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Startups comes into existence when an entrepreneur sees a potential opportunity in the market or dreams up a new idea for a product or service.
In Pakistan the trends of entrepreneurship is emerging day by day which is quite great.
Studies show 9 out of 10 startups fails or in other words they don’t bother to work hard or try to put more efforts to establish the business and ultimately they quit .The fact is that when someone enters into the ecosystem of startups he/she already knows the aspects and struggle of entrepreneurship.
Then why most of the startups quit without even trying for longer while and what are the reasons they quit and gave up to their dreams.
Insufficient understanding of market and target customer:
Most of the time entrepreneurs know the current market needs and potential of their idea but the problem is they don’t do any primary or secondary research about their potential and target customers. The poor understating or ambiguity about the customers, leads toward failure as many startups don’t exactly know about their target customers.
What they forget is that complete understanding of your customer is a fundamental part and is essential to your success.
Poor analysis of current market
Entrepreneurs must walk 1,000 miles in the shoes of their customers to identify their current needs and demands so they can better serve their customers.
Today customers not buy the products but they buy the perceived value that is attached to the product or service which they are buying. Entrepreneur forgets that customer holds the key to their success deep in their pain, behavior, dreams, values and the jobs they are trying to accomplish.
Poor marketing strategy
Although many entrepreneurs work hard to find a point of differentiation then blow it because they do not communicate their message in a clear, concise and compelling manner. I have witnessed many entrepreneurs who bleed to death through their failure due to the lack of poor communication strategy.
What is the point of having a big dream if you fail when it comes to selling.
Entrepreneurs must have the guts to sell their product and to communicate it to their customers in a better way.
In nutshell poor marketing and advertising policy leads toward failure of startups and in returns entrepreneurs quit the startup instead of putting more efforts. The best formula to hit target customer’s mind and hearts is
“Early to bed early to rise, work like and do advertise”
A poor marketing strategy is one of the prime factors behind startup failure.
Launching too slowly
Too slowly launch has probably killed a hundred times more startups than launching too fast, however it is feasible to launch too fast. The danger here is that you damage your reputation. When you launch something, the early adopters undertake and try it out, and if it’s no good they might never come back.
You may be over thinking about turning your dream into reality and suddenly you find that someone has already launched it into the market.
Lack of right team
The most important factor for a startup is “team” and being an entrepreneur you must know the most difficult task is to make a perfect team for your startup.
The backbone of each startup is a team of hardworking and motivated people. Successful startups have more versatile team to increase the chances of succeeding.
So the startups who quits without even trying more they don’t have motivated teams to save them.
Raising Too Little Money
The funding of the Startup is measured in time. Every startup at initial point is not profitable and it has a certain amount of time left before the money runs out and it has to stop. This is sometimes known as runway, like “How much runway do you have left?” It’s a good metaphor as it jogs your memory to inform you that when the money runs out you’re going to be airborne or dead.
Many founders quit because they don’t raise enough money to carry on the activities.
Lack of focus
Most of the time failed startups you hear about are the spectacular flameouts. Infect they are actually the elite of failures.
The most common type of failed startup is the kind of project started by a couple guys on the side while working on their day jobs.
It is the kind of startup that not makes spectacular mistakes, but the one that doesn’t do much of anything and then ultimately vanished because the startup team never put its efforts as much as it required they don’t try hard enough.
If you want to avoid failure then the most important thing is to quit your day job.
It is certainly one of the main reasons as most founders of failed startups don’t quit their day jobs and most founders of successful ones do.
Most startups that could succeed, fail because the founders don’t give their whole efforts to them. This factor is equally responsible in failure of startups as much as startups fail because they don’t make something customers want, and.
As a matter of fact, starting startups is just like everything else. The main mistake you can make is not to attempt and try hard enough. It is secret to success; it’s not to be in denial about that.
The other reasons includes
- Lack of motivation, commitment and passion
- Too much pride, resulting in an unwillingness to see or listen
- Lack of good mentorship and taking advice from the wrong people
- Lack of general and domain-specific business knowledge: finance, operations, and marketing
- No market need
- Ran out of cash
- Pricing/cost issue
- Poor product
- Lack business model
- Ignore customers
However, each of these reasons for failure is due to a breakdown in leadership at some level.
90% of the startups fail what are the traits of other 10% that prevail
Failure is not a novelty for entrepreneur. It is the real time to understand the reasons behind why some startups fail but more importantly why a few succeed.
When we came across the questions how many startups fail?
The answer is nine out of ten startups will fail. This is a hard and bleak truth.
Why? The answer is “because extremely optimistic entrepreneur needs a dose of reality now and then”. The reason behind this step is not to discourage entrepreneurs, but to support them to work smarter and harder.
What are the characteristics of those 10% startups that succeed?
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There are many characteristics of successful startups. However; I have collected the most significant causes of success.
- Focus strategies
- Founders are ambitious to impact, resulting in passion and dedication
- Commitment to stay the course and stick with a chosen path
- Enthusiasm to adjust, but not frequently adjusting
- Patience and determination due to the timing mismatch of expectations and reality
- Create and maintain the right mentoring relationships
- Willingness to observe, listen and learn
- Leadership with general and domain specific business knowledge
- Blend of technical and business knowledge, with necessary technical expertise in product development
Successful startups follow the “Lean Startup” principles means they just raise enough money in a funding round to hit the upcoming set of key targets
These are the traits that you must follow to be a successful entrepreneur, but they won’t guarantee success. As they say it stands to reason that if you fixed the reasons for business failure, you would at least recover your chances of success.
By implementation of these key points entrepreneurs can minimize the risk of failure and maximize the chances of success.
What are the footsteps that Pakistani startups should follow in terms of innovation and technology?
Pakistanis entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative solutions to solve the various issues of our country.
Lots of startups are creating an impact in society through their innovative ideas and breaking the stereotypes and conventional approaches.
To develop innovative solutions for pressing issues, Pakistan’s startup industry should focus on IoT and AI (Artificial Intelligence).
In Pakistan startup ecosystem is still in its growing stage but several startups have lifted and gone in front of our eyes.
Being an entrepreneur is a constant struggle and there are numerous startup founders who are trying to create an impact with the aim of presenting a positive image of Pakistan in front of world.
