Silly Startup Mistakes- Entrepreneur Should Avoid

Starting a business is not easy. Even if you have incredibly awesome ideas, many complex problems may arise. Be sure not to add to their tales of disaster.

On his many failed experiment, Thomas Edison ones said,” I have learned fifty thousand ways it can’t be done and therefore I am fifty thousand times near the final successful experiment”

Silly Startup Mistakes- Entrepreneur Should Avoid

Be sure not to add to their tales of disaster. Here are some silly startup mistakes that an entrepreneur should avoid at any cost.

1. Build a product that nobody wants

What if you put in time, money and efforts to create a product, to see that no one buys it? You launch your product and sit there and waiting to see results but imagine nothing happens. This type of silly mistakes is happening to most of the Entrepreneur. Forty-two present of startup failed due to this silly mistake. There was “No Market Need” for what they were making. So, you start questioning yourself, did I mess up the product? Did I mess up the wrong people?

So, if an entrepreneur wants to come in the market then they must come to that product which market want.

Read: Benefits of Customer Service Training

2. Any co-founders with skills will do

It is very hard to find a perfect co-founder for your startup. You just can’t team up with anyone. You will go through many, many lows and you need someone who can handle the pressure. Having a co-cofounder like being in a marriage. Just like choosing the right partner to marry, choosing the right co-founder is also the most important decision for your startup career. A silly mistake of yours can take your startup to the ditch.

Before you kickstart your new business venture, these are some essential qualities that you should look for in a co-founder-

• Complementary Skills
• Mutual Respect
• Alignment of Mission and Passion
• Open-Mindedness and Flexibility
• A Personality Match

3. Focusing too much on Competitors

There will always be people with more money or more celebrity, but you are the only one with your brain, creativity, and power to execute. Where you work for a small startup or a large one, you probably have limited resources. Not every project that your competitor is working on is right for you or your company. You can not control their actions, but you can control your effort and execution. You cannot complain that your competitor achieved something, and you should have been considered, but you did nothing to earn that business. As an entrepreneur, you will have daily reminders that what you are doing is insane.

So, if you really want an opportunity you need to develop a plan and go present your company, product or yourself to the market. As William Arthur Ward says – It is wise to direct your anger towards your problems_not people; to focus your energies on answers_not excuses. This type of silly mistakes can take your eye off your progress. By keeping away from the jealousy and negativity and refocusing on the positive reason why you began your project or company will help you achieve your goals.

Read: Essential Elements of Unique Selling Proposition

4. Spending money on ‘big marketing’ too quickly

This type of silly mistakes is done by many entrepreneurs. They thought that if they spend the maximum amount on marketing campaign they will get the maximum amount of business. Spending more amount of money on marketing, it just means you have spent more money, and you now have less money in the bank account.

If you do make the mistake of spending too much very soon, the worst thing that could be happened is that your marketing turns out to be a huge screen, but you will be incapable on resulting the new demand. If you are feeling like your startup business plateaued, you are still doing a bunch of work and you spending too much money, but you are not seeing any new growth, you are seeing your business slowly losing money, it is probably time to re-examine your marketing strategy.

Pulling analytics might feel like pulling teeth sometimes but they can help you save so much time and money

5. Failure to understand and comply with legal obligations

The unique problem of Indian startup is that even you get every piece of the puzzle right, you may still have to hang up your gloves just because you are on the wrong side of government policies and regulatory flip-flop.

You must have to research enough about the laws that govern the market where you operate. You have someone who in your startup who understands government rules and evolving government policies and can go to talk to government babus if needed. No matter what size of an opportunity is, if you plan to get into an unregulated sector, you need to have certain risk management plans.

Before starting the startup entrepreneur must understand and secure all necessary licenses and permits and set of compliance systems for taxes and fees due to the local, state and the federal government.

Read: Building Blocks of Digital Marketing

6. Not carefully considering intellectual property protection

When we first started our business, as an entrepreneur we don’t think about getting protection because our idea was untested and unproven as a marketable product. If you develop a unique product, technology or services, you need to consider appropriate steps to protect the intellectual property you have developed. An entrepreneur must need to think of their employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, and partners as the part of their IP strategy.

When working on a website and creating materials for your business, be very careful of using works that you did not create yourself. Just because an item is not marked with the copyright doesn’t mean that it is free for you to use.

Here are the some of the common protective undertaken by a startup which helps an entrepreneur to avoid silly mistakes at the time of considering intellectual property protection:

• Patents
• Copyrights
• Be aware of the EDP
• Address locating and timing
• Protect equity

Submitted By Vaishnavi Gupta | Aditya Modanwal | Shashank Agrawal (PGDM Batch 2018-20)