Friday, May 2, 2008

What it takes for a start up to survive

Its got to be customer/market need first, then product/technology. Make sure your product is highly differentiated and solves the customer/market need/pain.

Many start ups fail because they think there is a customer/market need, so they build the product only to find out they were wrong or the benefit is only incremental and not enough to make people switch.

Being adaptable and persevering are also key.

I know of a very successful entrepreneur who built a tool for scientists but found out scientists 1) didn't have a lot of money and 2) strangely didn't like to use software as much as she thought. So, they adapted and sold the product to the education sector, which is now 99% of sales. It got backed by a life sciences VC (it was related to brain function) so it was not easy to change the target customer market to education but they did and it worked!

So be adaptable (but it also proves you must really know your target market before building the product - they just didn't know scientists as well as they thought they did)

Watch the cash too.

But remember, its customer/market need first (and this must be confirmed through real knowledge of your customers).

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