Is it a startup for You?

Do you really belong to the startup? Do you really want to solve the problem?

Don’t run behind success stories. You might don’t want to do a startup you may be thinking of it because of hype.

Ask these questions before jumping into it.

1. Do you really want to start a startup? or you just love to develop things or doing marketing but don’t like other stuff related to startup (It may include sales speech, stuffing, speaking in public, interaction with customers, research, team-building, product+brand development, and marketing) or do you need a clear job description. (In this case, you should find a developer’s job or marketing’s job or job you want and enjoy doing it. Developing some side projects startup is not for you).
2. Do you want to earn a lot of money? Few people see startups as a world of fortune. They will come and strike at it and earn millions of dollars. It’s true people create fortunes via startup. But if you observe every single startup that is successful they have a mission. People who want to create value not for them but for the users. They had a vision of changing the world in a better way. If your aim is only to earn a fortune. A startup is not for you. You should have a mission to change the world not to fill your and investor’s pocket. founders who are in a startup just for the money, then you will have a lot more reasons and ways to quit before your startup hit a success. or you may sell the startup to big corporations. no company ever changed the world by selling it early. If google’s or facebook’s founder’s mission was to make a fortune they could have sold their company to yahoo.

Money is a by-product; if the business is successful and clients have faith in your offerings — success will follow. — Tanya Khanna, Epistle Communications

“Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.” –Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO

In this case, I will strongly suggest you get your skills honed and be a rockstar (who can compete not just in his/her area but globally). You will earn a great amount of money. Microsoft created 12,000 Millionaires. It’s clear that by doing a job. you can be a millionaire. Earn, save, and invest.

1. Do you need someone who can tell you what to do? In this case, get a job for you. a startup is not for you. no one will tell you what to do. not even an investor (if they do every time probably they are a bad investor). This may sound silly but I have seen many people who can’t work by themself and are aiming for starting a startup.

Still, you want to start a startup. I will advise you to find an early edge entrepreneur. work for him/her learns how they are taking an action. Try to discipline yourself to take action without external force. then you will be startup ready.

1. Don’t work well in stress. can’t handle stress. Just don’t do it. You will have a lot more stress than you may think of. You have to smile and have to give effective pitches at any time. If you believe in you, your solution and people that can help you than they will help you reducing the stress.

https://yourstory.com/2018/03/anxiety-stress-depression-startups

‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’

1. If you fear to be accountable. No matter how good of a business you can create but many people get nervous and edgy when things start to be measured and quantified. As a leader, you will be accountable. for any failure as well as any success related to your startup and obviously, it is not a one-time thing. you can not slide it to other people.

“Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame.”

― Courtney Lynch

1. You don’t feel comfortable around strong opinions (maybe against you). You may have to work with the same people who have strong opinions on something that you may don’t like.
2. In the early founder’s dictionary, you will not be able to find the word ‘work-life balance’. because they don’t believe in this. You will have to work every waking hour no matter how efficient you are.
3. You just want to work on interesting things But in statup you may have to clean the office by yourself. you may have to work on excel or you have to handle customers on call. you must have to do it when needed.
4. You need stability. The startup is a roller coaster ride or box of chocolate you will never know what comes next. In my personal opinion, a lot of luck is involved in it. If you need stability join Samsung or maybe Facebook
5. You are not getting any job, you have some idea, you think is worth billion-dollar, and people are suggesting you should start a startup but you don’t feel the startup is for you. In this case, if you will do it. It will be a big blunder.
6. You don’t understand what a startup actually is? Do you think it is the easiest way to get fame? Do you want to be a scientist kind of yourself (I will do Asteroid mining without having any knowledge related to rocket science and physics)?
7. Your idea does not have growth or just trying to copy-paste without creating any values or USP for business. Recently, I did research related to new startups. I found out that more than 50 startups are creating a chain of local mom and pop grocery stores. In this case, you might get lucky but most probably original will show up and your startup will fade away.
8. You fear to work hard. This place is definitely not for you. Based on some stats you will work very hard and most probably getting failed.
9. You are not good at making decisions. You must be extremely good at making decisions. startup = growth. to grow faster you must have to make lots of decisions each and every day.

“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.”
— Lou Holtz

1. Do you want to make a contribution to the economy? Based on data you will more likely to drain the economy rather than contributing to the economy.
2. You want to be your own boss. In a startup, you will have thousands or millions of bosses.

“CUSTOMER IS THE KING AND I AM HIS SERVANT.”

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000” — Jeff Bezos (Founder and CEO, Amazon).

1. You don’t love when things get to change. In the startup world, things are changing much faster rate than you can imagine.
2. You may have to invest your own money. Very silly statement to read but I observe a lot of startup founders. they don’t want to invest money from their pockets. It’s true we are a low-income country. we need to take care of our bread and butter. but I have seen more than 15 founders who have an expensive bike or the latest iPhone but they don’t even want to invest 50,000 INR in their startup.
3. You can not inspire others. In a startup, you have to inspire your employees, users, and sometimes investors.
4. You need millions of dollars and need the whole team to create MVP or you will take a whole year to create MVP. It should take at max 10–20 weeks. If it is more than that it is not an MVP.
5. You seek lots of advice or feedback from others. In the startup world, you may not get any advice or feedback; you still have to keep going and taking decisions.
6. Don’t know what the customer wants (You thought the customer want this without asking them), You don’t know who is your target customer or you just want to create the product you like. You will end up creating a cool project that doesn’t solve any issue and later will try to create the problem of finding out what problem it will solve.