Building a successful startup is probably one of the most draining journeys you can ever embark on. There you are, just you and your killer idea. But the roadmap in your mind to see it through is vague.
Today I thought I’d highlight a few important steps in creating a startup that can be achieved by taking small but achievable steps towards your big goal. Though many of the milestones you will create are unique to your startup, there are several key goals that every business must meet along the way.
In this article, I will talk about these goals and this way, you can draw a roadmap for success in your first year of entrepreneurship and beyond. This is startup 101.
Steps that every successful startup must go through
To make the roadmap easy at a glance, let’s categorize the steps into 5 categories: business steps, product steps, customer steps, marketing steps, and personal steps.
Business Steps
Your business steps will form the basis of everything else you do. These are tasks that cannot be postponed:
- Establish an institution in accordance with the law (in the form of one of the weekly companies mentioned in the Commercial Code)
- Open a bank account
- Get points for an accounting software
- Launch a website
- Create a startup pitch deck
- Determine the amount of revenue generation
- Hire key people
Product steps
Without an effective product, you can not attract customers. And without customers, your income generation is basically zero. Needless to say, without cash flow, you have little hope for long-term success. This means that it is necessary to go through important milestones in the first year and all subsequent years thereafter.
Each time you encounter the important steps of a new product, you will be closer to realizing your dream:
- Create an efficient prototype
- Fix defects of the prototype
- Launch the minimum available product (MPV)
- Official start
At this stage, getting feedback is critical to building a product that is of interest to customers. Review all feedback received and have a coherent system for troubleshooting. Otherwise, you will face numerous customer complaints in the first few months of your career.
Customer Steps
When you start producing your product, you are ready to experience the most exciting moment of your life: accepting your first customer. While you will look forward to getting many more customers after that, you will never forget your first sale! As you start selling, it is best to focus on the following steps:
- Build credit in the market
- Commit to providing the best customer service
- Focus on daily and monthly growth
Marketing steps
To achieve the customer steps, you will need to run a smart marketing plan:
- Examine your startup marketing strategy
- Make a list of interested customers’ emails
- Develop brand partnerships
- Show growth trends
Your marketing plan needs to be able to help grow your customer base, reach out to the media, and create engagements.
Personal Steps
In the latter case, which is no less important than the others, you will want to create personal steps to grow as a founder:
- Find an experienced coach
- Develop organizational leadership skills
- Learn how to manage a team
- Increase your personal savings so you can easily quit your previous job
- Improve your speaking skills
- Create a deep professional network
Your job as a founder will change over time, and you will change from the person who does everything in the company to the person who manages a team.
Changing from a founder to an organizational leader is crucial; Because you can not be an expert in everything. Knowing how to hire smart people and retain key team members is essential to the success of your startup. Start developing these skills today.
Take the time to review your progress
When you start doing tasks and facing the first important steps of your work, it is important to constantly keep reviewing yourself. As Matthew Michalovich puts it in Foundr magazine: “Few people keep thinking about how I got to where I am now. Why am I doing this? Businesses are evaluated regularly; “But most people fail to do that.”
The process of starting a business and leading it to success requires endurance. This is a marathon; Not a couple of speeds. There will be days when you will feel unmotivated, depressed and insecure. These are the days to remember the answer to the question, “Why am I doing this?” It will be important
