How to Turn Your Idea Into a Successful Startup
startups
With many successful companies proving they withstood the test of time, numerous aspiring entrepreneurs have been inspired to venture into creating their own startups. Yet among those who try, almost 90% of startups have been reported to fail—with the main reason being a lack of knowledge about the right approach.
For every business, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for your entire process but being able to start it correctly will surely give you a head start. More often than not, most startups try to begin by thinking of a great business concept. And if you’re planning to do the same, now’s your best chance to change that.
Startups that succeed are those that proactively seek out problems to solve, particularly those that resonate with their own experiences and expertise. In essence, one can say you’re on the right track when the business idea you have is a solution to a problem you were personally exposed to. Moreover, it should be something you can take on with confidence and is proven to be a worthwhile problem to solve for some.
In the following section, we'll explore some of these steps in detail and provide practical advice on how to execute them effectively.
1. Look for Real-Life Problems
As mentioned earlier, the best way to start the conceptualization of your startup is to look for real-life problems to solve. Why is it important? That’s because it will help ensure that what you’ll be providing is something that’s really needed by the market or the people. It also tells that there will be demand for the products or services offered by the business.
Start by looking through your personal experiences. Ask yourself questions such as, “What persisting problems do I experience in life?” or “What challenges are encountered by people around me?”
The same strategy has worked for Uber. The founder, Garrett Camp, came up with Uber’s idea when he struggled to hail a taxi in San Francisco. This experience led him to launch an app that would allow people to easily find and book rides. As evidenced by present events, the service quickly gained popularity later on.
Similar to what they did, think of a unique real-life problem to solve. However, remember that it doesn’t end there—you have to think of an innovative solution for your business to work.
2. Generating and Validating a Solution
Now that you’ve finalized the problem you wish to solve, the next step would be to generate a unique solution and validate it. This will be the concept or main idea of your startup, so it has to have a unique selling point.
Simply replicating solutions that have already been introduced is unlikely to take you very far, particularly given that many existing companies have already saturated the market. If you want to have the best ideas for your startup, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is my target audience, and what are their needs and preferences?
- What are the existing solutions to the problem I'm trying to solve and how can my startup differentiate itself from them?
- What skills, resources, and expertise do I possess or need to acquire to bring my startup idea to life?
When you already have the solution you want to propose to the market, next comes the validation. To do so, you would have to conduct a lot of research. In this phase, you may check out businesses that are quite similar to the one you have and look into their performance.
You may also try conducting market experiments to gain a better understanding of whether your target market is experiencing the problem you're trying to solve. By doing so, you can not only determine if your proposed solution is the best fit for the problem but also if the problem is worth solving in the first place. If you’re looking for the most cost-efficient way to do experimentation, you simply need to create interview questions and customer surveys.
It's important to keep in mind that the feedback you receive may be incomplete or vague, so it's essential to conduct extensive research and gather as much information as possible.
3. Building a Team
Having a team of brilliant and dedicated individuals is an imperative key to a successful startup. However, it’s one challenging decision you have to make as your team needs to have the right blend of skills and expertise you need. For instance, one of the most commonly used frameworks when looking for co-founders is the 3H personality model.
It’s also known as the “Hustler, Hipster, and Hacker” theory and suggests that an efficient team only needs three members:
- Hustler: He is typically the business-focused co-founder responsible for driving growth and revenue for the startup. They have excellent communication and networking skills and are typically responsible for sales, marketing, and business development.
- Hipster: They possess creativity and designer skills needed for user experience, branding, and product design.
- Hacker: They manage the technical side of things and usually possess programming skills essential for developing products, creating algorithms, and more.
At JLabs, we specialize in helping entrepreneurs and startups like you co-found as a hacker. We can assist in building and managing your technology, giving you more time to concentrate on growing your business.
4. Launching your MVP
If you’re not familiar with what MVP is, it stands for “Minimum Viable Product.” By definition, it’s a version of your product that possesses its actual features and it’s primarily used to test assumptions about the business. For instance, it could be launched to determine whether the market will purchase it or not.
Now, some might say that it’s similar to a prototype, but they’re two different things. Prototypes are created before MVP as it identifies if your product will work. Meanwhile, MVP is important for gathering user feedback, therefore helping you refine your product and launch with impact.
When you’re looking for someone who deeply understands and is knowledgeable about creating a well-executed MVP, you could check out our End-to-End Development service. It’s specifically designed to enable startups like you rapidly build and launch your MVP with a strong foundation, getting your products in the hands of your customers as early as possible.
5. Monitoring Results and Performance
Give yourself a pat on the back when you’ve reached this stage! That only means you’re one step closer to building your successful startup.
Now that you’re done with MVP and have introduced your final product or service to the market, you now need to monitor how it’s performing. For that, you need to identify the key metrics you want to track in measuring success. Afterward, you must use a system for those metrics. You may opt to build your own or use a common one like Google Analytics Tools.
Manifest Determination and Proactivity
Launching a startup is just one of the phases you’ve completed in your long business journey. To make it a success, you must remain determined and proactive. Building a successful business takes time, effort, and patience—even setbacks and failures are inevitable.
That means not letting hurdles bring you down but instead, using them as learning opportunities to refine your approach and stay focused on your goals. On the other hand, staying ahead of the competition requires you to continually seek out new information and stay up-to-date on emerging trends. You have to understand that customer needs and preferences change over time, so you have to align your plans and business strategies ahead as well.
By maintaining a determined and proactive mindset, your startup can thrive and scale to new heights.
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