Today is the last day of 2009. That means we’re moving into the first new decade of the 2000s. 2009 was not a very good year for startups considering the recession and economic downturn. It was also a rough year on the Venture Capital front. But, there are promising signs that VCs are preparing to ramp up their investment by injecting much needed cash flow into startups in 2010. So that’s good news on the VC investment front but startups also need to make and keep certain resolutions to be successful in the coming year. Here are a few important ones:
1. Simplicity and Stability – reduce unnecessary components and be consistently excellent.
2. Set realistic deadlines and meet them
3. Value your team and their commitment  – have a collective vision
4. Be receptive and open to the market – ready to absorb and change accordingly
5. Release Early - Release Often – a balance between perfection and speed
6. Internet Marketing will be indispensable in 2010. A Website design or Website redesign will help your startup keep pace in the competitive market
Happy New Year from the Bhopu Team!

A new idea is often the basis for starting up a business. Many entrepreneurs spot a gap in the market and start businesses that provide a product or service that fills it. Though having an idea is important but entrepreneurs get so involved in their ideas that they lose focus and objectivity. Here is where researching your business idea becomes important.

It is important to research the viability of your idea before launching a startup. Thorough assessment and market research at an early stage will help you to establish whether there is a market for your product or service.

The research plan should clearly spell out the objectives of your research. Research can be conducted by gathering information from the web, periodicals, federal and state agencies, industry associations, and so on. You can categorize the research by following the 4C’s – Company, Customer, Competitor and Collaborators.

A detailed article on the same is written by Karen E. Spaeder in Entrepreneur.com:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/evaluatingyouridea/article70518.html

Shenker, president of the ONswitch LLC, a full-service marketing firm in Westchester, New York. "Rather than taking the time to thoroughly plan and research, they sometimes plow ahead with execution, only to spend valuable dollars on unfocused or untargeted activities."

A common mistake many startups make is that they don’t conduct strict research to check the feasibility of their ideas.  Research is of vital importance to startups if they want to be successful.

I believe that since you’ve actually come up with a thought of launching a Startup, you do have a magnificent idea and have done all the research around it! And why shouldn’t you? After all, your dream will materialize through your Startup venture. It definitely deserves all the attention and effort.

But don’t forget that no matter how ‘unique’ your idea is, there is always enough competition in the market to pull your startup down. How will you deal with this competition ultimately determines your future in the industry. Customer Service, Convenience, Experience, Economic rates – all of them are offered by mostly all the businesses today!

That’s why the best way to drive people to buy from you is offering something that they can only get from you and no one else. The Marketers call it USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Ask yourself “What is different or better about the products or service my startup has to offer?”

The article below outlines a few steps a startup can take to identify a ‘Killer USP’ and stay ahead of competition:

http://www.startupnation.com/articles/9485/1/unique-selling-proposition-transform-sales.htm

In other words, you need to spend some time looking at your competition. Because it’s impossible to know what makes you unique when you don’t know what anyone else is offering.

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs find it difficult to find a USP for their business because they’re so involved in it that they forget the real world realm. Define your features and benefits, define your target audience, know your competition and write your USP.

How does Israel—with fewer people than the state of New Jersey, no natural resources, and hostile all around—produce more tech companies listed on the NASDAQ than all of Europe, Japan, South Korea, India and China combined? Israel has transformed the challenges it has faced into assets that form the key of its ‘culture of innovation’. Adversity of all kinds, have forced Israelis to be resourceful, to do more with less, to innovate and be global from day one. There are quite a few parallels we can draw between Israel and startups; passion, resourcefulness and persistence being the most important ones.

1. Passion – something you should feel as an entrepreneur, for the startup life, for your company, for your vision – is all-encompassing
2. Resourcefulness – know how to get information and results you want
3. Persistence – keep fighting till the end

Israel is an apt synonym for the global impact a startup business can make despite having “enemies” with massive resources. Senor and Singer from Start-Up Nation have written a book on lessons a business/startups can learn from Israel.

Throughout Nation, Israelis are a frank-speaking people who are willing to explore the world, to learn from those experiences, and to be persistent with implementing ideas in business. Managers at Intel Israel, for example, are credited for changing Intel’s strategic decision to no longer seek increased processor clock speed and instead create new processing paths.

Read the book summary and this itself will give you some good idea of what lies beneath (in the book)

Gone are the days when human resource was just considered to be back end work. Today human resource at a startup is considered as more of a business partner, advisor and mentor to the management. If a startup has to reach the peak of success, it is possible only through out of box and innovative thinking and through a well placed human resource and best practices.

But a problem many startups fail to realize is the one highlighted by ‘The Peter Principle’. It means that employees, who are a part of the hierarchical organization, are eventually promoted to the highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. The employee’s incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult – simply, that job is different from the job in which the employee previous excelled, and requires different work skills, which the employee may not possess. This is exactly the reason why most employees in a startup fail to deliver excellent results.

The move to incompetence in most startup occurs when ‘technical people’ try to step into management or executive roles, for which they have no aptitude, training or interest. And needless to mention but many technologists have tried to run startups and failed for this reason.

Some ways of solving the problem are, concentrating more on communication skills of employees, mentoring or training or probably keeping a check on the spectrum of responsibilities the employees have. The keys to avoiding ‘the Peter Principle’ are further explained in the article below:
http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/12/peter-principle-thrives-within-startups.html

Recognize and deal immediately with the occurrences of Peter Principle because a good HR team is an asset to any startup, as mentioned earlier. 

The Peter Principle is something that we all have to deal with, in our own career, and with other team members. In a small startup, everyone has to carry a maximum load for survival, and everyone sees the non-performers. If you are the last to see the problem, or the last to react, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.

photo credit: hellfroze

Start-ups also have a ton of options. They really are enter­ing with a clean slate most of the time and, often, a huge num­ber of resources. They have investors, boards, friends, fam­ily, old col­leagues, old net­works, etc., all push­ing for them and offer­ing a help­ing hand. So when it comes to decid­ing where they want to invest their energy and call in those favors, it can get tricky.

 

What is Technology Transfer? Generally speaking, it’s the process of transmitting research, technology or scientific findings from research labs to commercial users i.e. ‘Technology Commercialization’. Many companies, universities and government organizations have an “Office of Tech Transfer” dedicated to identifying research which has potential commercial interest and strategies on how to exploit it.

The process of commercially exploiting research varies widely. Tech transfer models and techniques can involve licensing, joint ventures or partnerships. The classic model was to develop a license to transfer new technology or research to an existing company. But a very few existing companies will take the risk of commercializing ‘premature’ technology findings. This is where startups come in and facilitate tech transfer.

Startups have an opportunity to bring technology from the research labs to the commercial end users and companies. They can either work on the technology and build it in-house completely or further research on a technology provided by the researchers. A new model of tech transfer is being evolved and startups have a major role to play!

Brian Darmody talks more about this topic in an interview with venturehype. Have a look: http://venturehype.com/startups-creation-and-tech-transfer/

Most university technology, however, isn’t mature enough to interest large companies (biotechnology is one notable exception to this rule). Therefore, universities have been developing new models of technology partnering and commercialization in the last 20 years.

When you’re starting up, you usually have a great idea or rather to say that you have a great idea and that is why you are starting up. This great idea of today will be the “killer product” for tomorrow and will turn out be an absolute blockbuster, or at least that is what you believe. Here is where the “Stealth” mentality comes in. You obviously want to protect your idea from the competitors and you think that being secretive is the key to success for your start up.

All is well except for the price that you will have to pay in the longer run for being locked up in your basement, talking to yourself for that ground breaking product you are working on. Products and services are made successful by adoption and adoption only happens after testing and feedback and iterations. Startups suffering the “stealth syndrome” lose out on great industry connections, PR opportunities, feedback from potential customers, and affluent investors.

What eventually makes a difference between success and failure of your startup isn’t your idea but your capability to create and dominate the market.

Truer words were never spoken before; ‘stealth’ startups need to open to reality. Vivek Wadhwa of UC Berkeley explains why: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/19/stealth-startupsget-over-yourselves-nobody-cares-about-your-secrets/

Learning what a customer needs is an iterative process.  You try something, get feedback.  Both you and your customer learn more and you try again. You keep doing this until you have something which is so compelling that the customer will pay money to have it—that’s when you know you have a killer product. But you can’t get feedback if you’re in stealth. You only have yourself to talk to.

Hope this information was informative and useful

Marketing is a very important aspect of business which startups usually tend to ignore at the launching stage. It is true that startups have budget constraints and they can’t really concentrate on marketing at this stage. But there are some low cost tactics a startup can use for promotion and relationship maintenance – all online. Start by choosing a name that works; something simple, memorable and unambiguous. Then probably kick off a blog and not to forget keep checking the website traffic through some analytics. These tactics and suggestions are explained in further detail by the Startup Guru Dharmesh Shah:
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/9008/Startup-Marketing-Tactical-Tips-From-The-Trenches.aspx

Probably the tactical steps don’t do much individually, but in aggregate they do start laying the foundation for much bigger things.

Find three closest competitors.  Pretend like someone is paying you $10,000 for locating each competitor.  Really try hard.  Barely managed to find three?  Take a lot of effort?  Great.  Now find 3 more.

The high rate of Startup failures can be attributed to many reasons and ‘indecision’ is one of the most fatal reasons. The whole idea of launching a startup can be quite overwhelming for both – first time entrepreneurs and experienced entrepreneurs and yes, indecision can creep in slowly. Have a look at the article below for certain tips and suggestions on how to avoid indecisiveness when it comes to startups:

http://www.instigatorblog.com/indecision-kills-startups/2009/12/16/

Don’t stress yourself much about making the right decision, in the end what is important is that any kind of outcome goes a long way in improving your motivation, spirit and chances of success.

Don’t confuse indecisiveness with staying the course. But recognize when staying the course isn’t you being decisive, it’s you being stuck.