7 Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Successful Startup

Launching a startup is a ball game where even the smartest and the shrewdest of businessmen can make mistakes. Want to know why? The world of startups is unpredictable, more so than the corporate world. You will never know what’s bound to go wrong next, and there are challenges at every other hour.

It is not mistakes but the dumb mistakes that startups make which lead to failure or a roadblock for reaching success. While these mistakes can prove to be a learning experience, some of them are unnecessary and should be avoided. The fewer mistakes you make, the better it is for your startup.

Here, we will take you through the common mistakes most startups make, and how you can overcome the mistakes or at least avoid them as much as possible. Hopefully, this guide will prevent you from making dire mistakes.

#1 Hitting the wrong road with business plans

Your business plan is very essential when you are starting out. It will give you a sense of direction and help you set goals for your startup. Being too rigid, obstinate, or just not paying too much attention to the business plan can cause issues.

Starting out with a single business plan and having no backup can prove to be a roadblock. Instead, make sure to invest in preparing multiple business plans, which will pave the road for your startup if any one of them fails to work for you. When one plan fails, you should immediately opt for the next plan. This way you will be able to stop yourself from investing time and effort in the wrong direction.

Having no business plan, which happens in some cases, is also a wrong move. This would mean you are starting out in the dark. You have made no efforts to research and validate your idea, study the market or plan for financial investments.

You should have a good plan in hand; multiple if possible. Make sure you have set the goals within the plans, which will help you achieve your day-to-day, short-term and long-term goals. A plan will set you in the right direction. Being flexible with your plan saves your business from going down.

#2 Too many offerings

Imagine that your startup, product or service offers too many things to the consumer. The first question that arises out of this is: do you have the kind of manpower? Do you think you can focus on all the aspects equally?

Yes, we all understand that this is the result of excitement, but is it really how you want to proceed? Too many things can spoil your premise and cut down on the quality. It can even prove to be a disaster if you continue committing to things that you cannot offer. It will lead to customer attrition.

Focus on the one thing that sets you apart from the rest, and work on offering that as your service or product. Once you have set sail with that aspect, you can plan to scale your offering.

#3 Target audience?

You have a business plan, a focus area, but if you don’t know who you are targeting your product or service to, then that can be a major problem. Unless you have a target audience in mind, you won’t know if you are solving the problem faced by real consumers or not. You won’t know what problems you aim to solve with your service or product.

The real faces to problem situations will help you gauge your startup’s plan, offering and value. It is important to use the segmentation and targeting strategy to get a better idea into what your startup should offer, and what will interest real people.

Take into account the feedback provided by these real users, and you will be able to construct a business that offers value to them. Even when you are beta testing your product, make sure you incorporate the feedback given to your product.

An excellent example would be Uber. They were clear about their target audience right from day one- the people who commute via local transport. They wanted to make transport comfortable, easy and affordable for them. This in turn helped Uber reach their success.

#4 Biting more than you can chew

Most startup owners tend to do everything on their own. They don’t enter into partnerships with anyone as they don’t have the capital to do so.

Most people tend to do everything, from hiring to filing returns to filing taxes to marketing to establishing a core business portfolio on their own. This means they are unable to serve the quality. In this case, they should ideally hire an external resource, outsource a few parts, or at least bite into what they can actually chew in order to stay afloat throughout the startup growth stage.

Of course, when you are delegating tasks or even entire projects, you should be clear about what you expect, and what the deliverables are.

#5 Unfocused marketing approach

It is important that your marketing approach focuses on customers that you want to acquire and on retaining users who are on your platform. When you tell them about the product or the service that you are offering, you are probably not going to win the pitch.

You need to set your product/service apart. For instance, start with understanding the issues faced by your target segment, and approach your marketing with an aim to solve these issues with your product/service. They might listen to you more. If your product offers better features and is priced less compared to others on the market, say so. This is your winning pitch.

#6 Budgeting the wrong way

When you are starting out, it is important to have a financial plan set aside for all the essentials, in particular for the product development, logistics and other factors surrounding it. You do not want to raise the capital at a later stage, when it can be impossible to find someone to invest and you are out of savings.

Businesses often underestimate the budget, which is why they plan for far less contingency funds than is needed. You should always keep in mind that the startup will take a long time to establish and will use more funds than you had set aside.

So, when you are budgeting, make sure to overestimate the funds needed, as that will help you to have more contingency funds in hand later on.

#7 No idea validation from customers

Many times, people will build a product, but will have not validated the idea or asked for feedback from the customers. They are not positive whether their customer really needs their solution or not. If your customer, under this circumstance, does not like the product or engage with the product, it could be a major downfall for your product and startup. The better way of dealing with this is to validate the product at the idea stage, seek feedback from the customers on if they would like to have the product and also ask them what type of features they are looking for. With this survey, you will know if you should proceed or not.

Ikea had recently released an advertisement directed towards pregnant ladies. It was a marketing approach they had taken to invite more customers to try their products targeted to new moms and babies. What happened was a disaster. They had not validated the idea with the target audience, which is why they didn’t know that the target would not like it. In fact, Ikea was torn down for this approach. Though Ikea is not a startup, the idea was new, and that should have been validated before going live.

Ending the startup mistakes

It’s time for you as a startup owner or someone who is planning to startup to end these mistakes. Make sure you define your target audience, validate your idea ahead of time, and have a business plan backing the idea with goals defined and deliverables mentioned. The cost of the product or service should be defined based on the needs identified, the product that you want developed and the marketing strategies you are planning to implement. Thorough research will grant you the exact cost estimate.

Finally, make sure you use the right marketing and customer acquisition techniques, tailored to your startup goals and needs.

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