The First 3 Years – Your Essential Start-up Survival Guide!
If you think raising a child is hard, try raising a business! True story. Children are at least genetically programmed to grow. Yes, you have to feed, clothe and water them, and keep them warm and safe. But – although many new parents will have you believe otherwise – they do a lot of their growing all by themselves. At night, when they’re sleeping, they sprout teeth, get taller, grow more hair, make more brain cells…all without you actually doing anything. Businesses, not so much. Getting your child through the first three years is difficult. Ensuring your start-up’s survival is really, really hard!
In South Africa, between 70 and 80 percent of all start-ups fail within the first three to five years. As worrying as that statistic is, we are not alone. Failure is actually pandemic in the international entrepreneurial community as a whole. So much so, in fact, that “fail fast, fail often” is something of a mantra in tech-start-up paradise, Silicon Valley. It’s true that many business gurus believe failure is an integral part of success, but for far too many businesses in South Africa, failure is simply failure. The end of a dream.
Why is this so? Why do so many start-ups fail? And what can you do to make sure yours survives the 3-year-glitch?
The Secrets To Start-Up Survival
Start-ups fail for a combination of reasons, but according to the Startup Genome Report, over 90 percent fail due to self-destruction, and not competition. This means it’s the decisions you make that end up killing your start-up! So, if you want to survive, get expert opinions and make the right decisions!
Scale At The Right Time
Some businesses grow too fast too soon. You’d think this would be a nice problem to have, but it can spell the end for start-ups that are unprepared. Growing beyond your means before you’ve built a sustainable business model is a fast track to Fail City – and you’ll take your whole team down with you. Kids who grow too quickly develop all sorts of problems because their ligaments can’t keep up with the speed at which their bones are growing. It’s the same with your business. It might be tempting to scale early, but be patient. Hiring the right people is important. But hiring them at the right time is critical.
Bring Your Co-Founder On Board
Statistics show start-ups who bring their co-founder on board right at the start are more likely to survive. In the same Start-up Genome Report, research shows that “balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth, and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical- or business-heavy founding teams.”
Get Your Head Around It
According to an article in Entrepreneur, a staggering 95 percent of the barriers to start-up survival and success come not from external factors – such as funding, technology or talent acquisition – but from crippling thought processes. The article references financial expert and entrepreneur Ramit Sethi, who believes internal challenges – such as fear, stress and self-doubt – sound more start-up death knells than any other factors combined. So work on believing in yourself, and your ability to succeed. It’s OK. You’ve got this.
Be Persistent
Every year in South Africa, tens of thousands of small businesses open their doors for the first time. Many will close them again within that same year. Those that survive have something the others didn’t – persistence. Like you, most people who start a business are intelligent and market-savvy. So, while admirable, those qualities are not exactly unique. Nor will they give you that all-important competitive advantage. As Forbes says in this great article, intelligence is commoditised. Persistence, on the other hand, isn’t. The longer you stay in the game, the greater your chances of success.
Spend Money Wisely
This might sound like a no-brainer, but in those stressful first few months, it’s not always easy to be prudent. The key is to make smart choices right in the beginning, that will stand you in good stead as your business grows. One of the smartest decisions you can make to help ensure your start-up survival is to outsource your telecommunications needs to a central supplier.
At Huge Connect, we’ll take care of managing your voice and data requirements, that you more than likely don’t know a whole lot about. Compliance, security, infrastructure, cloud deployments, data centre solutions and much more, can all be handled by our team of experts. What’s more, when you switch to Huge Connect, you get a range of up-to-date telecoms solutions without having to buy them. Did I hear a ka-ching?
So ditch expensive telecoms infrastructure, and stop stressing about your IT and telecoms. Let Huge Connect give you one more reason for your start-up not to fail. Call us today.
