Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.
I have been in business since I was 19, when the gentle revolution made it possible, and given my interest in helping start-up entrepreneurs, I think it would be appropriate to summarize the positives and negatives of the founders. I gained this experience myself during my 30 years of business experience on myself but also on people around me. I would like to give to anyone who wants to start my own company and come up with a unique idea.
The key intention is to focus on the advice for the founders of startups in the period of the idea to seed investments.
From the practice we have to say the following. Most of them are characterized by the following characteristics that affect their success or failure.
positives:
- they are passionate
- most of them in the sector where the idea comes from or know the idea more closely
- re interested in doing business
- want to be successful
negatives:
However, a frequent contrast to these positive properties is:
- naivita
- Overconfidence
- lack of equity, respectively. no
- exaggerated expectations, either in terms of investment or the future value of startup
- minimum business experience
-absence of studying the materials that start-ups and founders form
-copying existing projects that are already in place in another part of the world, thus reducing success and global expansion
Therefore, I think it should be quite clear to describe what start-up entrepreneurs should follow in startups and what they should be careful about:
1. think about what I want and whether I believe it, I am able to deal with it for the next 5-10 years
2.when there is competition, to study it, to analyze what resources I need, what we want to achieve
3. for the investor it is important to see the pipeline of the project on the first 12M on 1-2 A4, where there will be what ever happens, how much it will cost and what sales we expect
4. for any investor, it is important that the founder also injects equity into the company "skin on the game" to convince the investor that the founder is serious
5.We recommend to go through one of the possible accelerators in Slovakia before visiting any investor to help the founder to clean up his ideas and plans, gain experience, advice
6.For investors it is important to see the scalability options (the possibility of extending the founder idea), local business plans are not sexy
7. trust investors, the investor is not only the one who invests the capital, has the same interest as the founder. They help, give advice. Being together on the same boat in good and bad.
8. The business plan should only count on the necessary costs of creating a minimum valuable product (MVP) so as not to burn too much investor money
9. The uniqueness of the idea is the key to success
10. have the capabilities to make them adaptable to market changes
In principle, whether or not startup will be successful will be shown on:
-70% during the first 12 months
- Over the next 24 months this percentage increases up to 85%.