Building a startup has now become one of the greatest crazes of the decade. According to Oberlo, despite the global pandemic, more than 4.4 million startups were founded in 2020 alone. However, just founding a startup is not enough, building it to become a successful and profitable business is another process entirely. According to popular research, more than 50% of all startups go bust before their 5th year in business, that in itself is a clear indicator that starting a business, especially a technology business is not enough, you must know how to effectively and efficiently build and manage it to become a hugely successful and profitable enterprise.
Over the years, many business trends have come and gone. As much as everyone tells you what you need to do to be successful at anything, it’s also important you know what not to do, because knowing what not to do, and what to avoid is as important as knowing what to do. The purpose of this piece is to highlight the top six things you should definitely avoid doing if you want to build a successful startup in 2021. Here we go;
Not doing Market Research/Idea Validation
All great products and businesses start with an idea. The problem is although ideas are great, not all ideas are as good as they seem to be, or at least in their unreformed states. A lot of entrepreneurs will usually observe a problem they have or they see others struggle with and begin to build a product they think has the capacity to solve that problem. The issue here is that without proper market research and validation an entrepreneur may end up building a product for a very little subset of the population (niche market), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if they’re unable to command higher premiums from these narrow and more specialized market segments, it can usually have an adverse effect on the bottom-line of the business, and end up culminating into a business running out of cash.
To avoid problems like this, it is usually advisable that entrepreneurs and founders take out the time to study, and perform research on the markets they intend to innovate and build products for to check both the market size, scalability and the viability of their target market segments before they begin to build and develop products.
Not Performing User Research
As much as this may sound very similar to the point above, it is not. User research is really about interacting with your users and potential users and finding out what really matters to them, and what doesn’t.
Ideally, your business will already be up and running, and have some customers when you choose to carry out this process. Your goal is to find out how best you can improve the customer and user experience of your product to make it more appealing and desirable to your users. The best product is usually the product with the best customer and user experience, so your goal as a founder should always be to make sure that product is your product, especially if you operate in a crowded market.
Performing user research both qualitative and quantitative may involve talking with users (or potential users), deploying surveys, interviews, looking at reviews (app store etc.) and really just gathering data and information on your business in any way you possibly can that can help you create a better product. Constant user research saves you from playing catch up and follow the leader in your industry and space, and puts you (and your business) in a position where others are trying to catch up with you.
Quibi, the short content smartphone streaming platform that raised almost US$2 billion, and eventually went bankrupt in less than a year of launching failed primarily because of poor user research. Research in Motion’s Blackberry lost its relevance in the smartphone space for the same reasons, and even Nokia the one time global leader in mobile phone devices was brought down by the same error, lack of effective user research can have a negative and adverse effect on the success of any business.
if you’re building a business you intend to be successful, do not ignore user research.
Not Investing Adequately into UI/UX Design
The minimum requirement for an excellent product in 2021 is exceptional UI/UX design. If your competition is offering this, and you’re not, you’re setting yourself up to bleed market share in the long run.
When drag and drop website builders can help people build websites and landing pages that look elegant to some degree, not investing in great product design is actually a mistake you don’t want to make. The first lineups of Microsoft Windows OS released in the late 90s had horrible user experiences, but they still scaled and were successful nonetheless. However, if you try to re-enact that in 2021, chances are, you’re in for a rude shock. The idea that UI/UX Design is just about making things pretty is not valid, you need to realize that looks and ease of navigation play a very large role in both your products perception, and its user experience. Ignoring good design and/or putting it on the back burner, or in the back seat is a mistake you definitely don’t want to make.
If you can’t hire a fulltime team of product designers, it’s important you reach out to a design agency to help you get this done. However, blatantly refusing to invest in design because you think it doesn’t matter is a decision that will likely cost you.
Poor Product Development Process
A great product is a product that offers an exceptional customer and user experience to its users. A software product that keeps crashing, failing or doesn’t properly fulfill or achieve the purpose it was designed to achieve is definitely not an exceptional user experience. Investing resources into product development, especially the engineering and technical parts of your product is extremely key to building an exceptional product.
There are some parts of building a successful startup you can ignore or take less seriously. However, poor and lackluster engineering isn’t one of them, and is literally the one step and/or action that can do a lot of damage to your brand very quickly. If news begins to spread that your product doesn’t work well (or as intended) and keeps crashing and failing every now and then, it’s safe to say that you can begin to expect users to begin to migrate en masse from your platform to embrace and adopt the solutions your competition are providing. You definitely don’t want this to happen.
No Brand Strategy
If you’re a technical founder, it’s safe to say that the last option will not necessarily be a big challenge for you, you’ll likely tilt towards having exceptional engineering execution in your product development process, however, while building out the technicalities of a great product, it’s very easy to ignore the fact that if you’re operating in any kind of market, you need a good and strong brand to either help you stand out from the already existing players in that field or help you ward off upcoming entrants. A brand strategy and a strong brand identity is not a topic that should be taken for granted.
A brand can simply be defined as how your business is perceived in general. Your brand strategy helps you influence this perception and allows you to define the message and aura you want your business to emit, and allows you to build consistency around that message in your marketing and product development strategies. The lack of a deliberate and clear brand identity (especially in a B2C market vertical) can make it difficult for a business to build a community like approach to its product, making it more difficult to achieve widespread product loyalty among its users. A brand identity that has a strong connection with your users will play a big role in helping you build and inspire loyalty among your users.
No Clear Marketing Strategy
It isn’t enough to have marketing dollars to spend; you must have a very clear marketing strategy you intend to go to market with.
Building a clear and productive marketing strategy starts with understanding who your users are, and what marketing channels are the most effective and preferred to reach and engage with them in. Some users are better reached through TV commercials rather than digital ads, some will require you to embrace TikTok and Snapchat, some are better found on Linkedin, and there are others you will have to physically meet and interact with in more real life scenarios. Understanding the marketing channel that generates the best ROI for your marketing efforts is the first step in designing and developing a clear and effective marketing strategy. Without a clear marketing strategy, you’re more likely to find yourself randomly shooting bullets into the air hoping they’ll hit a bird.
Conclusion
Building a startup takes a good amount of work, from finding the right team members, pitching to early customers, and in some cases trying to raise capital. However, ignoring these six steps while you build your startup could end up being a fatal mistake, and is definitely not the way to build a startup you expect to thrive and succeed in 2021.
