Build a Winning Team for Startup Success
A start-up’s success depends on its human capital. It’s not the numbers but the quality of your team that defines the growth path. The team members should be able to handle multiple functions, wear multiple hats, and deliver under pressure. Their skill-sets should compliment yours. Even if you are a one person Startup, you still need a lean management team with whom you can share some of the ‘hats’ for better performance of your Startup. It’s OK if you can’t afford a full time team. You can avail part-time services of domain experts while focussing your energies on key business operations. The areas/domains that you need a team for are: Accounting, Manufacturing, Sales & Business Development, customer service, and may be industry experts if you are not. You need to outline descriptions based on your Startup needs on different domain/functions and search for resources accordingly. Initially you don’t need a huge team, each heading one of the functions, but an optimum mix of people who can cover all the functions within themselves as a collective team, each complimenting the other. And therefore, it requires time, efforts and careful selection to set-up such a winning team.
Outline skills and experience required for filling the team positions. By doing this exercise, you can actually further strengthen your B-plan and strategy. Also for a set of people to come together and work as a team, it’s of paramount importance that they share common visions and goals. Ineffective teams can be dangerous for the health of the startup. Asymmetrical teams often leads to start-up’s failure. Choose your team wisely.
Remember, that your team composition is the differentiator among loads of business ideas, if you are looking for investment funding. If you are Startup is at idea or planning stage, you should involve your team in strategy building exercises. Use the collective talent pool of your team to create a winning Startup!
Business & IT : Project management tools
One of the most important needs of any business is to have a efficient task tracking or project management system. Over the years, many kinds of systems have come up which help an organization track project progress, most ERP systems have a part of their system dedicated for this specific purpose. Today, we will have a look at various open source and closed source system that can be used as an project management tool for your startup !
Open source
- Codendi – From the Xerox garage, focus on software project management.
- Redmine – Built in rails, good tool which lets you do integrated version control and ticket tracking.
- ProjectPier – Very generic project management tool in PHP, handles fairly complex cases.
- Trac – Ticket tracking + wiki in python which is very effective on top of available version systems[SVN,git].
- Project HQ – Another smart PHP collaborative tool !
- Collabtive – A basecamp clone !
- eGroupWare – A fairly interesting open source ERP attempt, also lets you mange projects
- KForge – A KDE based collaboration tool.
- OpenGoo
- ClockingIT
Recommendation !
For people who use Rails, Redmine is a really useful ticket tracking and collaboration tool. If you are the PHP guy thne you can surely try out project pier ! In any given situation, it is important to remember that you need the right tool for the problem … given the options above you will be able to locate a relevant open source solution.
Closed source / SaaS
- Assembla – A very cool collaborative tool, it is also used by oDesk to manage projects.
- Basecamp – Set of disconnected tools which allows effective communication in any project. Useful for remote teams.
- Central desktop – Desktop based collaboration tool.
- JIRA – Very comprehensive tracking application ! Must try.
- FogBugz – Detailed time-based project tracking, very applicable to software service companies
- Microsoft Project – From Microsoft, its been around the longest !
Pricing Strategy for your Startup
Pricing your products/services is not only a key to your sales success but also for the health of your Startup. Both high and low prices than optimum will hurt your business. High prices in the beginning may throw you out of the game, and low prices will cost you more. So you must charge enough to make a profit while being in the game. A well thought-out pricing strategy takes some effort but is worth the time spent.
Your pricing strategy depends on the following key factors,
- Your pricing should take into consideration the demographic cohort/group you are targeting with your products. So if you are targeting college students with your cool t-shirts, your price range should be lower than that of designer tees so that college kids can easily afford. It’s advisable that you do a survey so that you can keep competitive prices and still make profits. Remember ‘Client is the king’ and therefore price accordingly keeping your clientele in mind.
- Prices are also dependant on the place or region. Metros and cosmopolitan cities usually have higher prices for consumer goods than rest of the country. Your pricing strategy should take in account where you want to market your products. Price discrimination is fine if you are not planning a country-wide release of your product. If you do, then you can plan on bringing out variants of the product to suit different markets with different prices.
- The technology that you use for your products also is a key factor in determining your pricing and hence profits. You have to keep abreast with the latest production technologies in your industry and make a judicious choice based on your size of production, accessibility to capital, and your benefit-cost ratios.
- If you get into a price war with a direct competitor whom you can’t beat, then try to value add in your existing product to differentiate and adjust your prices accordingly.
You need to continuously monitor prices of your direct and indirect competitors to have a level playing field and for keep growing your business.
How to Do Competitive Analysis
Businesses happen in highly complex and competitive environment. It’s important to understand strengths and weaknesses your current and potential competitors. This makes it very important for startups to understand and analyse their competitors and frame their growth strategies [both offensive and defensive] accordingly. In order to understand your competitors thoroughly, it’s impertinent that you do a systematic analysis and assessment rather than relying on informal knowledge and chunks of data that you might ‘know’.
Things that you need to know about your competitors include,
- List of direct and potential competitors [make a list of 5 each]
- Their strengths and weaknesses
- What are their products/services and their USP
- How does their product differs from your offering
- What are their key operations strategy and how do they advertise
- What’s the state of their business? How has been their growth in past 3 years?
In order to answer these questions, you need to develop separate competitor profile for each one of them. This kind of in-depth information will give you competitive advantage over them. You can deploy strategies through product differentiation, price discrimination, focussed advertising and sales promotions to get successful with your product offering. The competitor’s profile should include information on the,
- Company’s background and structure
- Financial info on their growth
- Complete product information comprising of array of products, rate of new products development, R & D, patents and IPs, brand strength, etc
- Marketing strategies and their market share, alliances and geographic coverage, distribution channels, and their pricing strategies
- Production process and operational strategies
- Key composition in terms of human capital
You will have to get such information from both within the company and outside. Some sources for gathering information could be,
- Look for their website on the internet and study all the information given carefully. Also look on internet if anyone else is talking about them. Google them extensively to find info about their offerings. Check web-logs for reviews.
- Talk to their customers. Conduct a small survey to understand their customer satisfaction and behavior.
- Analyse their advertisements in different media to learn about their target audience, product features, benefits, etc
- Read their promotional materials and annual reports to understand their operational strategies and growth patterns.
Doing a competitive analysis can be a challenging and interesting piece of work. You’ll learn a lot about your industry, and your insights will help you position your product better and make your Startup successful.
5 Key Tips for Engaging a Startup Mentor
A business mentor has more entrepreneurial and domain expertise than you and can help in improving productivity, streamlining marketing initiatives, build better business relationships and in retaining key human capital for your Startup. Read ‘Importance of Business Mentoring’ to understand the relevance of a mentor.
Finding the ‘right’ mentor is not always easy and requires some research and hard work to get the best fit for the founders and the Startup. Here are five tips on finding and choosing a mentor for your Startup.
- Ask around for recommendations from your past & present colleagues, contractors, accountant, lawyer, and among your professional friends. The startups that I have mentored have all come through such recommendations.
- Mentors have a variety of expertise. To get the best out of them, you need to brainstorm the areas of guidance you need a mentor for. It can be from business structuring to helping with financial planning, or product strategies and marketing plans, to overall growth and development of your Startup.
- Once you have zeroed in on few choices, you need to thoroughly discuss the areas of engagement to guage their views and see if they match your work principles. Before you meet a potential mentor either physically or virtually, prepare a set of questions and topics that you will discuss during the meeting. Don’t hesitate in asking for feedback on your business idea and status.
- An effective mentor helps you develop your own capacities and resources to undertake management challenges. It’s important that you and your mentor clearly understand the roles and therefore be vocal about what you want right from the beginning. This will ensure harmonious relationship with the mentor and you will achieve focussed results.
- Robust relationships are built on trust and honesty. Big names may not always be the best fit for you. You do have to make a judicious decision while choosing your Startup mentor. And so finally believe in your instincts when you finally have to make the mentor choice.
All the best for your search!
