Essential Tips for Starting Your Own Business

You have probably heard that more than 90% of new business ideas fail in the first few months of their operation. Line startups find the reasons for the failure of these businesses and in some ways help the idea owners to reduce their risk of failure. This article will help you a lot if you are looking to start a new business.

Line startups or lean startups are a new and unprecedented idea and business that has much less risk than other startups. If you are a little familiar with the world of startups, you have probably heard that more than 90% of new business ideas fail in the first few months of their operation. Line startups find the reasons for the failure of these businesses and in some ways help the idea owners to reduce their risk of failure. If you are also looking to start a new and successful business, reading this article will help you a lot.

What is the startup line?

One of the most obvious features of a new business and startup is its high risk. Because the idea of these businesses is usually new or they offer existing services in new ways, they may not be able to compete well with existing products and services. 
As mentioned above, more than 90% of startups fail at the beginning of their operations. Many of these businesses have very strong plans, professional teams, and sufficient investment, but what is the reason for their failure?
An issue that many of these unsuccessful businesses have not addressed is how they respond to the customer. You need to know if your product and service can gain a good position among customers and the target community or not?! Line Startup tells you to measure this by first preparing a simple prototype of your product or service and delivering it to a small target community. Examining how customers respond to feedback can go a long way toward answering your questions.
One of the most common methods used in line-up startups is the smoke test method. In this way, the owners of their idea, product, or service introduce themselves in a site that is just a page and there is nothing else in it. With the help of this site, you can track the status of site visits and customers.
With the help of this site, you will find out if anyone would be interested in opening the page you want? Do you need it? Will anyone try to buy your products or services? This test may seem a little simple at first glance but analyzing customer behavior will help you have a much better view of how the market and customer behave and the success or failure of your business.
 

Where did the startup line come from?

The start-up line dates back to 2011 by Eric Rice. Eric started his own company, but despite spending a lot of time and energy to produce the prototype, having a professional team and enough capital fails. Eric attributes his failure to a lack of understanding of the market and the customer. Eric published his research and results in Lean Startup in the same year, which became one of the best-selling books of 2012.
In this book, Eric talks about the failure of the company there. The company has high registered capital and hundreds of employees. After many years of professional activity, the company introduced products to the market, which failed. Despite the various reasons for this failure, Eric states that the product could not find a good position in the market because it could not meet the real needs of customers. 
This book was able to create a huge change in the business world. Many idea owners, instead of jumping into the water and starting their business with a lot of capital, preferred to first market their product and idea in a smaller volume, evaluate it, and then acquire it with less risk. And start their work.

Different steps of a startup line

Once we are familiar with the concept of line startups or new startups in general, it is better to know that line startups are done in several steps. Business researchers say that a startup line has three stages of construction, measurement, and learning. The goal of this cycle is to turn the simplest prototype into the best and most principled result by measuring customer behavior. In many cases, the result of this cycle has caused the owner of the idea to change a lot in his original idea and enter another phase altogether. 
In the iteration cycle, one or more product or idea defects will first be identified and addressed. Then in the next cycle, the modified product or service is entered, and the next possible defects are identified and fixed. By repeating this cycle several times, you will finally reach the product or idea that has been weighed from all aspects and its possible problems have been eliminated. This will greatly reduce the risk of failure. In a startup line in this cycle, various issues such as product capabilities, pricing, distribution channels, customer needs, competitors, etc. will be measured.
As mentioned above, the first step of a startup line is the construction phase. In this step, you build your simplest prototype and present it to a small target community. Of course, keep in mind that the simplest prototype does not mean building a product with low capabilities, but it means that you can implement all the features and capabilities you want with the simplest design.
After making the turn, it is time to provide the product or service and receive feedback from the customer. Measurement is the second step that analyzes customer behavior. As a result, measuring your useful information will increase dramatically and you will enter the learning phase. You can test the hypotheses you have at any stage so that you can have the best possible solution and result.

Let’s see what each of these traffic generation mediums offer.

  1. Search Engine Optimization: The best way for any business to get found is through the web search, and SEO serves this very purpose. For a website to appear in the top search results it requires a detailed plan and persistent efforts. SEO is a long-term strategy and takes a minimum of three months to show any results.
  2. Social Media: Almost everyone with access to the internet is on Social Media and this brings a great opportunity for small businesses and startups to leverage the Social Media platforms for their benefit. Social Media Traffic can either be free or paid.
  3. Email Marketing: This is one of the oldest yet most effective marketing medium today. What else can be an easy way to improve your email Open Rate. communicate with your audience than sending them an email, however, you need a proper strategy and the right tools to make the most out of targeted email marketing.
  4. Promotional Offers & Contests: Discount offers, and contest marketing where your potential audience can have a chance to win something can be a big motivator to get people to your website.
  5. Affiliate Marketing: If you are ready to share a percentage of profit with someone, Affiliate Marketing is a great way to save time and effort. Let someone else drive traffic to your website and pay them a share from a sale.
  6. Content Syndication: Whether you are looking to bring people to your website to read your latest article or buy your latest product, you can do it with digital storytelling and use content syndication networks to bring people to your website.

 

Line startup and business plan

For many people, the question will be whether a startup line can replace a business plan. The answer to this question is no. Every business needs a business plan to start a business and predict success or failure. In these plans, they usually explain and forecast the profit and financial flow of the business and forecast revenue. 
The vague point of this plan is that the entrepreneur has prepared this plan without considering the effective and external factors and customer feedback, and it is assumed that he can overcome all the challenges he faces. 
As usual, startups start with the initial capital if the idea can convince the owners of the capital to invest. After starting a business, spending hours of work and time, the product or service may not be able to attract customers and succeed. After a few months of activity, entrepreneurs may realize the flaws of their product or the real needs of customers, which of course is a little late and their startup has failed. Therefore, it is better to be able to get help from Line Startup along with the business plan to ensure the success of your idea to a large extent.

Advantages of start-ups over start-ups

So far, we are familiar with the concept of line startup and its steps. Now we want to know what the special advantages of line startups are compared to other business ideas.
The most important advantage of line-up startups compared to older businesses is the increased chance of success. In fact, you can objectively see how the customer’s feedback on your product or service, fix its flaws, and start a successful business.
Another point is that investing in an idea with a 5-year perspective may be difficult and far-fetched for many investors. If you provide investors with a practical, albeit a small, version that you have reached the bottom of the startup line, they will be more likely to connect with your idea and invest in it.

Paying attention to feedback is the most important key to Line Startup success

It was also mentioned above that the most important feature of line startups is paying attention to customer needs. As a result, one of the most important reasons for the success of a startup line is to quickly measure customer feedback. 
You need to be able to form a specialized team to receive customer feedback and be able to categorize and analyze their feedback. Your team needs to be able to identify the most common customer issues and identify ways to address them. Your team also needs to be able to identify the strengths of the product or service to put more emphasis on it.
How to interact effectively with the customer and the speed of action in responding to success factors in this stage of Line Startup is something that you should pay special attention to.

Is Line Startup only for small companies and new ideas?

It is interesting to know that due to the sharp increase in competition and of course the increase in production costs of products, even large companies that have years of professional experience in their field, have turned to line startups. Instead of spending a lot of money to produce a new product that they do not know how to be well-received, these companies prefer to use line-up startups to gauge customer interest and then enter their final product into a competitive environment with less risk.
These companies know that if their latest product does not have a good position in the competitive market, the name of the company, in general, will be questioned and their position in the market will decrease significantly. These companies include Inched, General Electric, Qualcomm, and others.

How well known is Line Startup?

You may be wondering if line startups are a common concept and phenomenon in the business and startup world. In answer to this question, we must say that it is true that Line Startup has entered the world of business and entrepreneurship ideas for only a few years, but in this short period, it has been able to find a very suitable position in this valley.
Today, the principles of Line Startup are taught in more than 25 business universities around the world, and its online courses, which are held on the Udacity site, have become one of the most popular online courses. Also, in many cities around the world, especially in developed countries, organizations such as Startup Weekend have been formed that teach tens of hundreds of entrepreneurs the basics of Line Startup every week and share their ideas and experiences. 
These events show that not only is Line Startup now a well-known and popular category but in the next few years it will become a widespread and popular phenomenon in the world of startups, investment, and entrepreneurship.

Conclusion

Additionally, it’s important to note that more than 50% of website traffic worldwide comes from mobile phones. This means you need to buy mobile traffic as well on mobile as it does on a desktop, or you will be missing out on a lot of potential visitors. A simple rule to follow is to think of the difference in experience a person has when using a mobile instead of a computer. Line startup is a new but developed concept in the world of startups and entrepreneurship that can greatly reduce the risk of failure. In this method, the product prototype is first introduced to the target community in a small volume to identify customer feedback. In three steps of the building, measuring, and learning, idea owners can find and fix potential problems with their idea and product. As a result, the product will be marketed with the highest efficiency and success in large volumes.