An Idea:

Ideas are numerous, and everyone has ideas, but very few people know how to start a startup. Raw ideas are one liner but to put it in the executable way you need to have little market research to find target customers, product demand, and scalability. Understand your competitors, if any. Come up with a USP (Unique selling point) which creates the market for you.

Idea is raw ingredient, the way of execution makes it as a tasty product

Narasimha Mohan

Write a business plan:

Business Plan is a formal document which contains information how to execute a business in an effective way. Business will have numerous things to do. Unless you have a plan in place your productive time may go waste. A plan may have more than 50% deviation, but still, a plan is a plan. Why?

For instance, you need to buy groceries for a month with a budget of 100 bucks. You may have to buy many things. I know you could have chosen a big supermarket so that it is easier to pick up from various sections in the store. Few common issues.

• While paying at the cash counter, you realized that bill is 50% more that your budget.
• While putting in the refrigerator, you may realize many important things missed out.
• Your friend said that you lost a good deal in other supermarkets, that could have saved 30 bucks.
• The quantity of few items might be less, and few might be more.

These are few common mistakes we usually do while going for groceries. List of items with quantity on a piece of paper should solve 80% of these issues. Consequently, imagine executing a business without a plan.

Write a business plan on your own: Click here for step by step process.

Find a mentor:

If you are new to startups, I would advise finding a good mentor as it saves you money and time a lot. Few people think that we don’t need a mentor. However, it makes a lot of difference as they would have already experienced all the phases which you will experience. Find a good mentor and discuss a mode which mutually benefits. Judge them whether they are worthy. A good mentor makes to live easy and guide you how to start a startup.

Naming a company (how to start a startup):

Usually, people spend a lot of time to name the business. I personally feel keep it simple and spend a good amount of time to create branding for it. What is the meaning of Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Intel in English? The name turns into the brand and becomes popular based on the performance and reach of the company I would suggest.

• Keep it simple short and crisp.
• Just try to associate with your product.

The majority of the people think that domain name is critical on the internet to become so popular. It is a wrong notion, Google algorithm is pretty intelligent, and it has many parameters to put you on the first page.

For instance,  type ‘Startup Jokes’ in Google, you can see www.saranmok.com on the first page. How do they both are related? 🙂

Creating Logo:

People are crazy about logos. The logo won’t create value to brand, however, the brand creates value to a logo. Keep it simple and if possible use just two colors so looks cute and minimizes cost in printing and branding.

See some free tools to create logos:  Tools to create logos

Setting up team:

Identify core members with a different skill set based on the nature of business. Judge their passion towards a startup. I would suggest don’t encourage people who are already working or just would like to be employees in your startup as they have to work hard and stay back. I strongly suggest that interview is not the benchmark to judge an employee; you need to do enough journey along with them to understand their skills and mindset. Don’t hesitate to kick them off if they are not the right fit for a startup; otherwise, you will suffer a lot. Setting up team teaches you how to start a startup.

Technology:

Selecting technology is purely based on the product. Usually, we have two types

1. Technology driven product. For instance, the product is developing on IoT, 3D printing, Embedded, Protocols, etc.
2. Ecommerce, B2B, B2C or any other business where you will have the choice to use the technology which you have expertise.

I would suggest selecting something you are happy and have expertise.

Working Space:

Home is the best place to start your startup with low cost. If you have the team and need more space to setup work environment, I would suggest going with some incubators, accelerators or co-working spaces with low cost.

Registration:

Business has to be registered to have recognition and make the business legal. Follow compliance, pay tax and put everything white from the day one.

Here are the registration processes:  4 Registration processes for startups

Hope you understand now how to start a startup

All set to go  :), all the best.

Narasimha Mohan

He is the Author, Product Specialist, Business Consultant, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker, Thought provoking writer, and Joke writer. Follow him on Twitter