When you think about it, giants like Google or YouTube which were founded 20 or 30 years ago didn’t have opportunities like today’s Startups. They didn’t have Startup funding websites & connecting with Angel Investors was so much harder because they didn’t have a simple way to reach them like Startups have today.
Get into the market at the beginning & predict the upcoming obstacles
Everybody knows about LinkedIn, a business social network but only a few know the story of how the company began. Some would say it’s important to find yourself in the right place at the right moment but is that really true?
The key is to find yourself in the right place – early.
Besides being the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman is also an Angel Investor. He recognized how many investment opportunities exist in today’s market & decided to join the Startup funding world. He invested in a few Startups that found their way to success. The most important thing is that he chose to fund Startups which potential he recognized before anybody else. He was there first & that was his advantage.
He was aware of the trends that were about to find their glory & searched for Startups whose values had not yet been recognized.
Don’t let your surrounding discourage you
Something that a lot of Startups struggle with in their beginnings is a lack of faith from their surroundings. A lot of people tend to condemn ideas to failure before they even begin & the same happened with LinkedIn. The public couldn’t understand the need for this type of social media since there were already a lot of other sources for employment in the market. Reid was early with his idea hence the lack of understanding. He had a hard time finding funding but that only made his competition decrease & he never gave up. Also, Hoffman was great at predicting the obstacles that might occur in his path which gave him the upper hand.
Hoffman made a very smart move on how to overcome his network’s obstacles. Since LinkedIn only had a few people on it at the time, he enabled users to scan their email contacts & show them which of their contacts are using the network. They could also invite contacts that weren’t using LinkedIn to join the network. From there, the rest was history. LinkedIn now has 822 million members & over 57 million businesses.
The LinkedIn story is a great lesson for all the Startups out there. If you want to realize an idea that already failed by somebody else, it only means that somebody didn’t predict the upcoming obstacles. You’re at an advantage in this situation. You just need to research what were the problems others faced & the reason why their idea didn’t succeed. Take that information & turn it in your favor. Another advantage for Startups these days is that there are a lot of Startup investment platforms that help them find funding.
So, don’t let somebody else’s failures discourage you. Use that to your advantage, join a Startup funding platform like PitchSee & launch that idea to the moon.
Dream big & never reveal your business secrets
People tend to make fun of people who dream big but as it turns out, those dreamers usually make their dreams come true. When starting a business it is important to have a positive vision of the future & a clear plan of where your business is headed to.
A great example of a founder who knew exactly what she wanted to accomplish is Sara Blakely. She’s the founder of Spanx, a company that manufactures pantyhose & other underwear for women. She had a very simple technique with which she built the path she wanted to take & with which she created her business opportunity. Sarah created mental pictures which depicted her achieving her goals & realizing her dreams. At the time she didn’t really now how is she going to do that, but she liked to use that technique to cheer her up on rainy day & to keep her motivated.
Sarah was a fan of Oprah since she was a little kid & always dreamed to be on her show, until one day, Oprah stated that Spanx are one of her favorite products on the market. You can imagine Sarah’s happiness seeing her mental pictures coming true.
Motivated employees are the key to success
When starting a company it is important to have the right people by your side. When you find those people it is crucial to keep them motivated & happy with their position in the company.
Although running a Startup is demanding & hard work, you should never bring yourself or your employees to the point of burnout. That it will only make them & yourself be less productive which means business will suffer too.
Seth Goldman is the founder of Honest Tea, a bottled organic tea company that sells organic tea & counducts business using fair trade principles. At the very beginning, Goldman recognized that success of his company doesn’t depend just on him, but on his employees too, as well as the customers. Of course, Startup funding & finding Angel Investors is important, but it’s the people inside that are the heart of the company.
Goldman realized it is best to lead by his own example & to be a role model for his employees. He found it extremely important to communicate a healthy work-life balance to his employees so he was the first to respect that balance. He left work every day at 5:30 in order to be with his family. That way he showed his employees that it is perfectly fine to leave work at a normal hour.
