Startup Lesson - Dont rush into it

I should probably say we are living in a startup friendly era. which is quite encouraging for the people who want  to do something on their own. government has launched many schemes to support upcoming entrepreneurs. all this has made a scenario where every got damn person is eager to start something of his or her own which is again a good thought. Having great entrepreneurs is definitely a great thing for any country and that's why government of India is promoting startups and entrepreneurs. But the current scenario is also an alarming situation for all of us because as you may know 90% of startup actually fail and because of several reasons. one of the reason is "Rushing into it". i know there is famous saying " No time is perfect, take a moment and make it perfect" but guys you really need to understand when to start and when not to start. most of the people these days who want to be in that successful entrepreneur list are just getting attracted by the Success story of very famous startups like Flipkart . but you really should know the dark side as well

Why rushing into it

when ever a person who is in doing his Job feels bored of that daily routine, thinks of starting something of his own and the students who think they have some business ideas, wants to start something of their own.

i feel there are three stages when you go for a startup. the first stage is the idea generation. its like when you have an idea you think you have an edge over the world as this Unique idea that came to your mind is going to change everything for you . after this idea generation stage there comes the second stage when one thinks on the other aspects of the business like feasibility and revenue model etc and the third stage is when you start it. so, the problem occurs when you keep things on a fast pace because you find your idea so unique that you want to do it before anyone else. i believe, one should keep things on a slow pace and should do a proper research and should always do a critical analysis of the business plan before jumping into it. lets take a look at the reasons why startup fails

No attention to marketing

Out of the failed startups, 14 percent attributed it to not paying enough attention to marketing. Most of these were startups founded by techies who were adept at writing code and building a product or service, but not so good at promoting it or finding customers.

Starved of customer feedback

Tunnel vision is a failing of many startups. When to get a product or service out in the open for testing is a tricky decision to make, but spending too many months perfecting it can lead to a myopic view of it.

Too early to market

The opposite of the previous point is also true – that sometimes a startup can be in such a hurry not to miss the window of opportunity that it can take a product too early into the market. Or sometimes the idea or the tech is ahead of its time

Not serving a market need

The single biggest reason for failure is that a startup will get caught up with what it wants to do instead of focusing on what the market needs: 42 percent of the failed startups gave that as a reason for failing. They built elegant solutions, and then looked for matching problems.

Running out of cash

 It points to the importance of planning ahead and allocating money and time judiciously. You don’t want the runway to end before the startup idea has time to reach its takeoff point.

Not the right team

A startup can fail if the team members are too alike. There needs to be enough diversity for a variety of skills to come into play. That’s also a reason why venture capitalists will usually look for startups with two or more co-founders.  Not wanting to let go of equity or a fear of personality clashes can sometimes prevent a well-rounded team being formed. A savvy partner can also act as a sounding board for half-baked ideas and provide checks and balances on excesses.

Ignoring the competition

Startups are often advised to focus on their own thing instead of getting distracted by the competition. But this can be taken too far, apparently. Ignoring the competition was a recipe for disaster in 19 percent of startup failures. 

The wrong price

It’s not just about the price, but meeting expectations.

Not a user-friendly product

Sometimes developers can get so enamored with their creation that they stop thinking about what the user wants. For example, a gaming startup came up with an interface that required a user to “leave a trail of playful web annotations.” This was too abstruse for most users who lacked the patience to dig into the core of the game

A flaw in the business model

A startup can get going and do well before floundering when the time comes to scale up. That’s because its business model works only up to a certain size, and is not so good when it comes to making money on a larger scale. A case in point is Tutorspree, which gained traction, and even got selected for incubation by Y Combinator, but wasn’t able to capitalize on it. In the end, it became too focused on SEO.

“We were single channel dependent, and that channel shifted on us suddenly,” explains Tutorspree.


Rushing into it would lead you to failure

for those who think they can handle it really well, my friends things are not as easy as you think they are. here are some failure stories of the sartups, i am not mentioning these to demotivate but to alert you about what not to do

Failure Story Launched in 2009, Quirky was an invention platform where people could vote on product ideas they loved, and the company would turn them into products, like the much-loved Pivot Power strip. It also created a subsidiary internet of things business called Wink, which made hubs for the smart home.
Many of Quirky's product had thin to non-existent margins,  For example, the company spent nearly $400,000 on a developing a Bluetooth speaker that only sold 28 units.
Its Wink unit also faced distress, and a botched security update meant the company had to do a nationwide recall this spring of all of its smart home hubs.
The startup ran out of money and filed for bankruptcy in September. It had struggled to change its business model after several rounds of layoffs, and eventually sold its Wink smart-home business for $15 million. Its CEO Kaufman had stepped down in August.

Failure StoryHomejoy offered on-demand homecleaning services. One of the first companies into the so-called "gig economy," Homejoy was a favorite of the press because it offered low-cost cleaning and was using software to automate the process of boooking so it would be more efficient. In an interview , Homejoy CEO Adora Cheung blamed the worker misclassification lawsuits the company faced. It had failed to raise enough funding to grow the company as big as they wanted, she said, so it decided to shutter its doors in July.
However, Christina Farr on Backchannel pointed to poor customer retention, poor worker retention, and mounting losses as its downfall. Like Groupon, the company had struggled to entice repeat customers when it offered a cheap initial cleaning then later raised the price.

Failure Story Zirtual provided on-demand virtual assistants. Instead of taking the "gig economy" model and using only contract workers, Zirtual differentiated itself by having full-time employees. Each assistant would work multiple accounts, depending on the workload, making it cheaper for corporate clients.
In August, Zirtual laid off its 400 employees in the middle of the night via an e-mail, after a last minute hail-Mary round of funding failed to come through. The CEO Maren Kate Donovan later said the "numbers were f*****" and the company had over-staffed without having matching demand.
Looking back, she told Fortune she should have hired a full-time CFO and had a proper board for the company. Zirtual's assets were acquired in October by Fundable.

Failure Story- The startup began as an internet kitchen with its own chefs and reliable partners serving a few localities in Bangalore. But soon the pressure to scale up made it pivot into an aggregator of restaurants as it focused on the tech at the cusp of food and logistics. This made it dependent, however, on many restaurant partners whose food quality and delivery efficiency were beyond its control. The curation of content it promised at the outset began to take a beating. It changed its name from TapCibo (because many new consumers didn’t get “cibo” is Italian for food), but neither the new name Dazo nor the cool tech it had developed could prevent its slide.
A number of other food startups like TinyOwl and Zomato have run into problems this year, but are trying to ride it out with a longer runway they have in funding.



But in spite of these sad stories don't remember one person who gave us "Angary Birds"

Please provide your valuable feedback