By Yuvrajsinh Vaghela
With fierce competition, ready to set the stage on fire and you want to be the ‘jack of all trades’ to stand above them all. Do you think would it be easy for you to be there? Not really. Running a startup is not child’s play; you need to give your time and attention to nurture it all through the years. There are certain bottlenecks you’re likely to face with your rigorous stamina to beat all the odds and take the league. Do you have that willpower to play the gimmicks needed to grow your startup?
Think about it, before you prepare yourself to take the league into your control, take a glimpse of all the tech startup challenges that many companies go through and the strategies they take to fuel their business so as to keep it going.
1. Hiring the Right Talent
Hiring the right and best talent requires money. Are you on the lookout for a great talent who can wear multiple hats and is able to work independently without any supervision? Do you have enough funds set aside and the right challenging jobs that are worthy of their careers? Well, these people are experts in class and in their industries and won’t like to risk their career path or a pay cut.
It’s better to keep an eye on tapping the best pool from your network of family and friends who are seeking for change and adventure. Give them the right room to experiment with their own skills and give them their ownership rights of the company as a privileged employee through employee stock options and retain them for your own good.
2. Financial Problems
Dealing with money management often makes the things go astray if not dealt with properly and in time. It’s hard for a stream of cash to flow and less expenditures to follow. Do you have enough funds to build the best version of new technology? With dwindling cash flow and without any clarity on your funding, at times, can halt your operations quickly. So, it’s better to keep evaluating your financial plans at quarterly intervals to prevent such problems.
The most common financial problems that tech startups face are underestimating startup costs, monthly expenses, and incorrect pricing. In order to avoid all this, the founders should smartly work on this and work on to keep their business network growing. Build relationships with potential investors early on before you find yourself pitching to absolute strangers. Keep your bankers in the loop and keep an eye on acquiring startups of lesser denominations than you; help overcome all the estimated financial problems that could possibly come your way. Moreover, you can check the below funding strategies for making things work for you:
- Bootstrapping: Using your personal finances.
- Credit loans: Borrowing money for repaying back at later date.
- Selling a stake: Deriving financial support through equity release.
Apart from this, take the initial steps of qualifying the product-market fit with respect to obtain funding for your tech startup. Without having this stage in your development, you’re just walking down a blind path in any large-scale investments you’ve made. At times, you’ll find yourself struggling to build the desired portfolio for investment. It means that you’re committing and releasing smaller investments, to be eligible for potential traction and interests and proving yourself that there is a sustainable audience for you to develop in the future.
At times, you need sufficient cash injection from alternative sources, you will find a need to demonstrate the financial figures and key metrics from your qualification of the product to the market fit. Once you qualify this stage, you will likely to get adequate financial access to sustain your tech startup for an extended growth period.
3. Marketing
Do you know if you fail to market your product, you’ll face heavy damage on every spend you’ve made? If marketing plans are not executed in the right way, it can also put extra strains on your company’s return on investment (ROI) on that spend. So, be alert whenever you’re going to do marketing for your technology. As you know, marketing is data-driven and you need to understand your sales funnel and synchronize it as per the need. If, possible outsource work to others even if you have the ability to do it yourself.
Outsourcing and delegating tasks will allow you to concentrate on other priorities. Sometimes you come to know that your market is not prepared for innovative solutions to everyday problems. So, it’s better to keep educating yourself of your target market and never give up in tough times. You need to upgrade your progress in business until your value in business speaks for you loud and clear.
At last, it is expected that you will be going to get thorns in your way whenever you aim for scaling and growing your business, and they’ll grow bigger when you add more employees, customers, and regional territories. Some of the above-mentioned challenges may come in the way of your doing business, but with a thoughtful approach and diligent consideration and planning can make your start-up have a successful transition from any early-stage to a more established one. So, get your weapons and armed force ready, and start climbing your goals one by one.