Every start-up starts with an idea.
You may have an amazing idea, but after that, you may be wondering what’s next?
First of all, don’t let that amazing idea die. Remember that having an idea worth nothing, but to bring this idea to life as a business may be worth millions.
In the following article, we will give you some recommendations for you to boost your idea to become a start-up.
Do market research
When you do market research you can acquire real knowledge about what the market currently has and what they are lacking. This is a big advantage as you will know from where to start rather than starting from 0.
We recommend you to consider the following aspects when doing market research.
Demographic and segmentation
The size of the market and the approach that you will take as it will vary if you are a B to B or a B to C business.
Furthermore, you will need to consider the value of the market and what is the number of your potential customers as well as their age, sex, and tastes among other specs.
Economical
What are the cities in your country with more potential to grow?
How is your currency doing compared to stronger ones like the Dollar or Euro?
This is important to make an approximate of the potential your business will have.
Legal-Political
Research the regulatory framework of your business. What do you need to open a business in your city? What is the procedure? How much will the investment be? And where you need to go to complete all of these procedures.
Market needs
Your start-up idea may change a little, once you identify what the market is lacking and, in this way, you will be able to adapt the idea to an actual profitable business.
Take into consideration the factors that your competition hasn’t and use them to your advantage.
Competition
Make deep research on who your competitors are and how they are doing in the market, the position they occupy and who their customers are.
Get to know what differentiates them from others and try to think about your own added value.
Barriers and Regulations
What are the regulations that your business will be anchored to?
What are the barriers to enter this market?
Do these barriers apply to you?
Some barriers that you may be facing are substantial investments, sophisticated technology, a certain level of recognition or access to resources.
Go from an start-up idea to a business
Once you have the start-up idea, you know your market and what differentiates you from your competition, you will need to build a business plan.
A business plan will let you land your idea and put your feet in the ground to start building something feasible.
The main questions that you will need to ask to write a business plan are the following:
- What are the needs your business seeks to solve?
- How is your business going to solve those needs?
- What makes you different from the competition?
- What are the key factors of your business?
- How big is the market in which you want to position yourself?
- Who are your buyer personas?
- What marketing strategies are you going to use?
- What is your starting budget?
- How will you measure the success of your business?
Think about your potential clients and their needs
You have to develop a strategy where the client will be your main focus. Also, you will need to think about a way on how to obtain new clients and how to retain them.
By keeping your clients happy and your potential customers interested until conversion, you will see how your business will grow.
Another recommendation is to make surveys and interviews with your clients to know what works with them and keep applying the best practices.
Define the professional profiles of your team
Each member of your team needs to have specific roles. In this way, you’ll see if you need to hire more people to develop some specialised tasks or if it is enough with the people you have.
Also, your team needs to be as diverse as your clients when referring to culture.
Invest in technology
If you can acquire technology solutions that let you minimise costs and maximise production or productivity, then don’t think twice and invest!
If you plan this investment in a smart way you will have an innovative, more productive and well-established business ready to keep growing.
Never stop learning
Learning is important as entrepreneurs are always in constant training. This is because you will need to learn about a variety of branches and topics linked to your business.
Also, you will have to learn how to manage people, be a team leader and keep growing along with your team.
Attend exhibits
You need to attend exhibits as you will put your start-up out there.
It will be useful for you to promote yourself as well as meeting with possible partners or investors.
You can do a small analysis of what you are looking for and what you want to achieve by attending this kind of evens.
Focus on your business and not on the competition
It is recommended to implement the best practices of your competition; however, it doesn’t mean you have to base your movements or decisions on them.
You will need to understand your own business to achieve ambitious growth objectives.
It is a matter of time to go from a start-up idea to an actual small-medium-large business.
To do that you will need to identify the areas in which you will be able to grow and establish objectives in a medium and long term.
All this process will involve adding members to the team, have a broader list of clients, manage different distribution channels and acquire new technologies, among other things that you will need to have clear to not get lost in the process.
