Startup Bangladesh Thoughts, By Raihanul Islam Innovation Editor

Speaking of startups, comes to our mind some names like Facebook, Uber, Linkedin, Amazon, Alibaba, Air BnB etc. All of whom started from zero and became enormous within years of 5, 6 or a decade and shook the world.

Like in other countries of the world, technology is expanding in Bangladesh as well. Individuals are initiating various startups here. Among them many tech startups are being built up besides the e-commerce ones.

But, a tea stole or a rice Restaurant, can we call them startups? Obviously not. Because, all startups are businesses but not all businesses are startups.

Today’s World is the world of startups. Its the world of the multi-millionaires of 25 year olds.  A real life fairy-tale of their stories of success and failures. A world of their struggles and their hardships. Knowing how they innovated into simple solutions to complex problems which are extremely effective. Take Uber, AirBnB, NastyGal for example. Intelligent solutions to complex problems. Individuals or a group of two – conquering the world even before they finished their university studies.

It requires a lot of research and thinking. And takes a bit gut and faith upon own self. Bangladesh a nation of 160 million people got thousands of problems. Each and every problem also includes endless opportunities. Take one of these complex problems and come up with a simple solution to it. If even 1 million of these 160 million people pays you a profit of 1tk daily for the usage of your product or service, that means 1 million tk for you daily! Let us not think about money for a while. Imagine the number of people you can help, touching lives of millions!!

If your startup cannot impact the activities or lifestyle of individuals or society, touching the skies would remain a dream for that startup. Before starting a startup, the most challenging thing is to choose the subject. Most people start their business with huge enthusiasm. And the enthusiasm fades away as days pass by. And there comes a time when his situation reaches a state of a tiny sailing boat swinging over huge waves, when he is at a dilemma of which to save first, the radar or the sail.

Start with something new

Idea is the heart of any startup. If you have an awesome idea, its assumed that you are much ahead towards your goal. If a startup is initiated with a new product or service then there is greater possibility of success. So, try to start with such a product of service that was never introduced before.

Assess the acceptability of product or service

Startup is not a social work, profit is the foremost and final deal of a startup. Even your brand new startup must be so that you can make some profit from there. Ask yourself, would you buy your this product or service if you were a buyer yourself? Find out how much your expense is behind this service or product? In conclusion, verify if your this product or service would be able to make profit for your in the long run.

Draft plan for the startup

It might seem to you that you can go without making a draft plan for the startup. But a draft plan including the financial aspects to it would let you ponder over it in the deep. This would be the first blue print of your startup, which would help reach your goals for each day.

Analyze the market and the competitors 

Firstly, you would have to find out the right market for your intended product or service you want to provide. You have to figure out the lacking and problems the customers of your competing startups are facing. Is there any unresolved problem among your competitor startups for which solution is not yet found? See if your startup can resolve that very problem too.

By analyzing your competitors, you would easily know their status and where your startup would stand. Moreover, through this competitive analysis you can assess how your competitors are ahead of you and where you have to improve. When you would understand the demands of the customers, you have to plan ahead according to your work area how to follow through them step by step.

Create a model for the startup business

The business model is very important for a startup business. When you can come up with a business model, it would be easier to know what actions to be done in sequence to make it work.  Typically `Nine Building` business model is considered very effective, where customer segment, value proposition, channel, customer relationship, revenue streams, key resources, band value, key partner or cost structure etc are taken into consideration.

Procure Key Investment

A new startup takes longer to penetrate into the market than we can imagine of. You know what type of business you are planning for and how much investment it would require. Besides that, you would have to know from where your personal expenses would come from. So you would have to be well aware about the personal expenses, human resource costs and business investment. Not that you would start the business and then start thinking about how you would be able to bring money for investment. Therefore, its important to take every possible financial sources into consideration.

Keep the network with your friends and family

It would be ideal to start the startup from within your friends and family. They can work as the referral for your startup to newer network. Ensure that your friends and family becomes the consumer of your product or service too, otherwise your startup would face challenges. So, its better to have your friends and family by your side for your startup. But in doing so, do not impose pressure upon any of them.

Make the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Before making the final product or service, giving a demo run of a product or service to a few internal consumers and then analyzing the feedback is the way towards minimum viable product or MVP. You can get many important information through this MVP product or service, like, how the cost of the product would be, would the project be successful or not, if the customer service is working properly, whether its possible to attract the investors etc

Start earning

If you wait for your product or service to become pixel perfect then you cannot start earning. Rather the earlier you start earning the more it would strengthen your self-confidence. Lets say you would start a startup for household groceries. Now, if you decide that, let me make an website first and build a shop then I would start selling, this only would waste the times unnecessarily. So, the moment you are preparing for a startup, let everyone know about your this startup and promote ads on the social media about the product or service. You would see an early selling and income even before your startup has even initiated.

6

The post Startup Bangladesh Thoughts, By Raihanul Islam Innovation Editor appeared first on The Pages – 24X7 Business , Lifestyle & News.