Ever Tell Yourself That Your Startup is Going to Make It Instead of Facing the Truth?

[Elygantthings]

by NEIL PATEL

 

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I know I’ve been there before and, sadly, more than once. Chances are you are going to be there too.

Why?

Sometimes solving problems and executing fast isn’t enough.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are. The biggest factor in a startup’s success is luck, and that’s something you can’t control.

The Fruitcast story

One of my first startups that I thought would succeed was Fruitcast. It was a business that helped monetize podcasts. We would place ads within podcasts, which would help publishers make money and companies get in front of more people.

When we launched the business, we received a ton of press and even had meetings to sell the company. One of the companies interested in buying us was Yahoo. Their paid ad division was looking for new channels to expand into, and Fruitcast was an opportunity for them to enter the podcast advertising arena.

We never sold the company to Yahoo because of multiple issues within our business. Firstly, the economics didn’t work. Secondly, the main person who was behind Fruitcast wasn’t committed to the business.

The big lesson I learned from this startup is that you shouldn’t get distracted. Don’t let press, potential acquisition, or funding talks take your attention away from what’s important. Focus on growing your company and changing your business model until it works. If those other things work out for you, great! Just don’t count on them.

The Serph story

If you thought I had bad luck with Fruitcast, just wait till I tell you what happened with Serph.

After two years, Serph never launched, and I was out a million bucks of borrowed money.

The concept behind Serph was very similar to Amazon Web Services, except Amazon Web Services didn’t exist yet.

We spent a million dollars on servers and infrastructure, but the business never launched. Why? Because we picked the wrong team to run the business. They were smart, but they were poor executors.

And that wasn’t even the worst part. We should have launched the business a few months into starting the company, but we never had the opportunity as our business partners ran away with our money. To add insult to injury, before they left, they trashed the house they lived in, which we owned.

The lesson I learned with this startup is no matter how good your idea is, you’ll never succeed unless you launch. To ensure that you launch on time, you need to pick the right team. The team has to be able to execute well. Beyond that, you need to have similar values and fit well together. If you can’t gel as a team, you’ll never meet deadlines.

Will your startup succeed or fail?

Sadly, I can’t answer this question for you. You will know better than anyone else if your company has a shot at succeeding. But to figure this out, you’ll have to look at it from an outsider’s perspective.

It’s going to be hard for you to do this, but it is possible.

All my failed experiences (dozens of them!) taught me that you are going to make mistakes. If you learn from your mistakes and start avoiding them, you’ll increase your odds of succeeding.

Take it a step further, and learn from other entrepreneurs. The principles of entrepreneurship haven’t changed. What worked for Carnegie and Rockefeller in the 1800s still works today. So, when you have time, read the life stories of other entrepreneurs, and learn from their mistakes.

What should you do?

Whether your business is doing well or poorly, one thing will remain true: eyeballs are always valuable.

Sure, you want to create a great product or service, but that alone may not be worth much to someone else. But what usually is valuable is eyeballs. If you can get thousands, if not millions, of people to your website on a regular basis without spending money on ads, you’ll have something valuable. Those visitors will be worth something to someone, even if you can’t make your business work.

For this reason, I changed the way I start companies. Before I create a company, I actually pop up a website, work on building an audience, even if it takes me a year, and then I consider creating a business. I do this because it is much easier to make money and create a profitable startup if you already have eyeballs on your website.

If you want to build up traffic to your website, focus on inbound methods. You can start by following the instructions in these guides:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing – if you haven’t marketed your website before, start by reading this guide.
• The Advanced Guide to SEO – learn everything you need to know to rank your website highly on Google.
• The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing – in order to build a loyal audience, you’ll have to create a bond with your visitors. You can do this through content marketing.
• The Advanced Guide to Link Building – referring sites are a great source of traffic. You can get people to link to you by following the steps in this guide.

Conclusion

I’m stubborn, so if someone told me my startup wasn’t going to succeed, I would push forward anyway. Heck, even when I knew my startup was bound for failure, I still kept pushing forward because I hate failing.

But pushing forward when a company is bound for failure doesn’t make sense. Why? Because you are wasting time, which is your most valuable asset. It’s something you can’t buy back.

You might as well put your time and energy into something that you and others feel has a shot at success. These days, if I get into something I realize is sliding toward failure, I quickly get out. But I had to learn this the hard way…

What would you do if your startup was bound for failure?