5 Things All First-Time Entrepreneurs Need To Know

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Do you have an idea which you think will change the face of the industry?

Are you someone who spends hours on the internet finding “the next big idea”?

Do you also spend hours researching how much funding flowed into the world of startups last week?

Do you think about things like:

  • Who are the latest unicorns? 
  • Who are the losers? 
  • Who are the winners?

Do you think about:

  • Why is Elon Musk a legend? 
  • What made Steve Jobs a bad ass entrepreneur?

If you think about these things, you are just inches away from entering the interesting world of:

  • Entrepreneurship.

You trust your instincts. You know your energy and zeal to succeed will take you to the next level.

But your mind is confused.

You have so many questions, but you don’t have anyone there to guide you.

You also don’t know what the unpredictable world of Entrepreneurship is all about. When I started my first venture, I was without a mentor and a plan.

First-time entrepreneurs have so many questions about how to be an entrepreneurThey are inquisitive, yet scared.

Now, it’s NOT that I am no longer scared of starting a new venture. In fact, I am just as scared as I’ve always been. But I’ve learned how to use my excitement to overcome my apprehensions.

If you are a first-time entrepreneur, here are 5 things you need to know:

1. Failing To Plan is Planning To Fail

Failing To Plan is Planning To Fail
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This line carries a strong message for all first-time entrepreneurs.

I know you started your venture by trusting your instincts, but without a plan, you will fail miserably.

Worse- you will move forward without an aim.

Every single division of your company needs to have a plan:

  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Finance
  • HR
  • etc.

Even if you can jot down a few lines on what you plan to achieve and how you will achieve it, you will have a stronger sense of direction.

This is so valuable. When you are a few months into your new venture, you can go back and look at what you had initially planned to achieve and compare it to where you currently stand.

Plans evolve over time. As your venture progresses, the vision takes on a more solid shape (and so does the plan).

  • But without a plan for your business, you are just swinging in the dark.

During one of my ventures, we moved ahead believing that we would make it succeed without planning. Too much self-belief and no planning eventually led to our failure.

2. The Journey: Idea to Implementation

The Journey: Idea to Implementation
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You may have the best ideas in the world. But they’re still just ideas.

Figments of your imagination…

All entrepreneurs should be ready for the journey from idea to implementation.

The journey is not easy.

I know entrepreneurs who have quit in the middle of the journey; they quit long before the product ever saw the light of day.

One of our failed ventures- a business directory to connect party planners and users- went through 100 rounds of iteration at the design stage. Ultimately, the final version that we launched was substandard and barely got any response.

We had:

  • A strict budget.
  • A vague deadline.
  • Too many founders busy with their existing ventures.
  • No one involved in the day to day functioning of product creation.

And when the time came to see the product’s versions, we all had different opinions and feedback which were nowhere near to where the product stood.

Every good idea takes some time in order to manifest into reality. Launch it without the right feedback and you risk launching a product no one wants.

However, if you spend too much time modifying the product, you will never see the launch of the product.

With all of this, you also need to take into account the “cost” of the journey.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind.

Quoting a wise man:

  • “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.
    • I will add “… and a lot of money and time” to make this quote apt for startups.

Ensure your journey of a thousand miles does not stretch to 2,000 miles.

You will lose interest and run out of money (and patience) before you turn your idea into reality.

3. Your Comfort Zone is Your Biggest Enemy

Your Comfort Zone is Your Biggest Enemy
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What’s your background?

Most first-time entrepreneurs are from:

  • Sales
  • Operations
  • Accounting
  • Programming
  • …or some other specialized field.

Anything but Entrepreneurship. 

There is no Entrepreneurship Division” in any company.

You could very well be a software engineer working for a decent company, fetching a good income and benefits package, but when you start your first venture, all you’ll know how to do is code.

Trust me, it will never be enough to handle your business.

My biggest weaknesses are accounting and finance.

My lack of skills in those two fields almost killed our only surviving venture during the first year.

My passion was marketing. I was always busy running with the sales guys doing door to door marketing or making cold calls.

When the time came to look at the company’s finances, I could not find the time.

More accurately:

  • I did not want to find the time.

Despite being an entrepreneur, I did not want to get out of my comfort zone.

In the end, the top line of our business never complimented the bottom line. The market owed us too much.

By the time I got my act together, we were in big trouble. The next few months were spent frantically getting payments from clients.

But here’s the thing:

Do you think I am the only one who made this mistake?

Most of us start ventures to follow our passion which inadvertently puts us in our comfort zones.

But running a venture is a whole different ball game. Every day, entrepreneurs are asked to do things they can’t even imagine.

Because of our past jobs and our passions, our comfort zones can actually lead to the closure of our venture.

4. All That Glitters is Not Gold

All That Glitters is Not Gold
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I have met entrepreneurs who start their ventures for all the wrong reasons.

One of the biggest “wrong reasons” (which stands out among all of the other “wrong reasons”) is:

  • “I am starting a venture to replicate the success of another successful venture”.

I have mentioned this point many times on Quora and in my past blogs.

Do not start a venture just because you’ve seen a similar venture succeed.

For example, do not start another Airbnb after looking at their success and hoping that you could be as successful as them.

As they say:

  • “Don’t judge my path if you haven’t walked my journey”.

Even if you were to start something similar to an already successful venture, study the existing venture thoroughly.

The advantage of trying a tested formula is the availability of SOPs (standard operating procedures) or clear definitions of what worked and what didn’t.

But you will put yourself at a disadvantage when you start a venture only to copy the success of another similar venture.

Try creating a niche for yourself before your try to copy an existing concept.

  • That’s the real beauty of Entrepreneurship.

5. Bootstrap and Then Raise Funds

Bootstrap and Then Raise Funds
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“Bootstrapping”  is starting up with minimal financial resources.

I have been involved with running multiple ventures for the past 8 years.

Do you know how many times our ventures tried raising money from investors?

  • Zero.

We have bootstrapped. Every time.

(In fact, the last month was the first time I started working on a business plan to raise funds. We are growing at a good pace and I think it’s the right time for us to let go of some stake in our company.)

But remember this:

  • Bootstrapping is not easy.

Still, it is the right way to build a startup.

The distractions from media with headlines like X company raised Y million is unavoidable. I do not blame today’s entrepreneurs for the disillusionment they suffer from after reading these headlines.

Money is an easy temptation. You are simply a natural human if you fall into the trap of raising funds to start your venture.

A few months back, I sat down and wrote a business plan for a product I was working on.

I sent it to 5 different VC firms in Delhi/NCR.

All of them rejected the idea. The experience was an eye-opener.

I have previously built a successful venture without any funds. Why should I raise funds for something which is still at an idea stage?

We have now started working on the product from our savings. The plan is to launch the product within the next few months.

The fundraising activity will be only be done once there’s a need to raise funds.

As of now, we are at peace with bootstrapping.

My advice to all first time entrepreneurs is:

  • Do not chase funds. Bootstrap. Get some traction. Funds will follow.

Persist and Never Give Up

  • Being an entrepreneur is not an easy task.

But if you manage to persist, it will pay off in the long run.

If you can still manage to bring your ideas to fruition even after repeated failures, you will have that thing that “made Steve Jobs a bad-ass entrepreneur”.

And success is sure to follow.

Are you a startup owner? What tips do you have for first-time entrepreneurs? Are you a first-time entrepreneur? How’s your startup going? Let me know in the comments!

Want to contribute a guest post here at ShoutMeLoud? Read our submission guidelines.

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Jasmeet has been a part of multiple startups (Most of them failures). He earns his bread and butter by hanging onto his first venture, a Software Company located in India. He shares his Startup Experiences at www.LessonsAtstartup.com

36 thoughts on “5 Things All First-Time Entrepreneurs Need To Know”

  1. Sunitha

    Awesome article….. Very useful. An eye opener for the entrepreneur .

  2. Vikash Sharma

    Hi Jasmeet,
    Believe me, this is mind-blowing article. This is really so helpful for the aspiring entrepreneur like me. I am also working on a beauty startup and so far I have invested 5 lac from my personal savings . However I am also planning to raise funds from some angel investors and VC’s but I though to invest my own money first.
    This article is really an eye-opener and I am glad I bootstrapped first before reaching out for some other investors which means I am going in a right direction.
    This article has really come at a right time for me. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Hey Vikas,

      I am glad you like the article. I will soon be sharing similar articles to help the new startup generation with their journey.

      Yes. You have done the right thing by investing your own money. Once you see success now, trust me you will go places when you get funded.

  3. Deepak Behll

    Excellent Post Jasmeet, Message from this is sharing a credible inputs not only for Youth who have lot of passion for trying their hands at all new different things but also to Mid Aged enthusiasts who are trying to jump and trying to taste the water of “Entrepreneurship”because of multiple reasons. I am also one of them. I would say business is like someone trying to prepare a dish in the kitchen and failure appears when any of the ingredient does not trun up to its real value. Most of the times looking at the recipe people are not able to prepare the dish as per the required taste.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Nice comparison. I can so relate to the example your gave 🙂

  4. Trista

    I have been wanting to get into blogging for several months now, partially as a form of my own personal therapy from PTSD, TBIs, etc that I struggle with every day. But at the same time, I’m also trying to start up a business that, while it has great potential, the costs are going to be exorbitant solely due to mandatory standard regulation compliances that don’t apply to most businesses.

    I would love to find a way to bring these two ideas together into a blog while still protecting the IP of my company’s products/services (which I could choose to post for sale on my website).

    Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. My greatest challenge is that my target consumer’s work time on a computer will not have access to the normal internet and I’m not sure what marketing strategies I should employ to establish my brand and make a memorable impression for those target consumers to reach out to me for their needs.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Initially, it’s very rare a customer will reach to you for services. Every business has stages, where they grow from an unknown entity to a brand with whom customers would want to be associated. (i can write this with confidence because it took us good 7 years to reach to the next level).

      Now you need to figure out the target customer base and where they are present. The 4Ps of market always help. Look to them to figure out your best strategy of placing your service.

      If you want to use blogging as a tool then use it for sharing information. The right customer will automatically find you after reading your views.

  5. Kiran Kumar. C

    Its always Intrapreneurship vs Entrepreneur ship.Thought process of this article was awesome

  6. GURVINDER SINGH

    Hi Jasmeet,

    I found your article posted in a very systematic way & really a soft instruction to the youths who just want to do business as others are doing but they don’t want to understand why the other one has succeeded & his USP of growth.

    I am also on a step of being entrepreneur & having experience of Non technical field but still struggling to find out the product category in which i can enter. If you can help me out in this it will be really helpful for me.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Hey…You can connect with me on my blog. Probably, I can be of help to you.

  7. Leo Smith

    It’s a great post, thanks for sharing. Yes I believe every new entrepreneur wants to be Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, and everyone is looking for the blue ocean ideas. However they should be firstly a good planner and learner.

  8. Gregory Pozo

    Great post. I loved how you structured the information. I have experienced that and i agree 100%

  9. rocky

    Hi Jasmeet,

    Very nice article, i hope it helps me out a lot, thanks for time on this article..

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Thanks. I am sure the article will be of help to you when you start your next venture.

  10. Kumar

    Hello Jasmeet,

    Thanks for your post, its really inspiring, this post will helps all new entrepreneur.

  11. Stacy

    Great article Jasmeet. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I’m looking for some direction to start promoting my business online. I had a quick small business question has anyone here gotten an audit from Odditly (google it). I heard about them from a friend and said that they help guide you with dynamic audits to any product or service. any feedback would be great!

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Hey Stacy…I haven’t used odditly but i did visit their website. Hopefully, will check them in detail when we launch our next project or product.

  12. VIJAY KUMAR UPADHYAY

    Jasmeet ji
    Fairly good Blog, My experience say that its ability of Entrepreneur to intervene/take action in desired time limit help him to succeed
    People do not fail because of external factor or Govt policy but because of their ability of not taking action in desired limit.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      You are absolutely right.

  13. Nicolas Puegher

    As you said, the journey isn’t easy. anything worth being will take time, dedication and lot of effort. Doing all by your own will not be good either, having a plan and a mentor should be a priority, we all need help and guidance even the best ones.

    These are very helpful tips and I learned a few new things as well, thanks a lot for sharing 🙂

    1. jasmeet Singh

      You are welcome! I hope you find the tips useful.

  14. Ben Stiller

    If you’re an entrepreneur, be an entrepreneur. Don’t listen to the naysayers. If you fail with one idea, start another. You’re an entrepreneur, no matter what, whether up or down, success or failure, you’re always an entrepreneur. Remember that.

    Nice Article!
    Thanks
    Regards

  15. manju rai

    Thanks for the post Jasmeet! it really helps a lot. its gives us motivation as well as few more point of view before starting any venture

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Thanks Manju. I am glad the article is of use to you.

  16. Gsingh

    “All That Glitters is Not Gold”
    Thank you Jasmeet for an amazing article. Most of the people start their venture for easy peasy money. Now this is where they fail. They just don’t see how much hard effort he/she involved to make it successful. There’s no harm in copying the other venture but you should also put your ideas into it. Instead of seeing how much money they make you should see how much efforts and dedication they involved.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Rightly said. There is no easy money. We all need to have our priorities right before we start a startup.

  17. cheshta

    Can a blogger be called an Entrepreneur? What are the costs that a blogger needs to incur in short-run, and long-run? Can you please throw some light on this query! Thanks

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Anyone running a business can be called as An Entrepreneur. If the business model of blogger generates revenue I see no reason why they cannot be called an Entrepreneur. The short-term expenses are setting up of blog, server space, etc. The long-term expenses depends on what you are aiming for. For ex, some use google adwords to promote. Others use SEO, SMO service to promote their blogs,.

  18. Atul Sinha

    Thanks a lot Jasmeet Ji for this wonderful article. I am also planning to start my own business and your article will help me a lot. It is a great learning after reading this article.

    1. jasmeet Singh

      Wish you best of luck. I hope my article is of help to you before you start your venture.

  19. Ugyen Dorji

    Hi Jasmeet,
    This is indeed a good post and a lesson that every first-time entrepreneur need to know. As you have mentioned, “I am starting a venture to replicate the success of another successful venture”, even I feel this is the mistakes most of us makes. We lack creativity rather we stuck with what others are doing. If I start to earn good money from a Health blog, everyone would jump into health Niche. Well, you explained it clear. Thanks
    Regards

    1. jasmeet Singh

      I am glad you found it useful. Most of us are after easy money and on the path to earning money, we forget creativity, innovation are two pillar stones of building successful businesses.

      Even when we copy someone else’s idea, we need to create a niche before replicating the same concept.

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