Those wanting to kick off their own venture need to understand that for any start-up, one has to be in a continuous launch mode — be it regarding services, products or ideas. In order to make a success of a new business, one has to keep performing many tasks simultaneously and keep tweaking them at regular intervals, says Manish Godha
Starting a business is a leap of faith. There just can’t be a ‘how to’. Owning a business means grappling with uncertainties of environment and of oneself. To wait till everything can be meticulously planned will obviously be a futile exercise. This is not just because it will take forever and most likely one will develop cold feet, but mainly because future would always surprise you regardless of any amount of rational analysis and forecast. At the same time, what propels an entrepreneur is the strength of vision (no matter how hazy or how personal it is) coupled with confidence. The trick, possibly, is to be able to strike a balance between doubt and conviction.
From an armchair, one can think of a process for starting a successful business. That will include identifying and writing down the business goals and objectives; having a thorough market research done; based on that research develop a strategy to start your business — product strategy, marketing strategy. These should lead to identification of the skills required, fund requirements and planning the sources, managing the legalities involved, so on and so forth. One can find guidance on ‘how to’ perform these various activities, both online and offline. There are many successful entrepreneurs in the country who have built their business doing just that.
These make perfect sense. These various activities are truly important for a business. They provide the required rigour and order. It is however, equally true that performing these activities to their perfection does not guarantee anything. Of course, in reality these activities seldom happen in same sequence or seldom all things work for everyone the same way, it is critical to realise the inherent fallibility of all and any preparation. One has to keep performing many things at the same time and continuously validate to tweak them at regular intervals.
The emphasize is that for most businesses it is not one big bet but a series of good decisions that have led to success. Thus, it will be clever to be agile and not over commit oneself to a howsoever well thought-out plan. One must realise that an entrepreneur’s vision may not be one well defined point, but a zone. And the path to that vision is like plotting through a maze with its myriad twists and turns.
Add to that the fact that the maze is changing constantly. It does take all the determination, conviction, perseverance, great vision, right timing, hard work and smart work, and more. The secret to the success for the business has to be discovered by the person who wants to start a venture. One has to continuously be learning what works best for you, your business, your product, your audience. And, yes, there’s a process for that.
When one plans to start a new business it is like stepping into murky waters. To start with, one has an idea in which to believe in. This is a great start, and to turn this idea into a successful business it needs to be refined and shaped as it negotiates through a wade of unknowns, uncertainties, and unproven hypotheses — what the product or service is going to look like, who will be the audience, what should be the price, how would it be delivered, and so on. It is vital to think of starting a business as a process of constant experimentation, stating the hypothesis and proving (or disproving) it. Refine, and do again.
Eric Ries has also described some approaches in his brilliant book The lean Startup. One concept that can almost be elevated as a mantra is that of a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. Make feasible assumptions and develop a minimum viable product (or service) based on those assumptions. Focus on offer the MVP to the customers and measure their responses, and quickly incorporate that feedback to bring out improved product or operations that customers want. It is not uncommon to find gifted entrepreneurs and, technologists spend years perfecting their product in isolation, burning their capital and resources through, building a product and business that they are sure of but proves to be not what market wants. Technology and global supply chains today allows rapid creation of MVP and its launch.
This is quite intuitive in the technology field. Cloud allows for quick and scalable product development and launch. Mobile platforms, marketplaces, and web marketing allow rapid marketing and distribution.
But the MVP approach, and continuous validation are easily applied across many types of businesses. Global supply chains, contract manufacturing hubs, greatly improved logistics and communication can be leveraged by non-tech entrepreneurs to build, launch and measure rapidly.
The key here is to have a constant launch mentality. It is important to keep launching changes and additions to the product and business. So you are in a continuous build mentality. You do not get to rest your laurels. That is how the MVP approach is complimented and the value of learnings from every launch (the feedback from inside and outside) is realised. This is a great way to make mistakes and learn from them, steer through the uncertainties and unknowns, leading gradually (but never finally) to a proven business model.
It is not just the hypotheses about the product that are tested. Approaches on how to market, sell and fulfill also need to be subjected to the same validate and tweak cycle. These could be mundane aspects of business process, say, warehousing or shipping. These could be more fundamental issues like positioning. Often, a product which in minds of entrepreneurs is suited for an audience finds eager takers in a different segment with just minor tweaks in the product or messaging.
Hubris has no place for an entrepreneur. She knows she is wrong and eager to know, as quickly as possible, where is she wrong and what is she wrong about. That necessitates rigour and ruthless measurement and assessment. It helps to be able to see one’s business plan as a set of hypotheses or assumptions, and business as a process of validating and improving on them.
(The writer is CEO & founder, Advaiya)