5 Reasons Why You Must Learn The Basics Before Launching Your Startup

You’ve probably heard millions of times that one of the key things to launch a startup and succeed is to jump into the pool and just start doing things.

In other words, just go for it!

Usually every start up comes from a great idea, and if you reached the point where you decided to start your own company, it means that you are a real implementer, not just a dreamer.

However, you should be careful with this approach.

Even if this is the needed attitude, you should learn the basics before launching your startup.

Behind the word basics there is:

• learn what your target customer wants
• Learn the insides of your business
• Know who your key suppliers are
• Understand the key technical aspects of your business
• Anticipate the main risks and opportunities

5 reasons why learning the basics is so important:

1. To avoid wasting a lot of money

Let’s explain this point with a simple example.

You want to sell very expensive women’s shoes through the internet, and for this purpose you hired an expensive web programmer who designed a beautiful website for you.

Your web is running great, then it’s time when you decide to invest an important quantity of money in promoting it.

Your main promotion channel is Facebook.

You start running ads on Facebook targeting young ladies, because young ladies always love nice shoes. You get plenty of Facebook likes and shares, but you don’t sell a single pair of shoes.

The problem is that the young ladies usually don’t have the money to pay for the shoes that you are selling.

Only women with a higher income, who are usually a bit older, could afford these expensive shoes.

This is a clear situation where you could waste a lot of money simply because you don’t know your target customer well enough.

” The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain

2. To grow your business safely

We hear a lot of stories about startups with great success in a very short time.

Even if it might look like these companies made miracles to succeed, each of them is built on a solid strategy.

If you don’t learn and anticipate your major milestones you will probably fail.

This is a common mistake when we talk about the legal implications of a company. Usually startups spend a lot of money, time, and effort because of poor planning.

For example, imagine your business is about selling apples. You start your business by investing on a terrain and planting apple trees.

Then, when you want to start selling your apples to big supermarkets, they don’t accept a single apple without a health certificate issued by the ministry of agriculture.

The reality is that you had never thought of such a certificate! More than likely you will lose all your first year sales.

So, try to plan well in advance for the key milestones of your project, with all their implications.

3. To avoid wasting a lot of time and energy

Speed is one of the most critical factors for startups to succeed.

The hard reality is that you are now really excited to be launching your new idea, but more than likely someone else on the other side of the world will have the same idea, or similar, and will be launching it too.

The sooner you put your product into the market, the better chances you have to gain a good position.

Learning all the implications of starting a company and anticipating the possible issues that will appear will help you create a launching and growing strategy and will save you lot of time and energy.

If you plan well in advance you will need to build your strategy with much less trial and error.

It does not mean that if you plan everything you will not have to try any other strategies to succeed. However, you can already discard a lot of non-working strategies by learning about them from the beginning.

4. To be able to think big

If you want to succeed by launching your start up you must have a set of beliefs. Many of these can be summarized in two words: Think Big.

The reason behind this is that you can only achieve something that you know it exists. The most obvious example: A man could not go to the moon if he didn’t know that the moon existed.

If you take a look at the most successful entrepreneurs you will realize that most of them have something in common.

They all think big and they are never afraid of looking beyond their limits.

It is really important to learn from the beginning of your project what you can achieve, even if this is a really challenging task.

Otherwise you’ll never think big enough to reach your target.

 “You have to think anyway so why not think big.” – Donald Trump

5. To keep your motivation and engagement with your project

It’s a hard reality that many startups don’t succeed, even if the ideas behind them are really great.

One of the key elements to succeed is to really believe in your project and push for it until it works. The issue is that it’s really easy to lose motivation in the project if you don’t see quick results.

In many cases entrepreneurs don’t see these results as they expected because they haven’t learned the challenges before launching the company and they haven’t invested enough time to know what was coming.

In consequence they have to face many unexpected situations, losing the motivation to keep moving forward.

This happens, most of the time, with one of the following things: a legal aspect, a technology aspect, a customer satisfaction point, or a supplier that does not deliver.

Expect what you will have to face and go for it!

Do you share this point of view or you just think that the secret is to just do the things and correct the mistakes along the way?