8 typical qualities of a hapless businessman

Failure is often a complete surprise to the founder of a startup, but all the mistakes at the earliest stage of business development, is actually very similar. "Theory and practice" examined the books and statements of the entrepreneurs and investors and built the list of common take the failed startups.

Unsociable

Everyone who starts a business will have to find suppliers, customers, investors, contractors, and many others. To knock on the door and offer cooperation — a great way, but it almost never works. This is understandable because business does not like too much risk, and to contact a total stranger can be dangerous. Darcy Rezak, the ideologist of positive networking in his book "Communication decide everything," recommends not to miss activities with useful people, and not to take down even the most, at first glance, nevliyatelny familiar. Another commandment of the Cutter is the use of good old business cards. They will help people to remember a name and a company name of a new acquaintance. That information is not lost, the Cutter is digitizing every one of the cards that fall to him. A similar approach is the co-founder of the payment service Qiwi Andrey Romanenko. Long ago he can't cope with that myself: the contact database, in which only suppliers 40 million, helping to lead the Secretary. The approach is clearly working: Qiwi has long become the largest payment network in Russia, its market capitalization exceeds two billion dollars.

The conservatism of the Renowned Californian entrepreneur Raul Varshneya that created SMM service for startups Foster.fm, believes that failure is imminent, if not to be able to adapt quickly. The market and customer needs change fast, you should be ready to drop everything, worked for six months, if necessary. Blindly adhere to a business plan — the path of losers, so you have to be ready to change course. The founder of the venture Fund 500 Startups Dave McClure a similar approach. He says nothing of those who have been with the Corporation five years or more. These people are too value stability.

Narrow thinking In the discussion early signs of failure of a startup on Quora mention selecting too narrow a niche. Well chosen niche can help a startup to shoot, but if it is too narrow, it is death for business. Evaluating a startup idea, be sure to check it for scale or even global expansion. Without it, about attracting investment, it is possible to forget.

The extravagance of the Founders no need to spend half of start-up capital to rent a beautiful office, the company could do without a Secretary, and hiring the most expensive experts is justified not always. The pros of bootstrapping (the founders of this approach do not attract external funding and leave the control itself) you can talk endlessly, but saving is necessary by default. But it is important not just to count every penny and try to optimize processes. About bootstrapping written many books, but one of the most comprehensive — "the Bible of bootstrapping" Seth Godin, which you can download for free.

Blind copying the Success of ideas in the United States does not guarantee success in Russia. The case size of the market. Let's say you make an app for the iPhone, the analogue of which in the United States downloaded by millions of users. But living there, according to ComScore in 2014, 70 million users of iPhones, and in Russia — only 6.5 million. The situation is exacerbated by the cost of the services of programmers in Moscow, she has almost reached the U.S. level. Wait, when it will all be worth it. Against this background, the approach of the Russian investors seem inhuman — they still prefer to invest in what is already a sensation in the West, the original project is very difficult to get financing. But this is just one more reason to follow the precepts of bootstrapping. See item 4.

Bad choice of teams Usually startups are advised not to start business with friends or relatives, but this rule has plenty of exceptions. For example, the brother of co-founder of "Vkontakte" Nikolay Durov, a modest genius, responsible for the technical part of the social network. Human skills are more important than the presence or absence of family ties. And important balance. Co-founder of travel startup Mozio.com David Litvak believes that if the company has several non-technical founders and only one programmer, nothing good will come of it. Meanwhile, investors pay attention not only on the skills of the founders, but also on their quantity. For example, the IIDF only one founder is a stop factor.

The lack of sincere interest in the chosen field of California serial entrepreneur, mentor at Lean Startup Machine William Pietri says that we should not even begin to do what you are ready to think every day. He admits he was never a sports fan, and therefore, it is pointless to create a startup in this area: he will get bored before you begin to make money. There is nothing better than to be a consumer of their product.

Doubts about the correctness of the chosen path Everything will always say that you'll fail, you will not be able to monetize your idea and will not withstand competition. History knows many examples of startups that didn't Shine or anything, but then they have to earn billions. Nobody believed in Facebook when it first started, everybody said, "Why you need it, when you have MySpace or Friendster?" When Dropbox was just entering the market, it was already a few dozen of his counterparts. Believe in the success of PayPal it was almost impossible twenty years have created a service in which you want to use an unreliable email account. But they did it.

 

источник:theoryandpractice.ru

Source: /users/1080