How to maximize startup advisor's superpower for new business success?

Starting up your own business without any support or guidance may appear heroic but it you might be delaying your chances of success. Associating with a startup advisor or a guest advisor can impact your decision-making skill and introduce you to a new concept which otherwise, becomes difficult, because an entrepreneur is solely engaged making his/her business plan work and might overlook other areas which need attention.

Getting an advisor on board can improve the way your company operates. An external advice works as a complimentary source of information for running your business more effectively using the experience of others.

How Startup advisor can transmogrify your business:

Here is how startup advisor can help:

• A startup advisor will be honest with you. Since the advisor is not employed with you or working for you, he/she will always come up with most honest advice and feedbacks. If an advisor thinks that you are sailing on the wrong ship, they will immediately tell without hesitation. This helps in better deciphering the bottlenecks and nipping the bud at the right time and hence maximizing your chances to succeed.
• A good and efficient startup advisor can help new business startups with quiet advice and consultation. There’s an age-old adage,” A wise man learns from the mistakes of others”, startup advisors brings with them their experience, their reason for failure and success which works as a learning ground for the new startups for improvising their business plan which eventually help them to succeed. As a new business startup, you might face issues like aggravating employees, legal and documentation issues reference for business or reviewing your business model, a startup advisor works as a panacea for all your problems.
• Seeing around corners. As CEO, you have everything in front of you. An advisors or Startup Mentors help you see the situation apart from the normal field view which helps in ensuring that you have a 360-degree approach to embark upon a situation.
• An efficient startup advisor works as a coach whom who can entrust with all your issues and problems and they come up with a right and practical solution to it. Moreover, similar to a professional coach, a startup advisor will help you understand the nuts and bolts of your business and trains you to come up with the best solution for your business related problems. Startup advisor has relevant experience in the field and hence you can seek their advice when required. Also, they act as your agony aunt or punching bag where you can unwind yourself which otherwise is not possible.
• Your complete training ground, as a new startup business you need funding to run your business and manage the operational cost. Before hitting directly at the shot, Small business consultant works as training ground in front of whom you can pitch your startup business plan and they will always come up with honest feedback. Since they carry a heavy bag of experience, it is easy for them to suggest you with an alternative pitch which can fetch you funding to make your business successful.

Learnings:

To sum it up, we can say that the role of a startup advisor helps the entrepreneur suggest with design constraint, helps the founder focused on their goal and work on priorities without getting deflected or hindered by daily glitches that come in the business. As a new startup business owner, your focus should always be on increasing productivity achieving business goal, a good and efficient startup advisor ensures that you succeed in doing the same.  

Are you a teenager interested to enter the startup world? Tips for young entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is the new buzz word that seems to be becoming the talk of the town. The latest development can be traced from the fact that most of the young brigade is getting inclined to become the proud owners of business rather becoming a mediator to fulfill someone else’s dreams. The passion for chasing the dreams have become so strong that many colleges have introduced entrepreneurship development classes wherein students are encouraged to come up with new ideas that can shape their as well as the nation’s future.

Advantages of having young blood as entrepreneurs:

It’s no denial that there is a rising inclination of youth to become job-giver rather job-seeker. The path-breaking contributions by these young entrepreneurs lead to employment generation which eventually helps in the growth of the economy. Entrepreneurs are an important asset for any economy as they bring forth the ideas and concepts that directly or indirectly act as a catalyst for the growth of the nation. Entrepreneurial endeavors lead to the influx of money into the economic machinery of the nation, whereas on one side the established business may hit the glass ceiling in terms of their services, offerings, and money generation, the entrepreneurial ventures will boost new products and technologies in the market resulting in income and wealth generation.

Entrepreneurs are breaking tradition, following the path-breaking rules to create something that was never thought of. Today we are experiencing the high rise of that stratum of people who believe in themselves rather than believing in the predefined systems and protocols. The latest examples of Facebook, Linkedin, Alibaba etc. are few examples of providing service to people in a manner that no had ever thought of and all this became successful because there were strong determination and perseverance of people who wanted to make it happen.

There is another side to the positivity of entrepreneurship and Italy is quite an example where self-employment has proved to be inefficient for the economic growth. Here I remember a famous phrase that says, “Too many chefs and not enough cooks spoil the soup”. Thus, it the role of the government and the state becomes very important here. They need to establish policies and rule that can work as a guideline for entrepreneurs. Unfettered entrepreneurship might result in some unsocial activities like pervasive corruption, criminal activity, unfair market etc.

Must read: 10 mistakes that you should avoid if you want to make your startup successful

Hence , the state needs to strike a balance when it comes to promoting the idea of entrepreneurship which will not only help the economy grow but will also lead to establishment of a regulated society. In order for entrepreneurs to grow, there are a few tips that will work wonder for you :

Fire in the belly

As a young entrepreneur you should be passionate about your idea and concept. Accept your failure with open arms as they are bound to happen however, don’t worry they are just a part of running a business. Your passion for your idea and zeal to succeed will help you come over this failure and make your way to success.

Delegating work

The success of any entrepreneur lies in delegating the right person right work. Your sole objective is to make your business run and increase the productivity ; technology has given us many options like Virtual Assistant, online work etc. which can be of great help .This not only reduces your workload but also lets you focus on your business.

Understand what market needs

Need analysis is the most important aspect of any business. Your product or service should match the customer requirement; make sure you run a pilot project r conduct a survey to understand what will be the probable response of people towards your product or service.

Look for mentors

Having a Startup mentor or a guide will not only help you get a third party view of your business model but at the same time they work as an excellent source to drive your business in a right direction. An important point to note here is that the mentor and the experienced brains in the business know the rules of the game, you might be good at technology but the experienced class has already, mastered the art of networking which is the key to success for any new venture.

Optimally use social media marketing

It’s never bad to use social media to market your product after all, people are now more driven by social media messages but remember to optimally use it. Don’t solely rely on social media as your only tool to market your product or service, see which is the best medium and best time to market your product.

It’s never bad to use social media to market your product after all, people are now more driven by social media messages but remember to optimally use it. Don’t solely rely on social media as your only tool to market your product or service, see which is the best medium and best time to market your product.

Is coworking right for you? Arguments both for and against coworking space

With the rise in real estate prices, it became very easy and convenient option for start-ups or freelancers to pay a small amount to operate in a readymade office kind of environment (actually better than that), rather than investing bundles of money in buying an office. Coworking spaces are often confused with collaborative office rental facilities and incubators. It is not exclusive to people looking to build tech startups and it is also not limited to a better way to rent space, it offers a lot more than that

Let’s look at what really are the advantages of working in a coworking space that professional are not able to resist themselves:

• First of all, it offers the office like infrastructure that has facilities like dedicated desks, conference rooms, cafeteria, wifi/internet connection, print & scan facilities, power backups, etc. at single cost and also saves time in maintaining records of such overheads.
• These spaces organize some events or conferences for its members, sometimes just as a part of motivational activities and sometimes specific to particular topics.
• It offers the most wanted feeling of an office environment to the freelancers or startups who cannot or don’t want to invest in their own office spaces.
• Contact building becomes very easy for the young entrepreneurs and that will help them grow their businesses in future.
• A very important advantage of a coworking setup is it has variety of business ideas and concepts operating from a single place which can really be helpful for its members as some of them can find the services helpful for their businesses right on the next desk which will provide prospective clients to that service provider who’s also a member.
• Idea-sharing becomes easy and insightful which makes the environment exciting.
• Because generally the members of coworking spaces are young or open minded freelancer or startups, the culture is highly energetic and rocking.

But, it is said that something that glitters is not always gold, same as that this highly aspiring concept of coworking space also has it’s own drawbacks which make it avoidable for some professionals:

• The biggest disadvantage one will have opting for a coworking space will be spending money just to have an office environment which is not always affordable for the freshers or people who do not earn much. Coworking spaces are not always cheaper as currently the concept is quite new and is only available in big cities.
• If a coworking space is not available nearby, one will have to incur the transportation cost and also time to reach at the location.
• Coworking spaces sometimes observe too many changes. Coworkers are never the same and same goes with the desk that one uses. Their staff and location are also bound to change if they have very low-profit margins.
• Coworking spaces are sometimes more noisy than what members who like peaceful working environment would have expected. Constant noise sometimes becomes annoying and distractive.
  Such places are not really meant for people who are working on some top secret projects. Privacy of ideas becomes very rare in coworking spaces, especially when members are of same work domain.
• Coworking spaces are not complete substitutes of typical offices. Sometimes, you might not get the same level of guidance or help from the coworkers that you get from your office colleagues.

Important Startup Terminologies that should be a part of vocabulary

As an entrepreneur are you planning on boot-strapping or is it the help of a venture capitalist that you are interested in? In either case you would need a great pitch. When attracting investors, you should impress upon them that they are going to get good ROI soon enough.
Confused at what was written above? If you are a young entrepreneur with huge dreams but little experience, the jargons used above should startle you. But worry not. They are just jargons and you can easily learn them. They won’t be a roadblock to your dreams – but nevertheless knowing them will help. Let us take a look at some of the startup terminologies that should be part of your vocabulary.

#1 Accelerator

Mentorship and financial support are two things that help every entrepreneur understand the business environment. This is what accelerators do – they are formal learning centers for startups to acquire knowledge from industry experts, aka, mentors. Startup accelerators are also known as seed accelerators, and are formalized centers for learning.

#2 Advertorials

It has become a common trick to generate revenue through advertisements in the garb of “real content” and this is called advertorials. When you pay for publishing content but what it to appear as an ad, it is referred to as advertorials. These type of advertisement gimmicks are becoming popular because the effectiveness of ‘traditional ads’ are decreasing, especially in online media. Advertorials are proving to be great means of capturing ad revenue.

#3 Boot-Strapping

The term boot-strapping evolved from the phrase “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” and literally means to start a business using funds from one’s own resources. This could mean starting the business by using your own savings or taking help just from close family and friends. Once the startup starts running with the initial investment, and slowly starts making profit, the revenue is used as further investment.

#4 B2B & B2C

These are two very common terms used in the business world. B2B translates to Business-to-Business and suggests that a business sells products or service to other businesses. For example, if you are into the business of selling machinery to a garment manufacturing store, you run a B2B. On the other hand, in B2C or Business-to-Consumer, products or services are sold to consumers. For example, the clothes made by the garment manufacturer are sold to consumers.

#5 Deck

Also known as Pitch Deck, it is a standard slideshow presentation, normally with just 10 slides. A deck has to be concise and informative so that when an investor sees it, he is convinced that there is merit in your idea and funding you would be rewarding.

#6 ESOP

ESOP or Employee Stock Ownership Plan is an investment plan that encourages employees to acquire stock of the company and earn direct profit. Most often employees do not have to bear any upfront cost to acquire the stocks. They are more or less seen as remuneration given to employees for their work done. It is common practice to keep the allocated funds in an ESOP fund that employees can sell once their leave or retire from the company.

#7 MVP

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product in its early phase of development which is launched with bare minimum features for the public. As more customers start using the product, they also offer feedback on its drawbacks – which is then incorporated by the startup. MVP has become a tried and tested method of launching products as it helps startups invest less on product development while at the same time get direct feedback from customers. MVPs reduce the stress startups have to put on R&D.

#8 Ramen Profitable

When a startup aims to earn just that much profit so that basic living expenses are met, it is called ramen profitable. When startups aim for just ramen profitable, they are looking at just initial profits, without thinking of earning huge profits right at the beginning. It is like giving yourself more time to improve your startup.

#9 ROI

ROI or Return on Investment is what the investor expects as revenue returns from a startup. It is usually expressed as percentage and the standard formula used is ROI = (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100. ROI is generally the investor’s methods of finding out how his/her investments are bearing fruit and whether the money has been efficiently used.

#10 Venture Capitalist

An investor who helps a startup or a small company financially by venture capital funding in the initial phase is called a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists usually help people with big ideas but little or no financial support. They believe in the credibility of the idea and hope that they will earn huge returns on investment once the startup succeeds.

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