Are you serious about your startup?
In the last 8 months that I have been working on Muziboo, I have been asked many questions by many people. Questions about revenue model, growth, market potential, our motivation to start something like Muziboo and several other things. The one that I am going to talk about today is “Are you serious about your startup” or “Do you think there is a good potential because you don’t sound very enthusiastic about it”
Lets define seriousness
Lets define seriousness for a startup. To many people that I have met, seriousness means that you have,
- A blind faith in your product (and your idea’s market potential).
- A belief that your company can be the next big acquisition
- Venture capital (this is a big one)
- Partnerships with big brands (specially in a country like India, where celebrity and brands drive the market)
I personally feel the above is not necessarily true. I define seriousness as the following
- You are working fulltime on your startup in a bootstrapping mode (which means you have cut down your expenses and are burning out your savings to work on your idea. So you believe in it)
- You are focussing on building a service that users talk about v/s signing up brand ambassadors
I believe that, as a startup co-founder you need to know what are the chances of your startup. When I talk of chances, I am not necessarily talking of chances of survival. I am talking of chances of success. Chances of making it a $10,000 a month profit company, chances of making at $100K a month company or chances of making it the next youtube. What most people fail to realize is that not every company has to become the next youtube for the founders to consider it as a success. Many people consider making a living out of their venture as success. Therefore if I or another startup founder does not think that his/her company can be the next mutli million dollar acquisition in the next one year, it is no sign of lack of belief or the fact that they don’t think their startup is going to be successful. In the same spirit getting venture capital is not a sign of seriousness as most people think. I feel there can be no better sign of commitment than burning your cash to fund your startup.
One final point that I would like to raise is that every year many well funded and talked of companies die. The people behind these companies would have surely believed in the company and expressed about how its gonna change the face of the planet. So we can safely assume that just blind belief does not mean you are gonna make it or questioning your belief or assumptions does not mean you are gonna die. We are talking of real companies here .. not fancy movies.
I am going to write about more questions that I get from people and my take on them. If you have anything you want to raise, please leave that as a comment.
Tags: bootstrapping, idea, startup, faith
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Comments
I am not sure if you can define seriousness, because as other qualities it is very personal. A hopelessly non-concentrative guy might be more serious then a seriously serious working guy. Because people react and act to different things in different way.
But I do complete agree to your second point, that as a founder you should exactly know what you want to achieve. And that goes about with anything in life. But it is another thing that getting that clarity is not easy?
Totally agree with you Prateek. Most people in India think that doing a startup starts with having a VC to fund your idea.