To go with a new startup idea may feel tricky for the entrepreneur and may keep them confined to their space by seeming that someone has already swoop their idea. Still, it is possible to become a successful entrepreneur on old ideas by spinning the old table or adding some new features to it. So to go with your idea strategically will surely make you land in a good space as self-employment has its unique benefits.  In addition to the independence of being your own boss, starting a business gives more satisfaction and unrestricted earning potential. Even new business ideas coming from uncertain fields can yield unprecedented success if followed in the right way.

Launching a startup in its prescribed way is also a challenging task as there is a thin difference between dreamer and doer. So along with a dreamer, you have to faith in leaping at the correct time and being a perfect doer. An Idea for starting a new business venture is the same as growing crops. You have to sow a good quality seed and nurture it with the correct set of directions to reap the expected fruit for your labor.  

Even you do all things in the right way there is the possibility that things don’t come out in your expected way and sometimes scary experiences you may have in a startup. You have to adapt to that situation and wait for dawn time after dark night. 

This brings us the question in our curious mind that how to start a good startup?

For having a handy startup it is not necessary to have big capital or investment at the early stages. FACEBOOK has started from 0 budget private school and GOOGLE was a research product of two students is just a couple of examples.

So this article is for entrepreneurs who are looking to experiment in a new startup. The idea behind this article is to give you a comprehensive guide comprising all necessary steps for a successful business venture. All interconnected steps have been described in detail:

Step 1: To find out the Need/ Demand of your startup’s output or find out idea for startup:

Behind every startup, there is a theme. This theme has at least one person who is looking to bring about a change in society by bridging the gap between demand and supply. Startup founders are strongly annexed to their idea. They work thoroughly on this idea. They do all required alteration and after it, they shape it to form a useful product or service.

In analytical terms, a startup is a young company that is established by entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs are looking for various ideas for fulfilling the basic requirement of the product or services.

Every idea which comes out in your mind may not be optimum for the current scenario so you have to be cautious before working into any idea. There are many agile people who are looking for launching a startup sooner. Some of them may already have launched the same startup idea which is in your mind. If they have succeeded in it then you’ll find them through the internet or market survey and may implement the same in your local domain. But if you are looking for any long-term and global idea then this may not work to copy the other’s idea. You are required to forecast the demand of the future and implement your idea accordingly to put challenges on already succeeded startups.

On the other hand if they failed, then it simply means that their idea is not demanded. So you have to be attentive and need to learn from other’s mistakes before implementing the final roadmap for your startups.

To check effectiveness of your idea, you have to perform some checks before preparation of final roadmap:

A.    Depth of demand: You have to check the demand for the product or services you are going to produce or serve. You have to check thoroughly that whether the demand you are looking for is real or pseudo. You have to check the pattern of the demanded product or services. It is not necessary to have to market survey specialist, instead a non-professional with a good set of questions can also find out the answers from surveys for finding out the genuine and necessary requirements for figuring out demand. You have to find out what changes your product or services are going to bring in the demand of the customers.   

B.    Requirement of technology: You have to find out which technologies are necessary for your startup. It is necessary to find out the correct set of technologies for your idea. UBER has started as a local cab provider in the USA on 2009. But today it has become a successful global organization due to the perfect combination of the app having all tracking, distance, and fare information for passengers. This becomes possible only due to the innovation of technology and their perfect utilization. You can put some new innovations on technologies and customize them to suit your idea. You may use already invented technologies or invest in new technologies.

C.    Balance sheet check: You have to be quite attentive about the balance sheet. You have to find out the correct data about the demand for the product in the future. 42% of the total startups in the USA fail in their initial years because only a few people are ready to pay for your product or service. So you should check that capital you are going to invest is justifiable. In another word, you have to find out that whether people are ready for paying your product or not. If the product or service you are going to launch is costly then you may go for the minimum viable product for at least the survival of your startup or you can alter through technology.

After validating effective of your idea through these checks you can implement a roadmap for your idea with a progressive mindset. Your plan will be written in the form of a document covering all goals, strategies, time frames, and most importantly about profitability.

Step 2: To find out people for your startup:

Every successful startup succeeds in its plan only because of the team and people working for them. Apart from the employee role of co-founder is also an important one and it has found that in most of eminent business start up has at least 2 startups.

You as an individual cannot be efficient for all operating parameters of the business so having the support of other co-founder give stability to the startups. There should be a strong founding team that includes a perfect investor, a good marketing specialist, the finest technology expert, and managers. Apart from them, there will be various employees in different levels of startup so selection of them will also be important for the overall performance of startup. Moreover, there are various approaches to find out correct personnel for your startup. Every good employee has certain sets of attributes that make them different from others and make them suitable for your organization. Here are some set of important attribute which discussed here before hiring them:

Personality: The working environment is different but there may be similarities in top companies in terms of personalities of employees working there. So hiring an employee having good soft skills is an important criterion. Good personalities and traits of employees will ensure their good performance under tough circumstances.

Set of Skill: A good employee possesses knowledge, experience, and expertise in their domain. At every level of organization, there should be personnel who have these sets of skill which make them perform for progress of their department and ultimately to the benefit of organization. Whether it is technology, management or supervision, every niche is important for overall performance of your organization.

To have right set of skill in existing or new employee will ensure that they will nurture and mature it throughout the business regardless of any job title or designation. So knowing about skill requirements is important before hiring a new employee.

Having a skill set is important but aligning employees in the organization with each other is also an important criterion. One individual may not have all skill set so the group of people necessary in the organization which are ready to perform together for organization rather than going opposite.

So apart from knowledge and expertise, each employee should have the ability to teamwork, honesty, integrity, and problem-solving attitude which result in constraint-free progress of your organization.

Attitude and professionalism: Having a good personality and set of skills and knowledge is not enough for a good employee if they lack positive attitude and professionalism. Your employee should be polite, calm and should be presentable in all form in the organization even in tough circumstances. Apart from this professionalism they should have ambitious, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence and creativity in their attitude. These all parameter can be evaluate through their past experience and reason for quitting the last job.

Personal behavior It is important to assess personal value and ethics before hiring an employee. You are going to trust a person and there may be many secret documents and events which must remain within the startup due to surrounding competition. So it is important to have high moral values and etiquette in the employee.

There should be balanced relation between you and your employee. There should be trust between employees and the company or founders. Though trust can not be built up in a day and neither can it be assessed easily in a single meeting. So, only experience and gut feeling can assist you in evaluating the personal values of employees in a single meeting.

All these parameters are necessary parts of employees in every successful organization. In a startup, it may be quite tricky to find an employee having all these sets of attributes at low remunerations as most of the startup has limited capital to invest. So there should be good startup culture from your side which ensures higher retention, good productivity, and self-motivation of the employee in your startup. You can look for an intern. The intern may not have experience but they can be hired at a lower salary and most of the time they are ready to work only for the experience. In various studies, it has been found that an intern has abilities to work on challenging projects so hiring an intern is a healthy option for your organization.

The next step will be to consider various legalities before starting your venture.

Step 3: Legal Checks

Every successful startup is one that is driven by a passionate entrepreneur who is dedicated to building a solution for a unique problem. While it is necessary to have keen sight of the customer and the market, it is equally important to have a good and mature understanding of basic regulations, rules, and laws pertaining to that particular business or in the local area of your startup.

For the smooth functioning of your startup, it is necessary to have proper formalizing of the business and founder’s agreement. In it, there is a signed agreement between the founders of the startup. The founder of the startup clarifies about the type of business that whether it is a single proprietorship, private limited, partnership, or liability partnership incorporated. Each of these business types comes up with a set of regulations and legal requirements to be followed. Various types of legal check to follow have been discussed below:

–          After finding out the types of business, you have to apply for a license according to the type and capacity of the business. Applying for such a license is a good step to start your business. Lack of such a license may hinder your startup when it is running smoothly. Those hindrances may lead to costly lawsuits and loss of business if your startup gets shut down due to the absence of such a license.

–          After license, it is necessary to have an understanding of licensing and account information. It is important to understand all taxes applied to your business. There are various types of local and central tax applied to the product or services you are going to provide. After taxation, it is necessary to have a proper account book and their audit to ensure all taxation law has been followed and there will be no possibility for any discrepancies in funds. Having a proper payment and receipt system for customers is the easiest way to maintain a proper accounting system.

–          After taxation and norm, it is necessary that your startup follow all regulations related to environmental law. Now a day it is important to follow these instructions as a concern of the environment. You should ensure that the raw material you are going to use is safe and legal to use.

–          After that legal check, you should define all contract management before starting your venture. It is necessary to define all contracts between employee and company, company and vendors, company and customer etc. These all legal documents are necessary and assist you if any one of these does not follow the actual agreement. Each employee, vendor, or customer should give assent before starting their relationship with the company.

–          After all these legal formalities, the startup should draft a document for the winding down. Even, we never hope for terminating the startup but it is mandatory to form a procedure for it to avoid any hassle if your venture winds down. There should be a proper framework for employees, customers of the startup.

All these checks ensure a smooth run of your startup and avoid imminent hindrances and ensure long term goal achievable.

Step 4: To arrange capital:

About 90% startup fails in their initial year because lack of funding. Sometimes the founder fails to get enough money to run the business smoothly and sometimes they do not use it properly and fall into debt.  Therefore arranging the money and using it optimally is quite important for the long run of your startup. Money is necessary not only for running the business, but for advancement also money is vital option. Through spending more you can get expert advice through a consultant, you can reach out to the mass public through a promotional camp. These all can be booster to your startup so you should collect the fund accordingly before starting the startup. There are various means through you can collect the money for your business:

–          You can use your personal fund of your saving or other important capital to start your new startup. Many people have brilliant ideas and knowledge for the startup but their plan gets kill in the bud because they lack capital to run a startup. There will be independence in taking decisions if you are self-reliant and capable for put your money at risk. So most of the people prefer this option for their startup.

–          You can use the assistance of an incubator and accelerator to run your startup. Incubators are the organization which gives proper training for starting the startup and related fund is also makes available to start the business. While accelerator gives only boost to smoothly running startup. This fund is required to get deposited back after some period of starting the startup.

–          You can get money from angel investors. Angel investors are individuals who have surplus amount and interest in investing different startup for running and expanding the startup. Angel investor gives all support to the cost of startup, assist them in growing business and keep you away from doing business.

–          You can get money through a bank loan. Bank assists startups and gives lucrative interest rates to start and expand startups. You have to tell about your plan to the manager and on approval, they will provide you a loan. So you can opt for a bank loan and reimburse it after the smooth running of your startup.

–          You can use crowdfunding to start your startup. For crowdfunding, you have to tell about your idea to the mass people and get their assistant for your startup. Crowdfunding is a good technique as you can get free marketing of your product along with collecting the capital.

–          You can get the assistance of a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists are the big shark in the ocean for benefit of startups. They give financial support for the expansion of the startup.

–          You can assistance from various government grants. Startup is good for economy of the any country so government itself wants to have a conducive environment for starting the various startup in the country.

 After having money it is important to have the right advice and suggestion for running and expansion of the business so it is necessary to have the right source of advice along with fund collection.

Step 5: Branding and launching of the startup

Once you have collected the fund for a startup, then the most important work of arranging various levels of the organization comes in front of you. Until now your work was revolving around ideas, but now the actual building phase of your startup arrives.

In this step, we will discuss some essential strategies for building the startup. It will cover up knowledge of various aspects of building an organization from brand name to the website to actual launching of the startup.

Building the image of your brand: Branding your startup means making an image for your start-up. This identity will make your brand popular in the market and give challenges to your competitor. You brand has own value in the market which is recognized by consumer or people. For example, when you hear the name COCA-COLA then there will be an image of red ribbon and stylish texture appear in your mind. This is the power of branding that you will visualize the product and want to have it when you listen up to the name of the brand.  Branding your product will assist you in the long-term run of your start-up. There are various organizations that skip this step and eagerly jump into starting their venture without branding which results in a slow response from the public. Branding your product will result in a faster response from the public as after seeing branding of product or service of your startup, people want to have use it once and if after using it worth them then they will use it again and let other people know about it. So it is one of the crucial steps and you can get maximum benefit for faster establishment of the startup.

       For branding, you need to have a logo for your startup. This logo should be designed by an expert designer as they know about a perfect combination of color, shape, and size of various pallets in the logo according to the product. They will select all these parameters which attract more people. This is a one-time process so you should be attentive in selecting the designer of the logo.

After the logo, you should launch the website for your product. This is an important connection between you and a potential customer. In the world of digitization, people prefer too much for online purchasing of the product. SO your website should cover all these demands. On the website, there should be complete detail of your product and service along with their price. There should be an offer on the product also to attract the customer. Your website should have a name that is based on the name of the product to bring singularity to your product.

Establishing building for your startup

Branding your product and startup is much easier than establishing physical building for your startup. If there s sufficient capital for starting the startup then you should surely go for opening an attractive building. It should have professional space for everyone so that employees at each level can perform more efficiently. Having all these spaces will make your customer client more trust in your startup.  Your premise should have all necessary and managed space as it brings more positivity in the employee working there.

Launching of your startup

After having establishing all these steps, the next step is to launch your startup. There should be a proper inauguration ceremony. There should be also launching campaign as it assist in attracting more potential customer or client toward you. You can create hype in the market by making advertisements for your startup through articles or blogs on social media. By this, more people will be eagerly waiting for your product till the launch date. You should select launching date which is away from other big brand launching date.  On launching, you can attract more potential customers by having inauguration through prominent personality.  

The launch of your product is not the end but just the beginning of your startup. After launching, there is the phase where you have to grow your startup at full potential. You can opt for various marketing strategies to make your product grow more. In the next step, we will discuss the growth of your business.

Step 6 : Growth of your startup:

Once you have found the startup and having all functional levels working fine then there is time to grow your business. It is necessary to have the mindset for approaching growth rather than waiting for growth. Before approaching for further growth you have to be ensuring that you are propelling it in perfect time. You should have a clear mindset that when you have to be bullish or bearish in your working technique. Before scaling up your startup you should ensure that your product or service has a good fit in the market and there is expected or nearly expected demand after launching it in the market. If your product doesn’t remain fit in the market then there is no mean of scaling up rather than you should find the bottleneck in progress and try to make your product fit in the demand of the customer.

When your product has sufficient demand then you should think for growth at a reasonable pace. Rather than going fast or launching various variants of your product may create hectic in the mind of the customer may impact your scaling. So scaling should be done at a reasonable pace and keeping all feedback from the customer from time to time for making changes accordingly in upcoming variant of the product to suit their demand. You should have a good customer service team as it quite necessary after the product launch. Your customer service should have problem-solving and polite behavior with customers and dealers. This will ensure more reliability of the customer in your startup and ultimately assist in the growth of the business.

You can add more relevant employees which can assist you in growing business as there are various business growing consultants in the market which can surely boost your venture.

Conclusion

This brings us to the end of the startup guide which will make you zero to hero in the relevant venture. Here we have discussed all parameters and requirements for starting a startup. There are various mistakes which are done by startup so they convert their business into the dust. So you should learn from them and avoid repeating them if you want to build up a stronghold in your startup. Apart from all these guides, there should be constant mentorship. These mentors can be from your family member, Friend, or any other professional who keeps you mentally supported in the downtime of business. Every successful business has to face foothill at least once in their voyage. So try to learn and have patience if results are not positive and apply required changes to make it out from tussle. Even if your startup has reached its peak, don’t ruin anything because of excitement and move forward with a positive approach. It is sure that if you follow all these steps carefully then in a limited time you will be at the peak of entrepreneurship.