How to start a business without funding?
In this article I will give some clues to start monetizing products.
Idea
Yes, you need an idea to start. The first step in creating a company is to come up with a business idea. This can be something you are passionate about or a problem you want to solve. Think about what products or services you can offer that will be in demand and profitable.
Idea doesn't have to be revolutionary. It needs to solve a problem and does something different than competitors.
Market Research / Validation
Once you have a business idea, an important step is to conduct market research to determine if there is a demand for your products or services. This will help you understand your target audience and competitors, and give you a better understanding of how to position your business in the market.
Note: it's ok to get competitors, it usually means idea is validated. What you need though is to do something differently so people will buy from you and not from your competitors.
Monetization
Having a business idea, know your competitors are essential.
But do you know how you will monetize your product?
Will you sell recurrent subscriptions or will it be a one-time purchase? Will it be free for users but you earn through advertising?
Evaluate a pricing is important:
- too low means you need a lot of customers before being ramen profitable.
- too high means people won't buy.
Then your pricing is important and depends on your strategy.
- If you want traffic with a lot of customers, then it's better to practice low prices.
- If you want less customers (for less support for instance), you can practice high prices and have the same revenue as option above.
Marketing strategy
Please, don't underestimate that one!
You can be the best developer, the best writer, the best designer, if you don't have a marketing strategy you will remain unknown and make no sales.
What is your plan to market your strategy? Is it advertising? Personal brand? Influencers? ...
Some thoughts about it: people trust people. People tends to buy when they hear about a product from someone else, better than with ads.
Team up or be solo?
It's a choice, it can vary over time. You can start alone and find partner(s) while you build your project, or you can team up at the beginning and choose different paths after a while.
Being solo means being faster, you don't have to wait for other's approval. You decide on everything. But it's also hard as you have to do everything.
I choose to team up with people I know. Our skills are not the same, we are complimentary and it's our strengths.
Creating a startup is a rollercoaster, every founder can tell. Create with other persons can help to stay motivated: they count on you. And you can celebrate success together. I also feel like it's reassuring, but that's personal.
It's worth to note that success chances doesn't increase with the number of co-founders.
There's persons like @levelsio or @JhumanJ who built alone and who are successful. Other who built in a team like @PierreDeWulf who succeed.
You can note that I don't name people who fail, failure is part of entrepreneur's journey, it's normal to fail, and you can succeed if you learn from failures.
Launch
Don't wait for your project to be perfect to launch! You will never launch otherwise.
Create a website, launch a marketing campaign, find beta testers, communicate about it, listen to your customers.
Improve
You start to get customers? Congratulations your idea is validated!
You can now invest time in improving your services and continue to do marketing and inform people about your improvements (new features, better UI...)
Build relationships with other founders
Whether you choose to build solo or in a team, I highly recommend you to build relationships with other founders. You will face many issues that others founders encountered too, and talk with other entrepreneurs will help you.
@cuireuncroco organized recurrent entrepreneur's meeting in France and it's a real pleasure to go there. It's incredible how much you can learn by talking to other.