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Steps to start your own business © Businessyard 2013

steps to launch your startup

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Page 1: steps to launch your startup

Steps to start your own business

© Businessyard 2013

Page 2: steps to launch your startup

Dream big and start small If you are dreaming about starting your own company, but you don’t know exactly what it is you want to do or if it’s even the right time, use your time to study. Starting a fast-growing tech business is incredibly challenging, and requires a variety of skills. The time you take for studying, allows you to explore your talents and find the one thing you really excel at

© Businessyard 2013

Page 3: steps to launch your startup

Work to learn, not to earn

Now that you’ve studied hard and really gotten deep into a particular discipline, it’s time to broaden your skill set. While it’s critical to become deeply skilled in one area of the business, the required skill-set to start and run a company is much more varied. Starting a business requires a strong sense for products, timing, trends and markets, which you can only acquire through experience

© Businessyard 2013

Page 4: steps to launch your startup

Join the community and meet founders If you start an international business, you’ll be competing with intelligent, ambitious, and highly skilled people from all around the globe. It’s a huge challenge and having a great community of entrepreneurs, developers and designers for support is key

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Page 5: steps to launch your startup

Find the right location

Depending on your new business, location does matter. If you are an Internet/software business, take care you pick a location that helps you to start. If you’re on a tight budget co-working spaces is a great choice to find something affordable and they are not only right at the epicenter of the community, but also very beautiful and lively.

© Businessyard 2013

Page 6: steps to launch your startup

Identify good and bad ideas, early

To pick this one idea, it starts with the ability to identify your own problems, and think about clever and smart solutions. One big problem can be solved by thousands simple solutions, it’s your job to find the best one. You need to become your biggest critics. Challenge every single idea with your team to the extreme. Be aware that most ideas that seem great in the first place, are either already taken or not so great once you’ve challenged them further. Try to play devil’s advocate.

© Businessyard 2013

Page 7: steps to launch your startup

Understand trends and markets As an entrepreneur you start a company with long-term goals. You want to create something that stays and adds value to people’s lives, both your customers and your employees. The challenge is to balance the awareness for trends and momentum without making yourself or your product a slave of those. It’s like surfing. You can’t change the ocean, so you need to observe and read the water and get on your feet in the exact right moment to ride the wave. Do your homework before you start with your idea, understand how big your market is, understand in which countries you can grow the fastest. Build a brand and a product that works globally, not just in your country. Really, the world is your market.

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Page 8: steps to launch your startup

Think like an athlete – Define your mission When I talk about entrepreneurship, I often talk about athletes. Athletes always train with a clear objective, like participating in a competition, or more specifically winning it. If you want to be an entrepreneur, think like an athlete and define your own mission. Why do you want to build a business? What’s your main objective as an individual? What do you want your own career to look like in 30 years? Don’t be small-minded! Widen your horizon and think how you want to influence the people around you, and maybe even change the world. Define the purpose of your business, and you as an individual.

© Businessyard 2013

Page 9: steps to launch your startup

Prepare to fail, 95% do That’s a tough one, but it’s so important. Starting a global business with international, well-educated and highly-skilled people, is incredibly hard. You will experience unbelievable lows, including running out of money, or seeing important people leaving or shutting down a business you worked so hard for. Being an entrepreneur means taking risks, because without that you will never be truly successful. It’s important you understand the risks, and start managing them. If you blindly run into a new adventure, these lows will hurt much more than they should. The better you do your homework, the more likely your company will be able to survive.

© Businessyard 2013

Page 10: steps to launch your startup

Find the right co-founders and advisors

Starting a company isn’t easy. However, there is a way to help manage risks and to deal better with day-to-day challenges – and that is by having great co-founders. Having the right co-founders is incredibly important. You deal with them every day and you will fight, win and lose together. It’s hard to find them, because you will only know you’ve made the right choice, after you start or complete your adventure together

© Businessyard 2013

Page 11: steps to launch your startup

Raise your first round of money, or bootstrap

There are two ways to start a business. You either do it on your own, taking all risks and responsibility yourself (“bootstrapping”), or you find investors that believe in your company.

When you start your first business, avoid the common mistakes. Don’t pitch too early, and don’t pitch to world-class venture capitalists before you are ready.

If you want to get an investor on board, try to understand what investors care about – it’s mainly the team and the product.

Focus on building a prototype, test your business model and create a clear strategy to become a sustainable and scalable business fast. Talk to investors when you are ready, not when you have something on paper – build up your story

© Businessyard 2013

Page 12: steps to launch your startup

Learn how to hire and maintain your company culture Determining who to hire is a powerful skill to have and it’s very difficult to learn. As a founder you need to develop this skill very quickly. You will make mistakes early on, and it’s vital that you identify them and correct them very quickly. Creating a sustainable, healthy and positive company culture in a fast-growing and fast-changing startup environment is tough

It’s very hard as a young entrepreneur to correct hiring decisions. Don’t be scared to correct your mistakes quickly. Also, if your business grows, don’t lose the skill to objectively judge your team. It’s often hard for your initial team to keep up with the progress of the business, you are entering new stages very quickly. It’s often hard to talk about, but when a business grows up, it’s often time to improve the team, rather than grow it

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Page 13: steps to launch your startup

Prepare to become a manager

The road from being a founder, to becoming a CEO or a manager is a very long and bumpy one. Being a manager and being a founder are two different things. You need to learn this very quickly. A founder often sets the tone, the mission, the speed, the ethic, the culture. Being a founder – a programmer, or a designer, or a salesperson – requires a totally different skill set than being a manager. Being a founder means to work – being a manager means to think. The job of a manager is to carefully make decisions, easy ones and tough ones. You need to define the business strategy, recruit people, build teams, motivate employees, set and measure goals, empower ownership, create partnerships, take care of financials

© Businessyard 2013

Page 14: steps to launch your startup

Businessyard offer

Consultation Advice

Support Assistance

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Page 15: steps to launch your startup

SPECIAL THANKS

Goes to the famous entrepreneur Christian Reber (founder of

Wunderlist mobile app), since most of his points are taken from his blog

© Businessyard 2013