❌1. Not visionary enough:
Most young founders start their business with great passion (read passion projects), launch one product, and then don’t know what to do next.
And, any kind of scale business will take at least 7 years to be understood and built. So, they need to be more visionary and strategically lay down a long-term vision for the brand.
Your first product idea will mostly arise from some personal experiences or needs. It may or may not lack product market fit. It may not address a bigger TAM.
You need to ask yourself – what if this fails?
And even if this succeeds, it is bound to plateau.
Then what next?
We never fail to ask my clients – What is the bigger problem you are trying to solve?
❌2. Strategy Chasm:
Young entrepreneurs need to understand the challenge of building a unique and exclusive product – which is that it does get you an easy first 1000 customers due to its novelty factor but then you face something called the ‘Strategy Chasm’ or a void in the business.
Those first few customers don’t stick around the long term because what they’ve built is either an extremely expensive or unique product built for early adopters.
What they should rather do is build a product for the early majority, not for the first 1000 customers but for the first 1 lakh customers, and see if the product is relevant and that’s where the product market fit comes into play.
A classic example we always give to our clients being a Mumbaikar is – building products for Andheri & Thane and not for South Bombay or Bandra.
❌3. Doing It All:
We’ve all been there and we’re here to tell you to stop doing everything alone!
Once your business grows, start delegating tasks, and build capabilities.
This will allow you to run the company successfully, and peacefully, and tremendously ease your bandwidth.
Play alongside your strengths and set your KPIs from the very beginning. Once you know what you are capable of bringing to the table, start figuring out how would you go about building relevant capabilities for foundation setting & growth.
Never attempt to do things that you are not good at – always hire or outsource.
Now, go get going and build the brand of your dreams.