Did you know that about 305 million startups take birth every single year? However, only 10% of them are able to beat the competition and succeed, which sets a 90% failure rate. But why do these startup fail? It’s because they don’t have the correct roadmap to grow.
What’s the correct roadmap for starting a startup, and what makes it so important? All startups have a business idea, but it’s the implementation of the business plan that makes up the roadmap. Do you wish to kickstart a successful startup from scratch?
Table of Contents
1. Pick your business idea and niche
Before starting a startup, you must have a business idea, which is the nucleus of your focus. Your business idea is the most important thing on which the functioning of your entire business depends.
While choosing a business idea, make sure to have a bunch of ideas. Your final chosen idea should be unique and must attend to a majority of your target audience.
It’s not always mandatory to come up with a new idea. You may even analyze any brand’s business idea, find loopholes in it, and prepare its modified version to create your business idea.
Depending on your business idea, select the niche of your idea. Remember, you can always make modifications to your business idea but stick to the niche.
Read more: The 10 most successful startups ever
2. Understand your products and customers
Once you’ve decided on your business idea and niche, it’s time to find products. Your products should be customer-oriented. Focus on bringing a better solution to reduce the pain points of your customers.
Analyzing your target audience, their needs, and behavioral trends is highly important to understand which products to choose and how to market them.
Analyze the landscape of the industry and the consumer’s needs. It’s because your products are the solutions to the problems faced by the audience. We suggest you understand your target audience first and then move on to choosing the products and services you’re going to offer in your startup.
3. Setup your location or website
If you’re planning to kickstart your startup with an offline store, you also need to work on selecting the location for your store. Besides, before starting your startup, a tough part would be to get the store ready to start.
However, if you wish to go for an online store, you need to set up your website. Your online website is pretty much similar to an offline store. Thus, you need to get your store or website absolutely ready to launch your startup.
4. Craft a startup roadmap, including a business and marketing plan
The next step is to prepare a startup roadmap, which will provide you with a layout of how you should proceed from basics to concrete. This roadmap will help you classify the order in which you need to handle various aspects of starting a business.
With the roadmap ready, you’ll have to prepare your business plan, which includes all the key information about your business. Starting from your products and services to market analysis, operations, and finance, your business plan is your business guide.
Next, you’ll have to think of ways to target your audience. Remember, the audience can be anywhere. That’s why you need to diversify your marketing strategies and focus on a diverse variety of marketing platforms.
These three documents are the founding pillars of your business idea. They are the layout of how your business will start and work. Thus, make sure to spend sufficient time strengthening your business’s foundations.
5. Build your team
Till now, we guess you must already have a team. It’s time to have your professional team of business advisors ready to launch your startup successfully.
From suppliers, vendors, and logistics to bankers, attorneys, CPAs, etc., choose the best set of professionals for your team.
Having a trusted, professional, and loyal team from the beginning is essential. Hire your contractors and employees right now. Make sure that you choose people whom you can trust and who have the right skill set.
6. Legalize your startup
Among the critical steps in laying a robust foundation for your startup, the process of legalizing it by adhering to all the requisite legal and regulatory prerequisites stands as paramount. Though the initial procedure might appear daunting, the advantages of legalizing your startup decidedly outweigh the challenges.
A business that boasts legal registration exudes an air of reliability and trustworthiness. This formal recognition underscores your dedication to upholding norms and protocols, thereby augmenting your brand’s standing and beckoning forth an influx of business prospects.
Not just this, by legalizing your startup under a distinct legal entity, such as a limited liability company (LLC) or a corporation, you erect a legal demarcation between your personal assets and your business’s liabilities. This legal bulwark forestalls unauthorized utilization, replication, or exploitation of your pioneering concepts by external entities bereft of your explicit authorization.
7. Implement, analyze, and optimize
With everything done, you are all set to launch your startup. Your team, products, store, and plans- you’ve everything well planned. All you need to do is implement and execute your long hours of hard work and see your startup take birth.
Once you’ve launched your startup, focus on providing the best customer experience. For this, you need to spend sufficient time marketing your products and making them reach the target audience.
It’s difficult to get sales in the initial days. However, a single satisfied customer will spread word of mouth on your brand to a bunch of ten people.
Analyse and track your progress consistently. Work on optimizing your operations and strategies and improving every single day.
Read more: How a mixed economy affects businesses and consumers? The advantages and disadvantages
