What's the best way to minimize startup failure risk and cost?

Search and read about the similar idea if there is anyone working on. Meet them understand their challenges and successes. Meet the people the product/service is for. Sample size keep more than hundreds. Go step by step - Slowly than expand. Keep faith on your idea and keep sharing with everyone whenever you get chance to attend conference, workshop do attend and learn from there as well.

Startups need to firstly focus on building a solution for problem worth solving .. problems that are eye -watering. Bigger the problem, higher will be the customer intent to pay for it. Secondly, many startups fail to pay right attention to marketing and sales. They consider it as a discretionary department. Mostly, the sole Salesperson is the Founder. While there is no issue him/ her selling, it’s just they limit their selling and growth capabilities by not building a strong marketing and sales team. Third biggest mistake startups make is to confuse marketing with sales. Marketing is the process that leads to generation of leads whereas sales is the process of converting them. Marketing team should not be doing sales and vice -Versa.

As an investor, I look for two founding cases: 1. Ideally, you start by solving a real-life problem, something you are confronted with and you deeply care about. 2. Or you are creating a solution to achieve one of the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The SDGs are the greatest market research ever done and they represent a $12 trillion opportunity.

Maybe don’t start. Over any timeframe most things end. So, whatever you start will end at some point. Could be tomorrow. Could be the day after. It’s going to take a lot of work. With no obvious payoff. Imagine the day you need to shut the venture down. If this doesn’t deter you. You’re ready to start.

As rightly said, your network is your net worth. They can give that helping hand not necessarily in the form of funds but also ideas, validating ideas or just connecting you to the right people who will just do the work for you. Building your network of like-minded people who have the same urge to grow or build something surely motivates and helps you keep going.

Besides the MTP, the 2 additional dimensions I invite all entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to focus upon are 1. Focus on having niches in your business model. What's disruptive about your idea - what's transformative. It's beyond your value proposition - it's across the frontend and backend - then only you can win sustainably 2. Leverage the 10 exponential attributes of SCALE and IDEAS - especially building and engaging with a community of your customers and fans - then you are nurturing relationships and not selling/doing transactions.

Keep trying without getting frustrated, success is a long journey. You have to experiment to reach to the final solution. Use initial customers as your critic, improve your product or service based on feedback. Keep in touch with the customer and ask for bad feedback. The improvement will ensure good feedback going ahead

Don't wait for an MVP to look or feel good - launch as soon as possible and iterate fast, ro make sure that you don't waste time building an MVP that no one is interested in.

I have spoken to many experienced founders about this and there is only one absolutely critical rule that everyone agrees one: "MAKE SURE YOU NEVER RUN OUT OF MONEY". It sounds simple but it is difficult. There is so much temptation from optimistic business plans promising future returns combined with pressure from investors to grow faster, particularly when things go well... But one has to resist. Once you run out of money there are only two outcomes: either you vanish or you are back against the wall having to beg for help while the value of your company shrinks. Needless to say that both are terrible. So, whatever it takes, make sure you have enough cash in the bank to fulfill for commitments for a good period of time.

Build a Lean Startup: Start with a minimal viable product (MVP) to test your concept before investing heavily. Focus on core features that provide the most value to users. Implement an iterative development process based on customer feedback. Avoid overbuilding features that may not be essential for your initial user base. Strategic Partnerships: Form strategic partnerships to share resources and costs. Collaborate with other businesses to leverage each other's strengths.

Resist the temptation to overextend or scale too quickly. Instead, focus on sustainable, measured growth. Keep overhead and unnecessary expenses to a minimum. Learning from Failures: If setbacks or failures occur, view them as learning opportunities. Analyze what went wrong and use those lessons to improve your business's chances of success. Minimizing startup failure risk and cost is an ongoing process that requires adaptability, strategic planning, and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures. By implementing these tips, you can enhance your startup's prospects while managing expenses effectively.

You win or you learn. Every failure is the best growth potential and must be turned to a lesson or it is greatly wasted and will drag you backwards. Failure is not bad in its essence, only you can turn it bad.

The only way to validate something is to get a paid customer by offering the 'service version' of the product you're making - doesn't matter if you have the product in reality. A simple LinkedIn page + Cold Outreach via email should work. For example, I run merrative.com - it's a publishing talent marketplace for thought leadership content creation and discussion. Here, I sell services for hiring experts to write their thought leadership content like data stories, and narratives, and get them for webinars or lecturers. Helps me keep things afloat with money by bootstrapping while gauging demand and identifying actual problems to build a SaaS for.

Implement stringent operational discipline right from the outset. As a startup scales, complexities multiply, making it increasingly challenging to retrofit processes and structures that weren't established early on. To avoid this pitfall, a startup must prioritise establishing a robust operational framework from day one.