The article that covers the topic is different from a how-to guide on “how to hire developers for a startup”. It doesn’t cover mechanics but instead talks about things worth considering in the very early startup stages to reduce the risk of failure.
It’s a long road from business idea to implementation. Every year thousands of ambitious entrepreneurs start new businesses, but only half of the startups survive to the 4th year. According to the USA National Small Business Association latest economic report, the most popular small business financing methods in 2018 were personal funds, bank loans, borrowing from family/friends.
Startups failed mostly because:
- there was no real market need
- a startup ran out of money before started to pay off
- there was no right team
- a startup went outcompeted
- because of pricing/cost issues
- the product was user-unfriendly
- because of poor marketing
- product was without a business model
- startups ignored customers
- product mistimed and some other less critical issues.
Divided into two big groups the issues belong to either outer or inner reasons.
|
Type |
Reason of a Fail | Preventive Measures |
| Outer | No real market need | Market analysis |
| Went outcompeted | Periodical market audit, product management | |
| Inner | Ran out of money | Correct business and finance management |
| No proper team | Outsourcing project development with the maintenance stage | |
| Pricing/cost issues | Business and finance management. Pricing strategy and price management strategy | |
| User-unfriendly interface | UI/UX design and development | |
| Poor marketing | Marketing must be proficient with deep sphere knowledge | |
| There was no business model | Business administration | |
| Ignored customers | Product marketing | |
| Product mistimed | Life cycle analysis, product marketing, business administration |
The best thing about it is that there’s a solution to most of the issues if started properly from the very beginning – from the idea validation.
As a business administrator, you may make right or wrong decisions concerning inner and outer reasons. One way to overcome these issues is to try to control everything by yourself, which is difficult for a startup with limited sources. By the way, 58 percent of small businesses got started with less than $25K. You must contact the marketing research agency for the calculation of the market volume, the average price, the payback period, etc. Or you can turn to a business consultant for an expert opinion about your idea. Or spend much time by yourself to do it proficiently, or employ a marketer. Then hire a startup development team – at least a front-end developer, a designer, and a back-end developer.
The second option for a company is to find a developer for your startup with profound experience in developing and launching projects to go to with your idea. Let’s see how a young company can shift the most of issues to the partner vendor.
| Preventive measures | In What Way |
| Market analysis | Idea validation together with a vendor business analysis and marketing team |
| Market periodic audit, product management | On the company’s side or with a vendor’s assistance |
| Correct business and finance management | On the company’s side |
| Outsourcing project development with the maintenance stage | A full-cycle development company will support the project and can arrange gathering feedback from users for further improvements and promotion |
| Business and finance management. Pricing strategy and price strategy | On the company’s side |
| UX/UI | A full-cycle development company will fulfill UX/UI design and development |
| Marketing must be proficient with deep sphere knowledge | A vendor that launches and supports hundreds of projects in many comprehensive domains knows specifics and can help with the positioning |
| Business administration | On the company’s side |
| Product marketing | A vendor that practices a partnership approach to customers can deeply integrate into the promotion by new features development, improvement, positioning, etc. |
| Life cycle analysis, product marketing, business administration | While business administration is on the company’s side, a partner vendor can deep integrate into the product life cycle analysis and marketing |
From the startup sphere for outsourcing development to XB Software come clients with a general vision of the idea they want to implement. Most of them know the field of the end-product implementation well or have got additional education or knowledge. Many of them have a working background related to their startup idea. But as one can observe from the info above, lack of understanding of the sphere is not the frequent reason to fail.
However, critical may become the lack of technical knowledge in the software development process for startups, uncertainty about the market, blind spots in the business analysis may lead to poor consequences. In general, poor knowledge of the surrounding areas such as business analysis, technical questions, startup business specifics, monetization and pricing strategies, etc. are the reasons to fail and lose money. These are the things you’d better shift to your software development vendor.
To Find Web Developers for Startups Ready to Share the Expertise is a Solution
What is a partnership approach to a customer, in a nutshell? This is a collaborative relationship between organizations. It is even more than just a client-oriented approach when the most valued thing is a client end-product result satisfaction. Without denying the significance of the result satisfaction, a partnership approach focuses on future startup evolution, its life cycle, promotion, new features development, product management, new market opportunities, and much more.
XB Software shares its expertise with the customers when it is so necessary for a startup to feel the ground. We are helpful regarding:
- protection of a startup intellectual property
- web application development
- technical implementation (hosting, hardware, security questions, architecture, etc.)
- market idea testing
- promotion
- UX/UI development
- product maintenance and evolution
- best payment systems
- monetization practices
- business model advice
- and much more.
We, as much as a customer, care to meet the budget and deliver your project on time. We understand that a startup has no big safety buffer in finances and time in comparison with mid-size and large companies. As a custom software development company, we can apply previously developed features to build a new system out of ready-made blocks that have similar functionality in the same spheres. Thanks to this approach, the development process is carried out faster, as the groundwork is fulfilled earlier. Also, we can meet the client’s budget by releasing a product with the minimum set of features required at the moment. As the business grows and enters new markets, we can add new features.
With this strategy, we’ve got a number of successfully developing startups. They have passed the way from an idea to a launch, overcame their 4-year mark, and have grown to mid-size businesses rather prosperous and stable.
As an example, a business that started in 2013 with an idea to gather in one web-service those who needed a cleaning service and those who provided it. The web-service successfully was launched, and as the business scaled and was getting complicated, additional functionality as the audit service was implemented for such a user category as medical institutions. It allowed to review and create a cleaning schedule, control the result, estimate it, manage staff and much more. After some time a mobile app was developed with sophisticated functionality and UX/UI design.
Retaining the main ideas of the system, we improved the functionality for using the platform in other areas: provision of educational and other services to the population, attendance monitoring, and control functions fulfillment. With the successful business model, many other apps oriented on different service users were developed either. Started as an innumerous startup, now the business has developed into a stable and prosperous company, the leader in the region.
To get more information on how XB Software can be helpful for your startup, fill in the request form.