The Anatomy of Success for a Start-up
How do you build success? Is there a secret or a recipe any entrepreneur should know? What is the difference between the startups that make it and those that break it? While answering these questions might be the subject of a complex and neverending academical study, I can state just three points that should be enough for any business to be successful.
1. Love your product
If you genuinely intend to bring your product to great heights, you need to love it. And not just as a founder. Everyone involved has to love what they produce above everything else. Because that’s the only way to guarantee that everything will be done for the product. Without passion for what you’re doing, you won’t be able to try harder, overcome challenges and obstacles, laugh in the face of failure, and end up producing something that is truly extraordinary. Without passion, there’s no greatness.
2. Strategy, strategy, strategy
Strategy is your friend. Maybe even the best one you’ve got. Because the strategy will show you the right way in time of need and will guide your direction. And it’s fundamental to have strategic planning for your business and for your brand also. If you have a strategy by your side from the beginning, it will clarify a lot of “whys”, “hows” and “whats” and it will make the future less scary. What are you in business for? Where do you stand? How do you want to be perceived? Where do you want to go? How will you get there? How do you want your start-up to act in a couple of years? These are all questions that attempt to put some shape and form into the future of your start-up. Only strategy can answer all of them and make the unexpected more expectable.
3. Be creatively driven
Ideas make the world go round. If you didn’t have an idea, your product wouldn’t even exist. That’s why let’s take a moment and worship ideas. Sometimes we might take them for granted, but without them, we would all be living in a predictable, boring world. Creativity is the most incredible thing we possess as individuals and as businesses also. Just think about it, if an idea is capable to change the course of humanity, why wouldn’t it be capable to change the course of your start-up? It’s so much you can do with it, that it’s actually surprising why it isn’t encouraged more in organizations, from daily practices to marketing campaigns. And I think the truth is most businesses secretly fear creativity. Because it’s not predictable, it’s not exact, it cannot be controlled or tamed. But that’s the beauty of it. It can surprise, and bring novelty and it is capable of tremendous change. I believe any start-up that will fully embrace creativity has a good chance of being successful.
Nevertheless, success is a complicated formula to crack. It takes years and years to gather knowledge and experience to really excel at what you do. Keeping your focus on the above and Perception Engineering definitely helps, but after all, it’s about your ability to follow your dream.
By Adriana Luca