What's the Secret to Startup Success? Timing.
Imagine a business where everything else is perfect: You have a great idea, a theoretically brilliant business model, a talented team and enough funding to get the ball rolling. But if your idea comes too early and consumers aren’t ready for it, they won’t readily adopt your system. If your idea comes too late and there are already a number of different competitors in front of your target audience, you won’t be able to squeeze in.
Imagine the other end of the spectrum. Everything else is lacking: You have an OK, but not great idea, a business model with a few holes, a few dedicated people who don’t know exactly what they’re doing and barely enough funding to keep the lights on. But your release is timed perfectly. People have a strong need for your idea and they’re ready for it, but you’ve come along before anybody else has.
You could expect to see strong initial sales, which can help you flesh out your business model and provide you enough cash to negate your funding issue. At that point, you’d be able to hire a better team, and eventually, your idea will evolve and get better with the support of your users.
Timing can’t be ignored, and it can’t be substituted just by paying more attention to the other elements of your business. Certainly, having a good idea, business model, team and available capital can all increase your chances of success, but without that critical timing factor, you’llinevitably end up failing -- or at least struggling.
The biggest downside to this is that there’s no scientific process for determining the timing of your idea. You can use market research to figure out the personas of your target demographics, and competitive research to see what your competition is like, but for the most part, timing comes down to a gut feeling and a little bit of luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment