Launching a project from scratch is incredibly complicated. Those who have already experienced it first-hand will surely agree with this. Even having the experience, knowing your market perfectly and having the right team at hand does not give you any guarantee that you will achieve your goal. startup entrepreneurPhoto rights by Fotolia As a result, few start-ups make it big. Many close down, and many simply do not grow . Depending on the goals of the founders and their investors, this situation is just as much a “failure” as the disappearance of the company. Without multimillion-dollar revenues, with very few exceptions, multiple returns are achieved for the actors involved.
In this post I base myself mainly on
my own experience of the last 8 years setting up start-ups and on the observation of others. By definition this limits the conclusions but I want you to be aware of this before taking them as absolute truths. They are obviously not. Contents [ hide ] 1 New and stronger competition 2 Loss of customers and/or users 3 Saturated or limited market 4 New trends replace old ones New and stronger competition This was one of our main challenges at Coguan. From the beginning we competed in a market dominated by a few companies. Almost everyone was active internationally, while we were basically focused on Spain, adding a bit of
We had the best ideas but we were
not able to get the market to take us seriously. Many saw us as too small, and in the end they were right. The online advertising market itself was huge, so new players with greater financial muscle and better technology than we had were constantly entering the market. To be honest, I’m not sure if more money would have solved all our problems. In the end italy whatsapp number data we lacked the experience of how to act in such a “political” market and many wrong decisions were made (many right ones, but perhaps too late) which, after reaching break -even, made it very difficult to grow beyond the client base we had. Possible solution : you may have to abandon the dream of becoming the next Amazon or Google.
When the competition is so strong
and you, with the typical advantages of a start-up, cannot fight against it, you are probably left with only one option: choosing a very specific market niche that almost no one wants (because it is either unprofitable or too small). It is more a survival strategy than an attack strategy, but based on my own experience (which has its limits as already mentioned), I cannot give you good advice to get out of this vicious circle. Loss of customers andr users You can be very good at marketing and acquiring new customers and still not grow.
You will be very good at acquiring
customers, but if you have this problem you are terrible at retaining customers . One of the few things I am clear about in this business world is that you must always treat those who are already with you better than those who join us. One of the most recurrent buying house b mistakes that you find in both start-ups and large companies is promotions for new customers where new customers are absent. Even the most clumsy entrepreneur should have realized that it is much easier to keep than to acquire.
That is why at Quondos we are very careful when launching promotions to do it in an elegant way. The company policy is not to give discounts to new customers . Not to piss off people who are already with us is the main reason. There is another, although less the advantage of brain teasers is that important. Every time you offer discounts you create expectations. A person who wants to buy from you will wait so they don’t have to buy at the regular price . The negative impact is that sales are delayed andr only happen when you offer discounts. This is probably one of the things (without having any data) that happens to Hawkers.
They may have calculated it this way
(which is very likely) because for the quantities of sunglasses they sell they should have a sufficiently high margin. Possible solution : invest in small details that do not bring you direct income and that only benefit existing users. It could be a new website design or some new functionality. Start treating those you have better than those you don’t. If you treat them well, they will do your work and bring in new customers because they love your product and service. Profitable businesses that treat their customers poorly do exist,
