What are the best ways to reduce risks when starting a new venture?

Don't waste time building something no one wants. Seek market validation first, then build your MVP. My favourite ways to get market validation. - Cold call potential clients, run the call as if you've already built the product. - Social media ad campaign - Many platforms now have "instant pages" which means you dont need to create a landing page/ website. - Post it on your socials, assuming you have an audience that has the problem you're solving. Less cool ways to get validation: - Talk to friends and family Either way, validate your idea with people that arent you.

The quickest way to validate an idea :- 1. Identify your target customers 2. Build their detailed user persona 3. Create a landing page 4. Send paid and organic traffic to this page with a free CTA. Paid traffic can come via social networks. Organic traffic can be sourced via popular communities. Keep a success criteria in mind. Also, make an effort to talk to these customers and try to recruit them into very early adopters.

Design thinking approach works best... Research on your idea (TAM,SOM,SAM) and understand the market landscape in terms of competition and revenue opportunity. List down the user stories. Bounce off ideas with potential customers and ones in the industry who are close to your idea. Get the feedback, adjust user stories and hit the drawing board to build a UI with potential user journey as the core focus. Take it to potential customers again, understand their WTP (willingness to pay). This should give you a good feel on the idea even before single line of code is written. The chances of you losing your shirt will be much lesser with this approach. The VC/Funding and all the comes so much later in my humble opnion.

Starting a new venture involves risks, but there are several strategies to minimize them: by Understanding your target audience, competitors, and industry trends. Validate Your Idea and make sure to Surround yourself with skilled and reliable individuals who complement your strengths and weaknesses. Develop a Clear Business Plan and Maintain Financial Discipline,start Lean in which you begin with the essentials and scale up as your business grows, ensure the approach of customer-Centric. Maintain laws and regulations And avoid over-reliance on a single product or customer segment. Stay Agile and Adaptive by being open to change.make sure to network and seek mentoring by Connecting with experienced entrepreneurs and seek advice.

1. Team 2. Team 3. Team The riskier aspect for me is the human factor. Be sure that you can trust your team and founders - if you can trust your team's loyalty, capability, knowledge about the product and market, and most importantly, culture, you can get far! Otherwise, it can be one of the most risky factors in both, problematic situations and in the case of success. With a strong team, with or without success, you will be able to navigate the hard route.

Most startups are failing because they don’t manage their financials in a healthy way. We used to hear the term unicorns, which is a label for companies achieving more than $1 billion in revenue, regardless of their profitability. This changed recently and the new term now is camel startups which focuses more on profitability and sustaining the business.

As a start up that's two year old and completely self sufficient w.r.t. finances, what we have found useful is being in sync with the Client's finance teams/ ways of working. Using funding to actually fund client projects is almost a step towards mismanaging finances in the long run. This is mainly because one quickly loses focus on what's profitable and just ensures a healthy top line. Hence, letting the Clients know about your own financial policies is equally important after all, it's meant to be a partnership. Being firm/ assertive about finances/ payment conditions eventually earns respect from Clients too (in my opinion AND experience!)

Effectively planning your finances is a cornerstone in minimizing risks when embarking on a new venture. Begin by creating a comprehensive budget that outlines your startup costs, operational expenses, and projected revenues. Develop realistic financial projections and contingency plans to account for unforeseen challenges. Securing a strong financial foundation also involves exploring funding options, whether through bootstrapping, seeking investors, or applying for loans.

After running merrative.com for 2.5 years — I think the only thing that helps avoid risk is to ensure you earn customer money. Just like money is said to solve most life problems — Paid customers solve every startup problem. You must align your finances and use resources to get more paid customers.

Best ways to reduce risk of failure is to first map out things that can fail and work backwards 1. Cash: Go seriously lean, having cash does not solve all problem but creativity does. The earlier you learn to stretch your money wisely the better 2. Team: Read as bandwidth - having team mates with complementary skills expands your bandwidth to deal with issues. Also, if you team up really well i.e you can maximise agreements + disagreements into micro innovation, then you are solid 3. Customer first: the reason your business exists is to solve the customer problem. Getting the right solution for the right customer is a journey in itself. While getting to a large customer base, if you can manage 1 & 2 above, then chances of success are high.

Have perspective that successful startups maybe showcase the CEO, but he is standing on the shoulders of a mountain of people. You don't become great alone and without help from others. So be kind, be willing to be the most stupid person in the room, be willing to hire people who are great and give them space to value their opinion and their work and let them work. Ensure you are the example of everything you ask of people. If you want your team to be timely, you need to respect their time and so on and so forth. This is truly the first hurdle of owning a business, and the one that if surpassed greatly will allow you to surpass everything else easier and better.

As tempting as it may be, don't go into business with a friend unless that friend has complementary skills and is as passionate and committed as you are. I've seen it work on some occasions (I'm looking at you, Fetii) but I've also seen friendships ruined when co-founders couldn't resolve their differences. Your ability to build a strong team is the first test of your ability to build and run a successful company.

Building a strong team is essential when starting a new venture. Look for people with complementary skills and experience who share your vision and values. Hire slowly and carefully, taking the time to assess candidates' qualifications, cultural fit, and ability to work well together. Clearly define roles and responsibilities to avoid confusion and overlap. Provide training and development opportunities to help your team grow and improve their skills. Foster open communication, encourage collaboration, and recognize and reward good work. Build trust by being transparent, keeping your promises, and admitting mistakes. Regularly review team performance and make adjustments as needed.

Let's be real: building a strong team is more art than science. Sure, you want talent, but don't underestimate the power of diversity and personality fit. Offering equity might sound good, but it's not always the magic bullet for motivation. Instead, focus on fostering a culture of trust, collaboration, and continuous learning. That's where the real magic happens.

The most critical component of any successful or failed startup after timing is Team. A good team can make an average startup work wonders too. The team starts from having the right co-founder which is like finding the right life partner. The comes founding members who are best fit for Zero to One Journey of your venture. (Remember sometimes folks for 0to1 may not be the same as folks from 1to100) Ensuring that each team mate shares the same vision & is relatively passionate for achieving a common goal. Also ensuring that you are able to clearly communicate the vision with them & able to hold them to it. Its critical to ensure that you are yourself visionary and far more passionate with the strong character of a leader as a founder.

<<This chat GPT-looking content doesn't take into account the fact that protecting IP can be wildly overrated. Do you want to spend your life in court defending a patent? Do you want to show your competitors your exact plans? How much do you want to spend securing and protecting your patent and is it worth it? These are the questions to ask yourself.

Protecting IP, such as a patent, can be an expensive and difficult to defend process. There are companies making trademark search and establishment much easier. Always pay the bill for your domain. Document everything. In tech your greatest advantage of competitors is often secrecy. Put things in place to protect leakage from inside the org. Expect some to happen naturally especially if outsourcing some work.

Your IP may be one of your most significant assets. You get what you pay for so be sure to engage suitable professionals who can help protect the IP correctly and robustly because doing so protects the business. You should seek appropriate confirmations, registrations, indemnities, licenses, uses and protections on a case by case basis. Despite the above, you still need to understand that your IP may still be infringed upon and so it is key to consider contingency plans for such situation.

Instead of fixating on legal battles, focus on creating something so innovative that imitators can't keep up. After all, the best defense against copycats is staying one step ahead in the market.

While most people immediately think "patents" when they hear about intellectual property, a few other areas should get more attention from day one. The first order of business is to have everyone who is involved in the company (including founders, employees, contractors) to sign an agreement assigning any IP they generate to the company, as long as it is is done in connection with their services. Likewise, a confidentiality agreement ensures that people are obligated to keep sensitive information to themselves. A standard PIIA (Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement) should cover both. Names, logos, etc. may change, but if the company doesn't own the rights to the product of its team members, it will not be able to raise funds.

Best way to validate a business idea is to go ahead and do it, launch an MVP, speak to as many users/customers (if any!) and keep fine tuning the product or service till you get traction. During this time, many possibilities and great ideas will come. The key challenge is to pick the best 2 or 3 and work like crazy to prove it is commercially viable and can be a sustainable business. Pivoting and adapting is a core function of any startup. Trying to make a business model work via different iterations in implementation and/or technical/ feature tweaks will bring more real results

Let's face it: change is the only constant in the startup world. Sure, you can stick to your original plan, but be prepared to adapt or die. Listening to feedback and being willing to pivot can be your secret weapons in this game. It's not about sticking to what you know; it's about embracing what comes your way and making the most of it.

Startups are built on iterations, you need to have a natural ability to adapt. Marekt these days to connected globally and lot of innovations are helping around the world which set customer need, technology changes, strategy adoption. For example, Chegg used to help students with homework and was the market leader but after the chatGPT, it suffered a 50% loss in share value.

Aprender a trabajar en un entorno de incertidumbre es una habilidad clave de las empresas de la actualidad. Hoy no existe evolución sin cambio. Para construir una empresa exitosa debes acostumbrarte a desaprender y aprender de nuevo, a hacer cosas diferentes, a que no siempre lo que funcionó en el pasado funcionará en el presente o el futuro. Es fundamental ver el cambio como una oportunidad de salir de donde estás para adaptarte o moverte a un lugar mejor.

A startup's ability to succeed depends on it's ability to survive and adapt to the changing facts and lessons learned through out the building phases. The super power of a small company is it's ability to change quickly.

Failure? Bring it on! 1. It’s like a bad date. 2. You learn what not to do. 3. Celebrate your mistakes, they're gold! 4. Maybe fall in love with your failures? ?? Follow me for actual advice on turning fails into wins!

Turn failure into fuel for growth and innovation. Success isn't just about avoiding failure; it's about how you bounce back and evolve from it.

There is no failure, there is only learning. You need to prove and validate every aspect: product, market, operations, finance. But of course the goal is to make failure cheap by applying the tactics already listed above.

This idea of ‘fail fast’ is propagated by people who don’t have enough skin in the game. They are usually playing with other peoples money. No-one should want to fail at any point. Sometimes we do. Then, sure, we learn. But better to set out to get it right first time - which is usually the mindset when it’s your own money!

Starting a new venture with reduced risk involves a few key steps: First, conduct market research to understand customer needs and competition. Develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test the market with minimal investment. Use customer feedback to refine your product or service. Adopt a lean budget, focusing on essential spending. Continuously assess and manage potential risks. After validating your product in the market, plan for scalable growth. Build a strong, diverse team, use data analytics for decision-making, forge strategic partnerships, and stay adaptable to change. This test market approach minimizes initial risk and lays a solid foundation for growth.

When launching a new venture, there are additional critical factors to consider for risk reduction. Firstly, build a robust team with diverse skills and experiences to navigate challenges collectively. Cultivate strong industry connections and seek mentorship to gain insights and guidance. Establish a scalable and adaptable business model that can evolve with changing market dynamics. Prioritize cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and maintain customer trust. Lastly, stay informed about legal and regulatory requirements to ensure compliance. By addressing these aspects alongside market validation and financial planning, you fortify your new venture against potential risks and increase the likelihood of long-term success.

One of the most important process to follow is create an extensive detail business plan based on current knowledge and research (with help of mentor) considering three critical phases: 1. Short term plan (1 - 3 years) 2. Mid term plan (5 - 10 years) 3. Long term plans (10 + Years) Always remember, founding core team should always evolve with business.

When starting a new business, it's important to reduce risks where possible. Some of the best ways to do this are to thoroughly research the market and potential customers, start small and scale up slowly, have adequate capital reserves, use lean startup principles like minimum viable products, don't overcommit at first, test ideas before going all in, figure out your unfair advantage, build a risk management plan for contingencies, move fast at first but don't overextend yourself, and leverage partnerships and advisors when possible. Taking calculated risks is expected with a startup, but being strategic can put the odds in your favor.

To minimise risks in a new venture, conduct thorough market research and start with a minimum viable product to test the market. Prioritise customer satisfaction and diversify income streams for financial stability. Manage cash flow meticulously and forge strong partnerships for shared resources. Invest in appropriate insurance and ensure clear contracts to protect your venture. Stay compliant with regulations to avoid penalties and embrace technology for efficiency. By combining these strategies, you create a solid foundation, reducing risks and paving the way for a successful business journey.