depending on the industry.

You may have noticed that I haven’t said anything about the required registrations to get your company going. As long as you are ideating and figuring it out, registration is not mandatory though it would be beneficial in the long-run, because that would mean you have your required paperwork sorted and aren’t running around from pillar to post. However, if you are not sure of your idea or startup then you can wait out the ideation stage and sort it out once there are sales and applicable government taxations or laws. Registrations also depend on the industry, for example Health industry, Food Industry, FinTech as these industries have their regulators that certify the authenticity and help build user trust in the brand and product.

This would be a good approach to get a good start in building a new business from scratch. So here’s to hoping that you have a smooth start to your new venture!