Top 3 reasons why a Start-up fails.

Within the span of last 7 years Start-Up has been one the most engaging trend, as it has attracted substantially more youth than it did ever before. This is a good sign of progress among youth, as they are now willing to make it on their own rather than following through traditional ways. Today’s youth is not afraid of going against the grain, although this is the sign of confidence but it has mostly been the reason for failures of start-ups. Fear of taking risk is what gives you the push to make it through.

Today the definition of start-up is mostly perceived as building a business on just an idea by acquiring funding from investors. And so, everyone thinks that’s easy, all I have to have is an idea that and build a business plan around it to pitch it to investors. Above 90% of people who engage in start-ups build their business plan in relevance with investor which is the first big mistake. A business isn’t built to raise funding it’s built to raise revenue, and so a business plan should be curated for investors but for the clients / customers.

The new entrepreneurial generation misconstrues start-up as a business, but in reality start-up is a stage of business. There was a time when 90% of business that started, survived and flourished; by now this figure is upside down. The reason the start-ups where so successful back then was very simple and logical. Back then entrepreneurs cared more about nurturing their business with efforts rather than spoon feeding them money to grow. Yeah sure! Money multiplies money, but the fact isn’t universally applicable cause if it were so then no small business had ever became big. An entrepreneur must never shelter the ideology that justifies the fact that every start-up can only be a big business by investment.  And so, he/she must never stop putting in efforts into that start-up just because it didn’t received any funding. A start-up could only be a business if it has the juice to survive even without the funding all it needs is an effort.

There are various key factors that an entrepreneurs must be aware of, these are:

Exit Strategy: Remember it’s pessimists who created parachutes. It’s always better to assume that at one point plan may fail and exit strategy is what help you to limit your exposure to loss. Learn your weakness so as to provide more strength to them, to keep business from failing.

Market Analysis: You must never think of your idea to be a unique until you happen to have invented a revolutionary product that provide better solutions. And when your idea isn’t unique, you then have to analyse the market to realize what would be sector of your potential clients / customers.

Resource Allocation: Although investment plays an important role in growth of business but it doesn’t mean that pouring in more will result in exponential revenue generation. Understand the market place and smartly allocate your resources accordingly.

Dilemma & Lifestyle of Writers

Many of you out there believe that the job & lifestyle of a writer is easy. We Sit-around all day; all week and suddenly we write something and voila! job’s done. Well! You wouldn’t be wrong because that’s how it looks from your side of the wall. Let me paint you a picture of our side of the wall.

Yes! We writers sit around all day all week but that’s just our physical posture, but in truth, our mind is going nuts with recurring questions all the time. What should I write about? What could be the title? What could be the matter/ content? And trust me it’s no piece of cake. Even when you’re doing something else, a bug crawls up your brain and says “Hey! This seems nice I could write about this. Hell! I am gonna write about this.” But by the time you actually start writing it’s all gone.  What seemed like a nice topic to write about now seems stupid.

See! The thing is writing isn’t much of job for us. It’s a habit; a hobby; a necessity; an addiction; or may be even an itch, an itch that we can’t scratch. The only thing is we made a profession out of it so we can do what we like and still be able to pay the bills. We are diversified to; we are authors/novelists, content-writers, copy-writers, columnist, blogger and much more. Shit! We can even form up a word and give it a definition. You know why? Cause every piece of paper you read is in one way or another written/edited/formatted by a writer. We all different types of writers have our own issues to deal with. For Author/Novelist, it is the sheer pressure of completing the novel, and it’s not just about writing what’s in our mind it’s more about writing the story in a manner that would be clear in the mind of the reader. Authors spend most of their time working on a book and there are times when the book that they finished isn’t good enough for publishing, sadly they never transform from manuscript/draft to a published book and there goes their effort down the drain. For bloggers, the main issue is what to write about? And how to start it? We even have to re-think titles of the article over and over again because that’s what catches the attention of the reader in the first place. For content and copywriters, the most difficult part is to figure out the matter because they know what they have to write about they just have to figure out what it is they could write about it. So, if you think writing is easy then think again, and if you reach the same conclusion again then start writing something. And yeah it’s true anybody can be a writer, just as anybody can be anything all they gotta do is put their mind to it.

In all honesty, most of us I mean like 99% of us writers are in fact writers by choice, it’s not that we couldn’t do anything it’s just that we didn’t want to. And like said our lifestyle is hard but it ain’t bad and I mean at all. It’s pretty freaking amazing. We do work by choice and work of choice. We have flexible hours of work and the timeline of delivery is somewhat flexible too. Shit! We can even sit around all day say we are thinking!!! Waiting for inspiration!! We win most of our arguments except when there is a woman on the other side of the argument, we are able to profoundly serve sarcasm with pure intent of pleasure , and when someone is mad at us we know what to say too.

And most of all we do what we like to do, we do it whenever we want to do it and from where ever we prefer to do it. Even as a writer I can’t put it in words but it gives an amazing sense of feeling when your profession is your hobby.  I mean, imagine! You are sitting on a roof or a garden close to nature or even your room where you feel comfortable not just physically but mentally too and a cup of coffee on the side and music playing and all that mesmerizing stuff and this is where you actually do what you like and it even earns you money. It’s like earning money for living. And To all fellow writers: When I was drafting this article I had an idea of creating our own legit network. So I built a group on Facebook & LinkedIn which I will closely monitor so as to filter unwanted and unwelcomed elements out. Join me if you want. It’s called Global Writer’s Network.

Branding by Hashtag..!

It’s highly unlikely to search on Google for something and come up with “No Results Found”.  It happened to me. I searched for hashtag of my not so famous blog called Its Diversified (itsdiversified.blogspot.com)

Well! It had been a year since I’d been operating a blog via Blogspot. I’d been on & off, having no consistency with posting timeline I never got much views. The more I explored the more I got fascinated and interested. As any other writer I wanted my words to reach more and more readers. So, I shared my posts a lot then one day it hit me, why not try to brand it. Using all those hashtags while posting on SNSs (Social Networking Sites) I realized I could brand my blog with a certain hashtag of its own. As first instinct I went and searched for #itsdiversified on google luckily enough I found it to be dead as google showed no result for search & same thing happened on all SNSs (Twitter, Facebook, G+ LinkedIn, Instagram & Pinterest) so didn’t had to look any further.

This was a huge breakthrough for me cause now in a way I get to own a hashtag as no one currently uses this (#itsdiversified) hashtag so when the only posts in relevant searches  would lead directly to me and my content on blog. Currently the hashtag is still not used by any other people but I am working and its promotion cause once it become trending and people start using it then it would mount to branding of blog. Phrase “Its diversified” also happens to be a phrase that could be commonly used by people if it were to be a noun it would have been a lot harder to promote it (But not impossible). #itsdiversified could be used in all sorts of posts tagging all I have to do is promote it in a way that people start taking it into a notice and start using it if they feel its need. If #itsdiversified becomes trending enough then as being its base brick it would increase my blogs visibility, because being all initial posts of #itsdiversified linking to me and my blog google has learnt to prioritize my posts. This could be understood as teaching Google (Its worms) to direct themselves at my posts when & if #itsdiversified is searched.

Similarly creating and owning a hashtag could help you in branding. No matter what business or start-up you have what product you are selling or if you are profiling yourself, hashtag building would help a lot. From my point of view Hashtag creating & building is one the best branding techniques if it happens to pan out. As I have never seen branding by hashtag creating I cannot certify it as a commonly used or verified method of branding. I had an idea for promotion of my business (In this case my blog) and worked on it.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that what I am saying makes sense even though you’re reading it for the first time that if a hashtag is created by you and becomes trending you would definitely get traffic. Besides out of all the hashtags you use do you know anyone who ever could certify that he/she is the creator of it or he/she posted the first post on internet. I mean if someone came up to you and say I was the first person to use #awesome on whole internet your first response would be “Yeah Right!” wouldn’t it. But in case of #itsdiversified I can easily certify it. As I kept track of my progress and made a video in which you would find the complete timeline of how I created #itsdiversified and initial results of google and all SNS that I searched. But don’t take my word for it, you can search for yourself on google and realize that results on it directs to me and my blog. Moreover you can search on any of the social networking sit (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.) for #itsdiversified and you would find top posts linking to me and my business (Blog). Though this method of branding by hashtag creation is not acknowledged by any of public figures I (a small blogger) could state for a fact that I have observed a certain amount of hike in viewers of my blog. 

What constitutes a good business plan.

Business plan constitutes an inked format of carefully calculated set of choices & decisions in association with assessment & evaluation of factors that holds the potential of regulation of resources, investment & profit. These inked formats are systematically organized, arranged and classified into various categories. Each category provides a detailed structure of what it is devised to represent. It’s important to understand what to present in each category and more important to know what categories must be included in a business plan. You can always add-on a category but there are some categories that are essential to a business plan. Categories are not anything complicated it’s just a titled paragraph that makes it easy for reader to get the gist before reading the paragraph. Categories also makes it easier to locate certain information in a document of such length and particulars. No arises a question what are these basic categories that forms a business plan? In other words what sections must be included in a business plan? Let’s discuss the most essential categories / section that a business plan must have.

♦ Company Summary:

This section is the first part that a business plan must hold. It provides the brief description of your business / company or a start-up. It provides info of what you / your business is all about and what are its goal. Remember this section shouldn’t hold any financial information and functional information. This is just for the bio of your business and its purpose not for the financial and inner workings details.

♦ Executive Summary:

This is the spine of any business plan. Executive Summary is in itself a whole detailed documents with various sub categories. This section is where it is required to present the whole idea and working of your business or start-up. Note that this section either doesn’t require any financial details but only the complete detailed elaboration of how the business works and what it’s about. The vital subcategories are

Management Team.
This section include details about your management team.

Customer Problem.
This section provides info about your start-up / business, i.e. it tells what customer problem you are solving.

Products & Services.
This section provides the details of your product/service that you desire to deliver to your clients.

Targeted Audience.
Every product or service is required by different sort of people. Let the readers know of what will be the audience that might buy your product or render your services.

Potential audience.
This section moves a bit further than targeted audience. Here might become would. This is the audience that will most likely buy your product or render your services.

Sales & Marketing Strategy.
This section will contains the details of you plan to reach your potential audience.

Competitor Analysis.
This section will provide the complete analysis of your competitors and what would be your counter measures if any one decides to “go to the mattresses” with you.

♦ Financials:

This is the only section where you must present all your financial statistics. Financials includes details about all investments and previous investors (if any) and the reports of revenue and profit that your business generate or is believed to be generating.

If you have a start-up not a business the story changes a bit, you don’t have to include your investments or investors cause there are none at this point and there is no revenue reports all you have is estimate of what revenue could be generated if a business were to be started. However, if you have a seed funding or equity or any sort of investment incoming you must mention it.

♦ Important Add-Ons:

There are various add-on categories that are required to transform a good business plan in to a better one. The above discussed are must for a business plan but there are add-ons like Exit Strategy or Stop loss protocols and contingency strategy that are by all means as much necessary as hand to body. Without these “hands” plan would still live but wouldn’t be as efficient. 

It's not all about profit when it comes to a business plan.

When making a business plan many believe that if the stats show the tremendous amount of profit through a business it would make the business plan obsolete and would easily get investors. This ideology is wrong and one shouldn’t shelter it. One must always consider “all going wrong” situation and then create a business plan. If you have a plan that could yield a high profit but you don’t have the fail safe contingency plan for loss assessment than the plan is as good as a project for school/college competition, cause no matter what the plan is it’s just for assessment purpose and will not be followed. However if you include protocols to limit your losses in “all going wrong” situation then the plan would seem effective and will capture the attention of investors cause then they will have a comfort of assurance for when things go south. Remember, Inventor invented the Airplane but a pessimist invented a parachute. Now, ask yourself how safe would you feel flying in plane that on paper says will fly smoothly and has no parachutes in it? Besides of how much profit a business would yield, there are factors that decide the potential of a plan. Believe it or not but these factors are a lot more concerning than how much profit you can make out of a business.

♦ Going Concern Concept.

As an entrepreneur you must be aware of a concept of commerce known as “Going Concern Concept” according to it when someone (An entrepreneur) is starting a something he/she starts with hope and assumption that it would remain business for foreseeable future and it would not be subjected to halts and assets liquidating. To follow this concept a business plan requires all sorts of evaluation of aspects through which a business might could or would face the resistance in its growth.

♦ Competitive Analysis.

Many misconstrued this concept of analysis and believe it only has to do with know what and how the competitors are doing business. Well! It’s not completely wrong but it’s not complete either, it’s just a part of it. It is necessary to analyse what the people who are already in business are doing and how they are doing it. Their failures will be your lessons and their success could be your path, but competitor analysis is much more than that. It doesn’t only provide analytical stats about your existing competitors but it should also be open to ideas that there will be another new competitor in future.  This analysis will educate you about what to do when a new competitor comes in the play with what would seem like better plan then you cause let’s not close eyes to the fact that world and it’s tech is evolving on daily basis. So to cover yourself from the effect of another competitor coming in play this competitive analysis will make you flexible to improvisations and resource management.

♦ Exit Strategy.

This is not just one of the most but it is the most important part of a business plan. Exit strategy is what devises you to control your losses and get out while you still can. It’s harsh but it true that the chances of a business flourishing now a days are way to slim as compared to last century. Everyday evolution in technology has made the market a lot more volatile, you may buy a piece of machine now but its highly probable that a new machine with better tech would be available in market soon enough. But there are start-ups that don’t depends on machines but one way or another every start-up is affected by technology for better or for worse. So to limit your losses exit strategy must be in place. Exit strategy is what you plan to do when you hit a certain low. It’s most important because when you start a business and it hits the ground your mind loose the sight of big picture and the stress makes you make rash decisions, but having a devised set of protocols at the very early stage of business prevents you from making wrong decisions at the time of your loss. Exit strategy doesn’t necessarily contains the steps of how to get out by closing and liquidating your funds but before that it contains of how to optimize your strategy to have a shot at surviving in market.

Remember an entrepreneur should be an opportunist and optimist but most of all he should be pessimist.

How Flipkart became the top player of India.

In the year 2007, Flipkart took its baby-steps. Founded by Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal, both are alumni of IIT Delhi who were working for Amazon. They both shared a vision of running their own e-commerce platform, and so they did what most only think of. They left their jobs at Amazon and started their own company. Initially the aim was to only sell books, but as they explored facts they realized they could be in big.

Although it may look simple but making it large doesn’t come easy. From evolving the Book selling platform into India’s top e-commerce site they invested all their efforts. To ensure company’s credibility they faced two most important issues of every e-commerce platform. First is payment integration, which always placed a buyer in difficult spot as they always sheltered the idea of payment going to scrap and not having goods delivered, and offcourse then there was a lengthy process of online payment by e-banking. However, Flipkart pulled through, they introduce easy and reassuring methods of payments for consumers, like Cash on Delivery (COD) & Payment by Card. Second issue was setting up a supply chain to make sure the goods are delivered timely.

When it comes to growth of company only credibility doesn’t help much. For growth one always needs funds to expand. Sachin & Binny knew that well, and so they approached VC’s & investors. Realizing the potential of their business investors gladly chipped in. Raising funds Sachin & Binny gave away stakes to investors and propelled the company at a rate that wasn’t estimated. Who would have thought that the two employees of Amazon could be one day their biggest competitor in India. This was all made possible because of the funding they raised. Being Flipkart founder Sachin & Binny Bansal holds only 7.5% share of it, all the rest is sold to investors.

Major shareholders of Flipkart are Tiger Global International II Holdings that holds 30.86%, Intervision Holding B.V has 22.44% & Accel India Venture II Ltd. Has 8.98% shares of Flipkart.

Every Entrepreneur knows the benefit of raising funds through VC & Investors. The ideology of being the 100% shareholder of own company is wiped out as we all know bigger investment generates better return. All the major players of all the fields have VC’s & investors as associates, whether it’s Google or Apple Inc. or whoever. They all know the eternal truth “Together We Stand Divided We Fall”. 

Why a Start-up must have a Website/App.

The world isn’t big enough, with the tech. today it’s easy to connect anyone from anywhere. So starting up, why not cast a wide net to capture the clients. A start-Up is limited if it’s reachable only through physical presence of client, and in this era where competition is at its peak, even a small step can lead to big changes & build new heights.

Not only every step you take matters but also the steps you don’t take, plays a far more important role in your success. No matter what field you are starting up in or what problems you are solving, you need for people to know that you exist and that you do something. How will people or potential clients reach you if they don’t even know that you exist, makes sense, doesn’t it? Then how to reach more & more people and let them know about your business?

The best way to acknowledge your presence to the crowd is through internet. For instance it might stand to reason that why one could have that doesn’t need a Website/App to make a sale, but making a sale & a profit are two very different things. True, there are business that won’t make a sale by a website/app, but in such cases a website/app can provide a platform to provide the introduction, information & a channel to reach you and your business.

Why limit the reach of clients geographically when you have the whole globe. Plus reaching more & more people will only and efficiently amount your start-up in becoming a brand. Take Royal Royce or Gucci or Prada for instance, a lot of people who can’t afford to buy their product know them well, not only the crowd who can’t afford but also those, people who don’t want their product appreciate it. This is what is called ‘building a brand’.

Look-up any brand you could think of and Google it, you will see it’s webpage/app, why because they know the power of knowledge and they know the benefits of educating the people of their product.

What you need to know before Starting-up.

A start-up always has an idea as its seed. An idea is what inspires a person to move forward. But idea has its own limitations, because idea is something that cultivates a dream but in reality you need a plan to turn it to success.  A business plan is well thought advanced form of idea that includes all aspects of the business that would serve as the factor in decision making. A business plan constitutes of various key features, which are important to be known.

♦ Figure out the problems you are solving.

First, you need to completely understand what are the problems that you intend to solve with the start-up/business you’re running or about to run? This will take you to the next step.

♦ Evaluate what will be the sector of your clients.

Once you’ve established what your business will be about, then you need to realize who would be your potential clients. Their Age/Interest/Occupation/Hobby/Gender/Location. Anything and everything matters.

♦ How will you reach those clients? 

Now comes the problem that has the juice to wipe your business out. No client, No profit and down goes the business. So, before starting-up you need to understand and plan out  how to approach the potential clients and turn them into you long term clients?

♦ What will be the investment in terms of money & resources?

Once you have it all planed out you will then easily be able to assess what resources/manpower you would need and what will be the investment to acquire those resources.

♦ Evaluating the profit by the amount of investment?

This is the anchor that will make the decision of whether or not you should move forward with your plan. Once you know the investment you need to make in order to start-up a business, you must calculate the interest on that amount & evaluate whether the interest amount is less than the profit or not. If not then there is no reason to start-up a business because firstly you’re getting lesser return on your investment as you would have received more, secondly there is no return of your efforts. So it is better to rather keep the money on interest and work on something else as every effort must generate a return.

Keep calm strategize everything and work out every detail.

You can get a lot further with working smart than with just working hard.

Important Ground that a business startup need to cover

Starting up something no matter what, there are some grounds that you need to cover, in order to limit the loss if anything goes wrong. These are the options where one doesn’t usually pay much attention or take seriously, however the same features can destruct your whole business and its resources overnight.

Structure & Hierarchy.

This is what could disrupt the inner functionality of any business. Every person has its own post of designation and with that a level of ego. A proper hierarchy must be set so as to properly feed every person’s ego and keep them happy. For instance a manager in no case would like to report his/her team it to be the other way around. There should be a check on every person in the company and the request & complaint should be properly channeled

up the hierarchy.

Roles & Responsibility.

Every person in the company should be assigned a specific role & responsibility along with a proper authority to make a decision. Every decision made by a person should only be questioned by the person up the chain. If not, then it would create an unhealthy work environment

Copyrights when choosing a Name/Logo/Tagline.

While choosing a Name/Logo/Tagline one should  research and make sure  not to use the name that has already been registered or copy the logo/tagline, cause if as hoped when your business grows, it’ll attract attention on these tiny details and if these are copied then a person/organization will bring a lawsuit against you.

Legal Contracts.

A business should have a properly structured set of legal contracts to ensure the safety of the company. Legal contracts include all the financial contracts as well as copyright. These legal contracts are also required when you hire a person to ensure your employer loyalty. Documents like Employment Contract; Non-Disclosure Agreement; Non-Compete Clause are among the most important contracts.

Exit Strategy.

Hope for the best but expect the worst. When starting up something, one never thinks of closing it down, which is a big mistake. There are circumstances and scenarios where a business should be shut down. This is where exit strategy is required. Exit strategy is the key map / protocols that you design to follow if in any case you need to shut the business down. This strategy limits your exposure to loss. 

Take It from someone who’s been where you at.

Starting up something needs a lot more insights than one expects. Every mind has his own scope which limits its vision and self-understanding of aspects. When starting-up one always browses for options and ways to make the process somewhat effective, and so you seek the insights of the people who are in the field that you’re getting into. Every input from every person is helpful in one way or the other. You don’t only need an advisor who agrees with you and elaborates your idea but you also need a person who will always point out the flaws in your plan.

Having an advisor and getting advised are two different things. Every next person can provide you an ‘Advice’ but it’s on you to take it seriously or not, on the other hand it’s you who chooses the person from people as advisors. Be careful about who you choose, an advisor is the one who takes your plan as his own and evaluates all aspects that could cast an effect on the fall & growth of the plan.

There are two types of advisors. First is the one whom you trust, no matter what field/business he/she belongs to, their advice holds the value to you because you know they are amongst your well-wishers. Second are the advisors who are in the same field as you, Take it from someone who’s been where you are, these advisors are the most essential cause they can provide the actual insights and share their failures with you. These advisors might not be able to help with what to do in order to succeed but they sure will provide you insights on what not to do to keep you from failing. A person learns from his mistakes but an entrepreneur also learns from another’s mistakes.

Advisors are the one who directly cast an effect on your mind and can alter the authority of your mind into making a decision, and business is all about making the right decisions so be careful who you take the advice from and be sure to hold your thoughts upto the utmost priority cause no matter what, in the end it’s all on you.

Take their advice but make your decision.

Best marketing techniques for promotion of Start-up.

Today the world is no more out of reach, with internet there are ways to target potential clients that will make the start-up/business run smoothly and progress. No more door-to-door marketing or cost of televised Ads & Ads in print media. There are now a lot better and cheaper ways through which a small business or start-up can do a cheap and effective marketing.

Website / App:

No matter what business you are running or what problems you’re solving it’s always advisable to let people know what you’re doing, who knows where one might require your services. If they don’t know that you exist, how would they know to reach you when they are faced with the problems that you’re solving?

So no matter what the business/start-up is about it must have a website/app that could at the very least provide the intro, info & the contact details of your business.

Digital Marketing:

Reaching a 100 people who cares about the business/start-up makes a lot more buzz than reaching a 1000 that don’t care. Through Print media & Television marketing you invest a lot money and reach a comparatively low volume of potential clients.

Digital marketing is one the cheapest and most effective tools in the field of marketing as the probability of reaching the potential clients increases exponentially. Every single share or like your post/article get extends the reach of that article to the circle of reader.

Digital Marketing includes

·         Social Media Marketing.

·         Ad Campaigns via Google Ad-words.

·         Mailing via services like Mail-Chimp.

·         Messaging.