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Why did we fail?

Following the success mantra is not the only way to success. That's why it's very important to understand failures and setbacks experienced by entrepreneurs.

Why did we fail?

Friday January 12, 2018,

4 min Read

Every entrepreneur when starts a journey actual or even in mind reads a lot of stories related to the success of entrepreneurs. It’s not bad at all but following the success-mantra is not the only way to success. That's why it's very important to understand failures and setbacks experienced by entrepreneurs, following are some points to be remembered by each entrepreneur while starting their entrepreneurial journey.

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1. Be in the game

As I and my friends founded Ezzyserve.com in Pune a hyperlocal startup for connecting plumbers, carpenters, Laundrywalas with the customers. This is one of the areas where there was emerging of large no of start-ups during 2015-2016. but few managed to right in the business. After just taking off from ground our business failed because I was still concentrating on my day job and part-time on my startup. Many people say that is the right thing one should not leave his/her job unless getting good no of transactions from your business. Maybe it’s right and that's why I stuck to my job and it's definitely affected our startup. I used to work in Mumbai and I was used to going to Pune only on weekends. My scope of work was the development of web and Android applications. The second wrong thing we did has we hired a team for app and web development in Pune. Now I consider that we should hire the company from Mumbai so I can give more inputs to the team and get a better product.so according to me, we shall be IN the team for the start-up, not outside role performer.

2. Team plays all

One of the pillar of our startup was our product. nowadays it becomes the thumb rule that if the startup working in tech background you should have one co-founder from tech background so it will become easier to develop things.

3. Targeting right customers also target right investors

During startup, we think we should focus on right customer base yes it is. But also it is become very crucial to focus on the right investor. We pitched our startup two to three investors but out of that no one is reputed investor or no one is fit for our business.No from them leads to assume that our ideas don't have much potential. Now the other start-ups who focused on right investors made the big leap.so stay focused on right customers as well as right investors.

4. Be original

This is one of the important points every startup founder should know. During developing the product, we consider our competitors working this feature so we should use. But I think these things are not going to help you to finish the competition. you should develop new features and capture the market rather than just copying things from competitors.

5. Efficiency and optimization

Every star up founder needs to be focused on the resources he/she has. Time, money, energy all should be effectively used for the growth of the start-up. Even the contacts you have to be used timely and effectively.

6. Don’t look for share

The biggest mistake founders do is they look for the share in the start-up. Same we did and result in too much misunderstanding with segregated focus. Do not look for share at all. Having 1 % in a successful start-up is way better than the having 100 % in a failed startup.

7. Be a master of the account book

The fuel for the start-up is the finance and worst we had start-up which is desperately looking for funding. We had some good transactions in early days and the numbers were increasing but the bad thing about us that poor account keeping. Microeconomics, the flow of money, margin and how and where the money to be used for the better result are crucial things during initial days of the start-up.

Having all of the secondary reasons there is the primary reason behind our failure was giving up too early. Now I and my friend cum partners talk about the start-ups growing in the domain we used to have we think if we kept faith in the idea and team then maybe there is a different story?