photo credit: gbaku

The importance of ‘right’ workforce in a startup can hardly be over-emphasized. You must hire the right people – especially the ‘early employees’ must be perfect.

The hiring procedure of a startup should follow a two-way approach – not hiring the wrong people and hiring the right people (the former is much more important). Hiring a wrong employee can be detrimental to the growth of a startup.

The main confusion arises in identifying the ‘right’ people for your startup. No matter how experienced you are, there is always a dilemma when it comes to hiring for startups. In the following paragraphs we attempt to outline some important points you should consider when hiring for your startup venture:

•    Instead of spending a lot of time going out and finding the perfect person, let the perfect person find you

•    Change the “what can they do for me” line of thinking to “what can my startup do for them?” It’s not only the responsibility of big companies to ‘create value’

•    Generalists and Specialists – both are important for your startups so try maintaining a balance

•    Hire talent, not skill – the talented employee will automatically learn the skills

•    Have a probation period before actually hiring (you should date before getting married)

•    Experience is important but don’t ignore the people with a ‘warrior attitude’. Reminds me of a post by Seth Godin I came across recently.

Your startup is developing in the Information Age so take full advantage and look out for the best talent. Detailed information on this subject is available in the following articles:
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/1278/5-Quick-Pointers-On-Startup-Hiring.aspx
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/185/Startup-Hiring-Why-You-Should-Date-Before-Getting-Married.aspx

I’ve been in the startup business for a pretty long time now.  One of the things that I’ve found hardest to do is find and recruit exceptionally talented individuals.  This is not particularly surprising, I think all businesses (big and small, young and old) have this challenge.

photo credit: M i x y

Let’s start by explaining what Inbound Marketing is all about – the style of marketing that focuses on getting found by customers (when they need) and not ‘pushing’ your product or service (referred to as Outbound Marketing) is known as Inbound Marketing.

As a customer when you need to buy a product/service, you don’t solely trust the ad or newspaper release. Suggestions and feedback from friends, family and other customers influences your decision in a big way. And getting this ‘feedback’ has become so much easier with the advent and rise of the Internet and Web 2.0.

All you today need to do this type your query in a search engine and here you go! You have hundreds of reviews, suggestions, feedback (negative too) in one search. Traditional Marketing methods are effective but with the rise of Web 2.0, inbound marketing is definitely the future.

Now as a startup you need to go out there and market your product or service. Inbound marketing is the one stop solution to all your marketing strategy confusions. Your website, SEO techniques, blogs and social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc all come under the Inbound Marketing umbrella.

 As a startup you gain the following benefits from Inbound Marketing:

1. Better Relationship Management – which can lead to higher prospects to client conversion
2. Loyalty factor can lead to more sales
3. The methods of implementing it are far less expensive and as a startup you can’t spend heavily due to financial constraints
4. Easy to use and ready-made tools available online

Inbound marketing can be related to what Seth Godin describes as ‘relationship marketing’ which can turn out as long-term strategy for your startup business if implemented wisely.

Three quick points for Startups: Content, SEO and Social Media

(1) It Costs Less - Outbound marketing means spending money - either by buying ads, buying email lists or renting huge booths at trade shows. Inbound Marketing means creating content and talking about it.

For more information visit:  http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4416/Inbound-Marketing-the-Next-Phase-of-Marketing-on-the-Web.aspx

photo credit: manfrys

‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimization) is a term widely used to mean “the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (organic) search results” (Wikipedia).

As a startup, you have your website ready with excellent content but how will you get it across to the ultimate users? Your website is in a space where there is a lot of search traffic, but how will you make it to the top of search engine rankings and generate traffic (ultimately leads)? There is a lot of confusion by founders of startups around SEO and how it works for a startup.

What we believe – SEO is extremely important for small businesses because normal users (those who don’t live and breath technology) only type a few of their favorite websites directly into the URL bar and for everything else go to search engines, most likely Google. In the 90s, people talked a lot about “home pages” and “site flow” – which matters if you are getting most of your traffic from people typing in your URL directly. However, for most startups, this isn’t the case (at least for the first few years of existence). Instead, the flow you should be thinking about it users going to Google, typing in a key phrase and landing on one of your internal pages.

Search engines are ‘matchmakers’ between users “demanding” information and websites “supplying” it. SEO helps tracing the gaps in the supply of information and providing traffic to your startup website.

The following article and slideshow provide great tips for Startups on SEO:

http://www.slideshare.net/willobrien/try-will-o-brien-startup-corner-seo-and-social-media
http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/11/seo-for-startups.html
As a startup founder, don’t overvalue better results with SEO than is deserved. There is a great value in SEO for startups. The beauty of SEO is as a long-term strategy for building inexpensive traffic.

 In the same conversation about SEO for startups, the founder either tells me:
•    There's a ton of search in my space
•    I'm not sure how much search there is in my space

photo credit: cloudzilla

Entrepreneurs agree that shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den are changing business culture – for the better. “Entrepreneurial” reality TV shows have become popular because they reflect all the problems, issues and situations a startup or small business owner may face.

Reality-Business TV offers an insight into the highs and lows of starting a business and there are quite a few lessons startups can learn;

Don’t overvalue (or undervalue) your business – sales and profit are different

Study Competition – Know about your competition as much as you know about customers

Diversify – New markets, new distribution channels or new verticals; explore all possible avenues

Perfect Your Elevator Pitch and Presentation Skills – it will help communicating with investors, clients, employees etc

Forget your ego – an over-inflated business ego will ignore the ‘cost’ and ‘risk’ realities

Further information on what a startup can learn from business reality shows is provided in the article below:
http://www.allbusiness.com/banking-finance/banking-lending-credit-services/13641763-1.html

Whether you are a start-up seeking investment (think Shark Tank) or an established business in need of a re-launch to abate failure - these shows deliver what could be considered a 50 minute master class in how to succeed in business.

photo credit: Tracy O

In many articles that provide tips to building successful startups, a lot has been written about three key factors: The caliber of a startup team, quality of a startup’s product and size of a startup’s market. Many entrepreneurs believe that the only thing that matters when it comes to startup success is getting a right team/product/market fit. But an important point most startups forget is the cost of customer acquisition.  In fact a lot of startups solve the product/market fit problem, but fail because they don’t find a way to acquire customers at a low enough cost.

It is also important to ask yourself the question: can my business realistically expect to acquire customers for considerably less than the amount that I can monetize them?

The service/product your startup is providing may be extremely interesting and compelling. However, if your business doesn’t pay attention on how much will it cost to acquire customers, your startup success dream, perhaps, will just remain a dream.

The article mentioned below gives a detailed explanation on how to calculate the cost of acquiring customers and comparing it with the lifetime value of a customer (LVC) to find out if your startup can really succeed:

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup-killer/

The article is a great resource for startups.

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.