You are human, you are bound to make mistakes on your journey to building a successful business. However, some mistakes prove to blunder. You can be doing everything right, but one mistake can cost you your whole business.
Call it bad luck but that is how it happens, or else million-dollar businesses would be an everyday discussion. While some mistakes are unavoidable there are others that can be avoided to prevent your startup from the major fall. Moving forward, don’t forget one thing – mistakes turn blunders when you refuse to take responsibility.
So if you commit mistakes, own it up and learn from them. But most of all, NEVER repeat them in the future.
That said, here are blunders that startups all around the globe commit and later regret:
1. Users aren’t your first priority
Raising prices and crafting pitches will not serve your purpose if you aren’t focusing on your users enough. The sight of millions of dollars in your account is undeniably very much pleasing, but you cannot achieve this feat just by raising prices.
Increased prices in a good technique to gauge extra money for a short period of time, but if you are here for the long run, you need to add value for your users. Reckon whether your product is helpful to your audience and if it is worthy of their hard-earned money.
Now, if the answers of these two questions are positive, move onto the advanced levels. As a startup, you must not commit any mistake that will hurt your user’s sentiments or disrupt their buying behavior.
2. Hiring employees that aren’t a good fit
One of the primary reasons why startups or even SMBs fail is because they aren’t patient and diligent with their hiring decisions. As said, employees are the wheels of your company, if they are incapable of carrying the burden of the vehicle, the entire organization will collapse.
Be wise and clear about the kind of people you want to be associated with, on your journey to the top. Pick people who possess the same viewpoints on growth and success as yours. Trust me, one wrong person can harm your organization more than any of us have ever imagined.
3. Getting exhausted
In most of the startups, people perceive exhaustion as a part of the process due to the initiation phase. Well, it’s not right. You cannot compromise on sleep, work more than required and expect you to do well.
If you let yourself burn out, you will tend to lose the hunger moving forward. Therefore, make a routine, delegate time to every aspect of your life: work, family, friends, fitness and don’t hold yourself guilty for not working 24*7! You are a human, not a machine.
4. You don’t have a support/mentor
Belief in yourself can definitely create magic, but that doesn’t imply that you cannot have support by your side. To build a business with your desired profit, you will need a few people you can rely upon.
It can be your co-founder, your investor, or a mentor for real. They will add a different perception, help you weigh the listed pros and cons and overcome stressful roadblocks on your journey.
Thus, look out for people who are willing to invest in your organization (physically or financially) and aligns with your end-goals, propose a partnership with them and then move ahead.
5. Raising money too early or too late
Fundraising blunders are the worst kind of startup mistakes because the impacts are immense. Too early in the process, will lead to a share dilution in your own company while too late can limit your growth. In the words of Warren Buffet, ‘You cannot produce a baby in one month by getting 9 women pregnant.’
6. Not practicing web archiving
In today’s world of web-pay, web archiving is extremely important. Many startups don’t feel the need to store their web data because of its 24*7 accessibility and later regret it.
Quite similar to your physical data, archived web data can also be presented in the court of law to prove your innocence.
Apart from that, it will help you conduct a comparison check with your competitors and your own self to reckon your growth. You just can’t rely upon Wayback Machine to help you with these legal issues, You need a strong foot here and Stillio works as the best alternative for this.
Now that I have successfully cited the top 6 blunders a startup tends to make, let me summarize the takeaway in one line: Everything takes time. Don’t rush with your decisions and expect overnight success. Take one step at a time and you will soon reach the end line!
