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by Dalip Jaggi, co-founder of revive real estateis a PropTech with the goal of democratizing house flipping.
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Joining a startup mixer and meeting other founders and entrepreneurs is energizing. Attending these events, you can see that most people are young and excited. And even though everyone is secretly exhausted, you are having the best time of your life without knowing it. As an entrepreneur and founder of several startups, I find these events inspiring.
But at a recent conference in Vegas, the most common theme I heard was about startups preoccupied with the “shiny object syndrome.” Many of these companies are only 12-18 months old, but they are building products from the top down while building new offices with all the employee perks and high-end amenities. .
Rather than building a business that plays the long game of capturing market share, they pour massive amounts of VC funding into massive hiring, extravagant campaigns, and events designed to capture “mindshare.” are spending That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but is it for the best?
A question I often hear at these events is, “How do you run your business?” Unfortunately, most of the time the focus is only on product development, not business management.
i know i’m going to the plateau
Having launched and sold several startups, I can personally attest to the fact that the growth cycles are almost universally the same. A business gains momentum, grows like a hockey stick, then stagnate.
Smart companies find ways to get out of the plateau, enjoy hockey stick jumps again, and then flatten out again. It’s a cycle of rinsing and repeating.
The problem for many startups is that they don’t have the patience to go through these cycles. They want a glamorous office now. They do mass adoption too quickly. Many of his members in the team in general will soon be recruited.
When my latest venture was in its early stages, my first instinct was to hire an executive assistant. However, I realized that this is not the case. A better business decision was to take on these administrative tasks myself. We were at a stage where every expense and hire needed to generate her ROI instantly.
The plague of oversystemization
Now, this may go against startup common sense, but the way Startups spend a lot of time systematizing processes. For a new company, one of the first decisions to make is deciding whether to automate your marketing funnel.the problem is that you are concentrating building than that Are doingThere is a big difference between the two things.
One of the biggest common weaknesses of startups is rarely discussed. It’s spending a lot of time building. When you’re just starting out, you need to figure out how to make your phone ring —todayIt’s not sexy and it’s not a flashy funnel. Answering calls, making connections, closing deals, etc. are your own actions.
When I first hire people, they often come to me and the first thing they want to do is automate their assigned tasks. Don’t start with automation. That way, instead of just doing today’s tasks, he’ll spend the next four weeks automating them. Right now, you probably don’t need automation to do the right thing.
know when not automate
Today, in the startup world, we want to automate everything. But I’m afraid this approach will lose quality. A better way is to first show that the manual process works. Yes, more trouble. Yeah you have to spend days doing it. But when it works, you can focus on efficiency afterward, not up front.
Our company has a theme. It’s about building technology from the bottom up, not the other way around.
I learned the importance of doing this the hard way and made a few mistakes along the way as an entrepreneur. Building a new app, creating a new website, developing a new marketing campaign are all easier than the execution required to turn these products into real businesses. You may feel like you’re moving the needle in your company, but to me it feels like a busy job unless you prove its worth.
Investing in the right things
There are two sides to good spending decisions. Finding the right balance is important. You need to be keenly aware of how you spend, but likewise, don’t be afraid to invest in things that can have an impact.
For example, startups often spend a lot of money on industry trade shows, such as large trade shows and top sponsorships. But how closely are you tracking your ROI?
If you have a dollar and you’re building a business, I believe most of that dollar should go to sales. Sales are the foundation of any business.
The danger of growing too fast
If you’ve ever been in a startup, chances are you’ve tried to serve too many markets too quickly to accelerate growth. It often starts with the feeling that you are racing against time and trying to beat your competitors.
We all know that “more” doesn’t mean “better”. Focusing on quantity and quality is often the Achilles heel of startups. But it’s better to build slowly and methodically to ensure quality than to compete to create impact with a volume-based strategy.
It’s a lot sexier to grow your reach and expand it, but it’s a lot harder to be profitable doing this than stooping and prioritizing quality over quantity. after that It’s time to expand. Remember, after all, we are building our business for profit.
So one of the biggest lessons most startups need to learn is avoiding shiny object syndrome. Building a business takes patience. be patient.