Open secret : Difference between success and super-success
Updated: Feb 18, 2022
WHAT FACTOR SETS THEM APART? SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS AND AN UNICORN
This article is a self-evaluation of what we have learnt from online training in last one year. from our certification courses from Startup school of YC, Global scaling training from OpenExo and Purpose alliance.Thank God that we did not get any investment last year. For us It is blessing in disguise because we would have never realized our mistakes and improve upon them. We would have wasted funds and time in correcting the mistakes.
Please add your comments and correct if we are wrong – We want to improve upon every aspect of our BloodyFast mobile app that we expect to go a long way in saving people’s lives worldwide
This is a personal view that may be useful for some founders but there is no intention of teaching anything to anyone involved in the start up ecosystem which have stalwarts and qualified experts in every area of operations. We are just learning before getting any investment and relaunching our Bloodyfast mobile app in near future.Your guidance and mentoring is always welcome to improve upon ourselves.Correct us if we are wrong.
There is no point in talking about why the startups fail. This article may take care of it automatically. Let us just mention few points in brief that are beyond any discussion.
Lots of brainstorming is needed when you go from POC to Prototype to MVP
Following issues are very basic and assumed as already taken care of by visionary founders who wish to launch it successfully and making ordinary / extraordinary profit
Persistent existing problem/s which demand solution/s
Global scalability with huge target audience
Founder-product fit
Product market fit
High quality limited number of staff
Low monthly burn rate
The cheap digital/social media training from Udemy is a good starting point
https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-marketing-guide/
Try getting first 100 customers from family and friends or max 1000 customers if you have bigger social media network to test your product or services and when you are sure about organic growth / sticking ratio / DAU / MAU ratio / accelerated downloads within limited users you may go for pumping in bigger budgets.You can conduct user surveys to be sure
If this does not happen then you have following choices
A) Completely pivoting the model of business if possible at that stage
B) Work on UI and UX ( Refine/modify/ delete / add features before going ahead
C) Completely abandon the project and do something else if the initial limited number of users do not respond to your offerings exactly as per your expectations
7) Product/service is perfectly priced,UI / UX is perfected and successfully tested and founders are happy with limited initial traction.
A) Now it is time to allot little more but limited budget to get first 10000 downloads with minimum CAC B) Then stop all advertising completely after 10000 downloads and study the initial users reaction bu conducting customer surveys C) Organic growth, sticking points, ratio of DAU and DMU and a possibility that inflection point within limited users is n sight Watch if your product or service show some sign of organic growth to reach a inflection point with existing users D) Then think of blowing huge budget for scaling.
Understanding If you are approaching a inflection point with limited users or not is not a rocket science.Detailed study of back-end and Google analytics or any other analytical tools will certainly indicate the approaching inflection point of growth of your product or service.Only when you are sure of stickiness of customers and their accelerating positive response, you must start your burst of your social media or ad budgets.Till you are not sure, blowing up huge budget to acquire customers can be suicidal.
Now product or service is ready and need big investment for launch and scaling and you go for it without studying initial limited response as explained above.Massive investment is made by investors looking at misleading profitability. Founders are excited and blow the funds in massive advertising / digital / social media marketing and get millions of downloads in short period of time.
Traction with customers is achieved and revenue and profit start streaming in very slowly.
Number of downloads is very misleading and distracting figure.It means nothing if daily active users are not sustained continuously.You may still be profitable but nowhere near your dreams and targets.Even after massive number of downloads your growth and profitability may fail if initial experiments are not conducted before infusing huge funds for growth.
Paid growth may not be sustained for long if all these issues are not taken care of.
Everything is perfect then why there is no exponential growth worldwide?
We believe now that hurry to get investor funds is root cause many problems
If we invest more time at stage 7 as mentioned above, it may lead to a huge difference when you actually blow bigger budgets on marketing for further traction, global scaling and profitability . We think root cause between simple Success and Super success lies here.
Pivoting at this stage is rather difficult but certainly not impossible. This should happen much before this late stage when you are ready to go investors.
At 7th stage of progress, think tanks of the startups must devote their time on testing with limited target audience, conducting user survey to understand them and utilize this input from users to improve upon on UI / UX strategy that is focused on customer service.
When customer is happy and pay for your product leads to success and profit but when your customer becomes your proactive ambassador and start promoting your product on his own out of sheer excitement of bragging – that leads to massive success globally. Mouth to mouth publicity is a sure shot guarantee to instant growth in limited period of time.
Exponential growth is directly proportionate to the real happiness of customers to use your product and the Bragging factors you add to your products and services so that they become your free promoters and pay you too for using your product.
How to serve and inspire your customers to be your free promoters is the key.
Forgetting that we are founders and getting into the shoes of customer is the important role you must play to understand real issues and subtle nuances that will lead to a changes in business, pricing and design strategy that will excite your customers to be your ambassador to promote your product.
No adverting budget however huge it is, can achieve this.
Breathe-live-and chant “CUSTOMER-CUSTOMER -CUSTOMER” The magic mantras to add some CORN at the end of your brand. We are busy doing the same before we go to investors for funding
Correct us if we are wrong
