4 Pillars of Startup Success and There is No Other Way Around It

There are 4 areas that startups needs to excel to be able to imagine success and fortunately or unfortunately, there is no other way around this. If startups and entrepenuers can master these four areas of their business, they will scale and if not, they will fail as 90% of startups fail within the first 5 years of their establishment.

If you are thinking of starting your own business and trying to come up with new ideas to monetize a new concept, or either you already working on creating you product who revolutionize a specific market, or you are in the growth phase and trying to scale faster, you need to excel your business and startup in the following 4 pilars. The bad news is there is no other way around these areas and there is no other way you can make it work. The good news is that now you know which areas you should work and improve and that gives you focus.

By putting your focus on these 4 areas of your startup, you are almost guaranteed that you will get result if done right. Remember that you are limited to your weakest skills and if you, as a leader, are weak at one of these areas, you cannot take your business to the next level. So, the idea is to make sure you understand what it takes to scale your business by focusing on right areas and improving yourself and your team to comeup with new ideas and mastering the market.

Number 1: Product

It is actually common sense that you need to have a product or service. But beyond that, it needs to be the best product or service that is available in the market place. The competition is there and there are lot of established giants that probobaly are doing what you offer. There are lot of other startups that are working on the same or similar ideas as you are reading this article. So this means your product and service must outperform all those in the market.

Your product and service, must be best. No excuse. You should be able to showcase how you are doing things, better, faster, cheaper or even different and what is the value in using your products. You can always ask your prospects and clients that what do you need from us and how do you want us to solve htese problems. On the other hand, you can come up with a challenger approach and start educating your prospects that this is the new way of doing things and here is the tangible value.

Go big and inspire.

So, try to come up with new product and services all the time to be able to solve problems differently and create the best products you can imagine.

This is the approach that Tesla Motors and Apple are taking by creating products that revolutionize the whole industry in a modern way.

Number 2: Branding

If you cannot illustrate your big vision in a clear way on where your company is going, you will fail. After building the best product possible, you need to work on the bigger picture and clearly envision where you are heading and how you are taking your clients there as well.

You should be able to illustrate how you are making things different or how you are going to inspire people to follow you. Remember, if you cannot make a differece or inspire people, you will fail as a brand sooner or later. You must craft a big vision for yourself and your business and be able to tell your story on how you ended up here and how you are doing things differently in future.

You should work on setting up expectation for your target market on what to expect when buying from you and how you will transform their lives and businesses.

So go big and inspire.

Number 3: Marketing

It is absolutely crucial for you to communicate the capability of your products and services and your vision to your target market. If you fail to effectively communicate and educate your industry, you will fail as a business. Education is big part of your daily activity when it comes to marketing. As Steve Jobs puts it: you need to connect the dots for people, otherwise they cannot do it. As an entrepenuer and leader you should take initiative and create excellent content, showcase successfull clients and projects, create news on a regular basis, inform influencers to talk about you, building a strategic social media campaign, network with other businesses that provide similar services and products, establish strategic partnerships and speak about your vision in public.

If you cannot put together a solid marketing strategy, you cannot survive very long.

And just as a side note, except nobody to do this for you. Branding and Marketing cannot be delegated to other people or companies. You as the founder of the company must take control and come up with ideas on what to do and then you can pay other people or companies to execute on your ideas.

Number 4: Sales

If you have the best product and service, if you have a clear and inspiring vision and if you communicate this to your market, but if you cannot close the sales, you will end up failing. This is no brainer that you need to have a strong sales strategy and a hungry team of sales force, who belive in your vision and share the same passion with you. If your sales team do not belive in your products and your vision, they simply cannot sell. They cannot pursuade the market to commit.

Plus, you need to empower them to achieve what you are asking them. Providing all the tools and resources you can to enable them with information, documents, case studies, labs, training and etc. so they can deliver on their promise.

Do not see them only as number people, but as people with passion who are trying to solve problems for your target market on the field.

All these pilars seem like common sense but you will be amazed to know how many organizations are missing these points by putting 80% of their focus on only one or two of these areas. the result speak for itself as many startups fail before getting the chance to show how they can impact the world.

So, become amazingly strong in these areas and see the results for yourself . . .