10 Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your Startup
By Young Entrepreneur Council, inc.com, 30-04-2014
When your team is preparing for launch day, things are bound to get hectic. In the chaos, don't a mistake that will haunt your company for months or even years to come. We asked a panel of 10 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council to name some of the common mistakes that can hobble a startup launch.
It's important to be strategic about when and how you want to draw attention to yourself. It's important to build some credibility before you rush people to your product or service. You may make the mistake of getting a quick burst of attention and fail to maintain their interest in the long run.
--John Hall, Influence & Co.
--Dan Price, Gravity Payments
--Evrim Oralkan, Travertine Mart
--Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
--Kelly Azevedo, She's Got Systems
--Andy Karuza, Brandbuddee
--Andrew Fayad, eLearning Mind
--John Meyer, Lemonly
--Bobby Grajewski, Edison Nation Medical
--Matt Ehrlichman, Porch
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When your team is preparing for launch day, things are bound to get hectic. In the chaos, don't a mistake that will haunt your company for months or even years to come. We asked a panel of 10 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council to name some of the common mistakes that can hobble a startup launch.
1. Launching Your PR Campaign Before You're Ready
It's important to be strategic about when and how you want to draw attention to yourself. It's important to build some credibility before you rush people to your product or service. You may make the mistake of getting a quick burst of attention and fail to maintain their interest in the long run.
--John Hall, Influence & Co.
2. Overthinking Your Strategy
Overthinking things, overstrategizing and overanalyzing gets you
nowhere. Instead, be connected to your customer, constantly take action
to improve things for him and continually improve along the way.--Dan Price, Gravity Payments
3. Forgetting About Customer Service
Most startups are founded on ideas or products that are new to a
market. This may cause an unexpected amount of demand for the products
and services. If you have not laid a foundation for customer service
that goes above and beyond, then chances are your future competitors
will focus on this and attract your disgruntled clients.--Evrim Oralkan, Travertine Mart
4. Losing Track of Inventory
When you launch, the worst thing you can do is sell something you
don't have. Starting lean with little inventory is great. Just make sure
you do not keep a product live on your site. At the beginning, building
customer goodwill is critical; they will be your advocates. Having
credible people say you've let them down can be a major hit.--Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
5. Forgetting to Track Your Data
If you're not methodically tracking all the traffic,
conversions and results of your launch, then you won't know if it's
actually worthwhile to relaunch in the future. Without this data, you
can't determine the weak link in your funnel or how many leads you can
target the second time around.--Kelly Azevedo, She's Got Systems
6. Spending Too Much Money
You might have a small seed round or possibly your own cash on the
line when you're starting out. Protect that cash flow because it's the
lifeline of your business. Anything unexpected can come up after you
launch. You might realize your product needs more work before people
will buy it. Don't spend all your money up front; you need enough to
last through the first year or until you gain traction.--Andy Karuza, Brandbuddee
7. Waiting for Perfection
Launch dates are always pushed back. Launch as early as you feasibly
can because there often won't be the traffic or influence you expect
from day one. A launched startup is able to get the word out there and
approach clients, whereas a product or service that hasn't launched is
taken less seriously.--Andrew Fayad, eLearning Mind
8. Thinking that You're Ever Done Working
You just started. I think the biggest mistake is the mindset that the
game has just begun. After all your work designing, developing and
testing, there's a celebration when you click launch because you think
you've made it. But that isn't the finish line--it's the starting line.
Shift your mindset to know the hard work happens after the launch.--John Meyer, Lemonly
9. Lacking an Operating Agreement
Startups should focus on having an operating agreement in place that
provides the terms on how the business will operate and be structured.
This provides a road map to all involved. In the excitement of launching
a company, this step is often ignored, and that can lead to costly
ambiguity in the future.--Bobby Grajewski, Edison Nation Medical
10. Launching Without a Purpose
The launch can be big, so it's wasteful to launch your product just
to be launching. It's about understanding the purpose of your launch and
making sure that purpose aligns with where you are as a company. For
us, we had many "little launches" during a period of a few months, and
each had different goals in order to maximize our exposure and keep our
momentum rolling.--Matt Ehrlichman, Porch
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