career DEVELOPMENT
Is 2011 the Year You Start a New Business? Expert Reveals Tips for Launching Your Start-up Right
Cynthia Kocialski loves start-up companies. “I love start- ups and all the wonderful gizmos and gad- gets they make,” said Kocialski, a veteran of three start-ups and author of Startup from the Ground Up (
www.cynthiako-
cialski.com). “The problem is that most of these wonderful things never make it be- cause the entrepreneur is in love with the technology, and they lack an understand- ing of the technology business. It’s one thing to develop a new gadget or piece of software that does something cool, but en- trepreneurs need to ask themselves if it actually solves a problem. Cool doesn’t sell. Meeting the needs of consumers and businesses does. In the final equation, it is the business of technology that determines the ultimate success or failure of the prod- uct.”
Kocialski’s experiences have led her to
create a series of tips for anyone consider- ing launching or financing a start-up com- pany. These tips include:
It’s Not About the Product
Start-ups are not about the technology
or product. The product is the heart of the company, but the product no more makes a company than a heart makes a human being. There are many components to a company that all have to work together harmoniously in order to achieve a suc- cess outcome.
Don’t Be Afraid to Discover
The early stage start-up process is a
discovery process, not a step-by-step ex- ecution process. Many first-time entrepre- neurs believe you come up with a great product idea, then they come up with a de- tailed business plan, and finally they hire the people to execute the steps in the plan. Discovery is simply a starting point from
40 PROFESSIONAL WOMAN’S MULTICULTURAL MAGAZINE
to an investor, the company itself is THEIR product. Entrepreneurs need to understand the investor’s perspective. En- trepreneurs engage in the deliberate cre- ation of their end-user product, but what they also need to do is engage in the delib- erate creation of the company. Investors buy into companies, not end-user prod- ucts. For an investor, the best case sce- nario is a tested, proven business with a market that is poised to expand and grow rapidly. “The spirit of American business is
which the product and business with evolve, iterate, and be refined as the con- cept meets the customers, the market, and the investors.
Retool and Revise The first product idea is never the final
product that makes the company famous. In reality, the worst work you will ever do is the first work you do. Press forward past the first iteration, and make use of the lessons you learn along the way.
Build Your Team You need a team, but not just any team.
You need the right team for that stage of a company’s life. You wouldn’t hire a col- lege professor to teach kindergarten. For that, you need to find early elementa- ry teachers. Ditto for start-ups. Find the right people for the right job, as well as the right attitude and stage of their careers to make them a match for working with a start-up.
Think Like an Investor Investors know and accept that invest-
ing in a start-up is a very high-risk propo- sition. If investors wanted a moderate re- turn, they’d invest in publicly traded bellwether companies like IBM and Coca- Cola. What entrepreneurs don’t get is that,
CELEBRATING 11 YEARS OF DIVERSITY
embodied in the start-up,” Kocialski add- ed. “Innovation and guts are the founda- tion of the start-up, and those qualities also happen to be characteristic of the most successful mega-firms ever to hit the market. Let those qualities form the dy- namic of your start-up and you’ll be off to a good start.”
About Cynthia Kocialski Cynthia Kocialski is the founder of
three companies – two fabless semicon- ductor and one software company. Cur- rently, she is a consultant for start-up companies. What makes her unique is that she has experienced many start-ups see them from the inside out, including the day-to-day trials and tribulations, not just the milestones and status presented to pas- sive investors and outsiders. In the past 15 years, she has been involved in dozens of start-ups and has served on various advi- sory boards. These companies have col- lectively returned billions of dollars to investors. She also writes the popular Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog and has written many articles on emerging tech- nologies.
Source:
russ@newsandexperts.com.
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