Sometimes it seems like the trendiest word today is a “startup”. In tech centers like Silicon Valley, Singapore or, any startup hub, many are engaged in creating or even starting their startups.
Let’s explore the definition of beginnings according to Silicon Valley legend Steve Blanc.
Definition of a startup
Investors for many years treat startups as small businesses. This was a real problem because there is a huge ideological and organizational gap between startups, small businesses, and large corporations.
This concept means the following three main functions for an early founder:
Create a range of business model views relating to customers, distribution, and company finances.
Understand whether the model is appropriate based on customer behavior, as predicted by your model.
How to promote a startup?
Six Types of Startups
Here are six different types of startups:
1. Start a lifestyle: self-employed people
Lifestyle Entrepreneurs live their favorite life, not someone else’s, but their work. In Silicon Valley, such professionals are freelance coders or web designers who choose their jobs out of passion.
2. Starting a small business: feeding the family
Some businesses are grocery stores, hairdressers, carpenters, electricians, etc. He is the one who runs his own business and supports the family. Not designed for small business entrepreneurship scale.
3. Scalable startups: big from birth
Google, Uber, Facebook, Twitter are the latest examples of scalable startups. From the beginning, the founders believed that they would change the world.
Such startups hire the best and brightest. They are always looking for a repeatable and scalable business model. When they get it, they start looking for more venture capital to boost their businesses. Group of often scalable startups in innovation clusters (Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New York, Boston, Israel, etc.).
4. Purchasing start: The birth to buy
Over the past five years, startups providing web and mobile application solutions have been sold to large companies. His goal is not to build a billion-dollar company, but to sell it to a large company for fine cash.
- Start a large company: innovation or die
Large companies have a limited lifespan. Consumer preferences, new technologies, legal issues, new competitors create pressure, forcing large companies to create new products for new customers in new markets (for example – Google and Android).
5. Social Start: Mission – Difference
They are enthusiastic and motivate to make an impact. However, unlike scalable startups, its goal is to make the world a better place, not for wealth, but an idea.
He navigates through numerous difficulties to find a way to success – even overcoming impossible obstacles. But this crazy ride ends somewhere and somehow.
The question is, when?
Where is this turning point, when a startup just loses its “startup” status and becomes like any other company?
Adam, an associate of True Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, says the company is a startup until the product/market feels right.
While the definition is hard to understand, there are hints, that your startup is no longer a startup, and here are some of them.
How is a startup set up?
Probably a start-up and a small business start with just the idea, and the founder’s own or friends/family money or a bank loan. In the latter, successful start-up angels receive funding from investors, venture capitalists, or IPOs. With each fund, the investor acquires a share of the company and becomes the co-owner of the startup.
Get started with your startup
You won your pitch and got your funding. So now you have to start building your company.
Like any other newly formed company you also need to research the market and see if what you want to do is necessary.
Another thing that helps is the minimal product design because what you keep in mind and the final product will be very far from each other, but just be sure to keep its essential parts, so you don’t end up with a completely different product.
Promotion stage
As a startup, you probably don’t have enough funds, however, you still have to develop and market yourself, and as we all know, you also need investments in marketing.
There are many different tools for startups that you can use to grow, but some of them can be more expensive. However, fortunately, there are many ways you can promote your business without incurring additional costs or at least limiting them to a minimum.
For example, you need to focus on SEO – search system optimization in the Google world cannot be ignore. Read how-to guides on SEO.
Another important point to focus on is email marketing campaigns. It is claimed to be “the gold standard of marketing”. News concerning product updates, special pricing and discounts, and corporate news must be sent to your customers. Keep your e-mails short and avoid being annoying. Think proper about your subject line: It must be engaging to avoid the reader’s deletion.
Steve Jobs once said that he loved the startup architecture, and want Apple to become the biggest startup in the world. Sure, Apple isn’t a startup anymore, but what Steve Jobs was talking about wasn’t the company’s price, instead, he was speaking about this “startup mindset.”
Never stop being a startup. Sure, your company can’t continue on the same trajectory when it’s already a mature company, but it’s important to have the passion and drive, that you had from the very beginning.
Sources: Steve Blank Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Techmeetups Blog, Forbes, Business Insider, Business.com, Fortune, Onboardly.
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