Are you launching your startup correctly? Recent studies show that current business successes are reporting a 90% failure rate for new startups. There must be a better way.
According to RootsTech speaker John Richards, CEO of Startup Ignition, LLC, many entrepreneurs with a great idea for the family history/genealogy industry are still practicing entrepreneurship the old-fashioned way. The old way means coming up with an idea, raising money, building a product, and then finding that no one wants your product.
There are a new and more effective model to help ensure your success. There is a modern, lean startup revolution discussed by John Richards that is learning based. The product or service you start with looks nothing like the end results. Entrepreneurs have become more than just people developing an idea. They are also scientists who identify and validate results. Mr. Richards cites key resources including worldwide entrepreneurial theory and practice emanating from Silicon Valley gurus such as Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Alex Osterwalder, and Ash Maurya. They have turned the normal sequence of things upside down and have introduced a repeatable process to launching new ventures.
John Richards recommends the following:
- Start with an idea and ask yourself, “What is a problem? Why doesn’t someone fix it?”
- Do enough viable market research to receive strong customer validation.
- Measure your performance and every step of the way treat it like a scientific project.
- If it needs be, pivot. The customer tells you your product/service needs to be changed.
- After this, then you can put money into it.
A product development focus kills startups. Startups must exist to search for an unknown business model, not to develop a known product. Startups need to focus on customer development first…product development might be a latter part of the search.
Your goal is to fail, fail and fail again. After receiving customer validation, you pivot. You may eventually need to start over. It is then you will succeed.
Interesting process and quite a different model than taught years ago in business school!
This post is a recap of a presentation given by John Richards at the RootsTech 2016 Innovator Summit.
