The statistic everyone’s too afraid to mention to young startup owners is that of survival rate. The honest truth is that most of the startups end up failing within a year. This isn’t to say that most of the startups have a bad product or a bad management. In fact, most of them are run just fine and their products are usually very useful.
This makes it even more interesting to understand why some startups succeed and what it takes to create one of those. It’s usually the combination of these three things:
Timing
Businesses often fail or succeed because they were founded at just the right time, when there was a general need for their product or service and when the circumstances needed to sustain it have aligned. The first thing a businessperson needs to do is to understand their potential customers and their needs. They can move on with the preparations needed for starting a business only when the customers aren’t satisfied with the offers they have now.
Some of this is related to the economy as a whole. If the economy is failing in general and there’s not enough job security, the business will fail regardless how good their products are.
The business itself needs to find the perfect time to enter the market. There are a lot of competitors out there in every industry and there’s even more pressure for the companies to launch as early as possible and to use the hype to promote themselves.
This is especially true in the case of tech companies which need to release their products on a schedule and sometimes that means that the products aren’t as good as they could be. The simple answer is that even though the timing is important you also need to make sure your startup is ready to be launched.
Funding
It’s much easier to have an idea for a business than to actually run one. The problem that a lot of business owners face, is that they can’t find the funding needed to jump start their company. There’s also a matter of running the day to day business operations which is often more costly than starting a company in the first place.
Australia has seen the rise of startup culture lately and there are a few reasons for it. Firstly, the economy as a whole is booming in Australia, but there’s more to it than that. Australian entrepreneurs have found the middle ground between traditional financial institutions like banks and modern ways of funding a business like peer to peer lending.
One of the ways to get ahead in terms of funding is to be very careful about its tax repercussions. There are ways to save a lot of money by organizing your business in a way that helps you pay lower taxes. Using financial services from Sydney is more often about tax attorney than about banks or investors.
In the end, there are also government-backed programs that help businesses in certain industries. This helps is more than welcome but the conditions are strict and the businesses need to follow them to the letter.
Having a good team
A company is only as good as the people who work for it. What really makes a business stand out or fail is how good the team that runs it is. This is not always about the qualifications of your employees – there are plenty of educated and talented people out there. More often than not, it’s about the business being able to motivate the employees and to bring out the best in them.
Motivating employees doesn’t always mean paying them more than your competitors, although a good salary and a few bonuses can go a long way. It’s also about making each employee feel appreciated and welcome within your company.
Having a clear career path and providing the opportunity for the employees to grow and learn on the job is what makes them come back to work every day and give their best.
There are no simple answers to the question “what makes a business a success”. It’s usually about providing the service at the right time and having a bit of luck.