Online Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Startups for beginners

If you are keen to follow and know more about what is happening in the online entrepreneurs’ world, you will regularly come across online success stories. The outstanding thing is that these stories are not from a particular group of people nor are they from a particular place; they are success stories of people from different walks of life, from different continents. So what does this mean to you? To me it means, to become a successful online entrepreneur does not matter where I come from and what I do as long as I know the right thing to be done.

 You will also notice that a great number of those who made it to the top lists started out with startups. So the question is; what is a startup?  Logically your answer is, starting up something or setting something into motion. If that is so then what is a start-up?  Startup and start-up are completely different technically. While a start-up can be kick starting something, process or company; a startup is a temporary company that has been setup to try the market potential. The main motive of startups is to search for scalable business models with the help of information gathered from customers and on customers. This information is used to generate a business model canvas. This canvas is an entrepreneurial tool used for describing, inventing, designing and pivoting your already existing business model.

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Startups are normally very small and in beta form as the investments into the venture are kept as low as possible though the same market forces affect startups and other already established businesses. Even though the term startup can be used for any form of business, it is mostly used by companies in the technology field.

There are many types of startups and all of them take different forms. It all depends on the size, how and what you intend to do. While there are the already existing types of startups, you could as well come up with your own startup ideas. One of the easiest ways is to fix your own problem. This is the easiest because you are the customer and since the success of startups is largely based on customer feedback, you are available to provide any suggestions. It becomes even much easier if it is in a field that you are fanatical about. Remember, you are not just solving your own problem, you are solving a problem that is faced by many other people like you but unlike them, you are creating an opportunity to generate money.

Another easy way of coming up with a new startup idea is to watch out for any changes in the market or the technological world. With the constant change of technological needs, there is always something missing more so if there is a new product introduction. Take an example of the chat rooms; when they were newly introduced, it was only for text chatting, but once the idea of video chatting came in after some time, people just welcomed it and now are looked at as an essential for a chat room. The down side of this method is that it requires you to be a quick thinker. If you waste time, by the time you come up with a complete version of your idea, someone already has it up and running. That does not make your product a new idea any more.

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If you think you have the guts, the zeal, the ability and all it takes to do it better than the inventor of the idea, then do it. But! Be warned it is the riskiest road to take especially if your competitor is going to be an established company with a loyal customer base. Unless you believe you have an advantage over your competitors in other factors like a larger network, a better management & administrative system and a superior publicity among others. Otherwise, introducing the idea to a different market probably in a different way could work wonders. A perfect example is eBay and OLX. Even though both are multinational, multilingual and American based companies, eBay dominates USA close to 100% but the Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford co-founded OLX dominates much of South America and a great part of Europe.  

You will find many more methods of coming up with startup ideas apart from those I have listed for you above but the question is, what strategy are you going to use in implementing your idea? Eric Ries, a successful online entrepreneur and the chief author of the “Startup Lessons Learned” blog came up with method called “Lean startup”. In this method, prototypes are rapidly designed to be passed to the market. The major reason is to minimize the use of resources (time and money) to the lowest as possible. Speed is a big factor in lean startups as products are rapidly released to the market, consumer reactions are countered as soon as possible as well as development.

Although lean startups are generally conceived to be small companies, the ambitions are always high and large amounts of capital investments can be done. The only thing is that the investment approach is a bit different as discipline is observed as to when the large amount is to be put in. 

Among the successful products that made it by the use of Eric’s lead startup methodology include;

The Dropbox. This service was first started as a Y combination startup by two graduates Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi from the Massachusetts Institute of technology in mid 2007. What started as a Y combination is now a file hosting company that allows her users to share files and folders over the internet.

Grockit. It is more of an educational social learning game that allows students from different places prepare for ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT and SAT exams. It allows users to prepare for the exams as they interact with other users. It was founded by Farbood Nivi in 2006.

Last but not least is KISSmetrics. This is an event tracking system founded by Neil Patel. The system helps to manage and analyze a team, product, sales and customers to make the right decisions for your company.

 



All in all as a beginner, you should hold the vision; never let go but use all the information, feedback, complaints and praises to retouch your vision in order to make it a reality; because without them, you will only change your world and not the world as a whole.