Prepare Yourself For The Challenges Your Tech Startup Will Face

Startups are pegged as enthusiastic and innovative businesses with unique solutions to mundane problems. However, in order to succeed, it is important to understand every single startup challenge that can hinder your growth as a tech startup.

While most tech startups struggle to keep momentum, others die before experiencing even a whiff of success.

With this post, we’re going to touch upon the various challenges that startups face and how you can tackle them should you have to face them.

Startup Challenge #1: Lack of Planning

As a technology startup looking to conquer your niche, you need to plan everything down to the T.

From crafting a solid business plan to the daily tasks — everything should be well-planned.

Furthermore, you need to account for any contingencies and obstacles. Key functions and areas like sales, development, staffing, and funding shouldn’t be afterthoughts.

Ideally, you should have a plan in place for every function as this will help you on a day to day basis as well as for future planning.

Whiling planning for all known functions and elements is necessary, it’s important to plan for things haven’t thought about or considered.

This means preparing for every eventuality by knowing what you’re going to do in case things unexpectedly go south.

If your business plan is all rainbows and sunshine and if it fails to account for a surprise twist, then you’re tech startup is heading for big trouble.

As the saying goes, “if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” So, make sure you plan for everything.

Startup Challenge #2: Acquiring and Managing Money

Let’s face it: You need money to start and run a startup. And sooner or later, money is going to be an issue.

So whether you opt for crowdfunding or borrow money from people you know, acquiring capital and utilizing it wisely is a key startup challenge.

Cash flow issues can hit a startup hard. In many cases, the lack of working capital and investment can lead to delays in prototype developments or product launches or hiring key staff or acquiring new offices.

You’ll need to rely on active startup fundraising avenues to raise capital to fund your software or product development, office space, marketing, and other expenses.

Most of what you build will flow from the initial investment and how you use it.

The last thing you want is your team of engineers and marketers to leave you mid-way due to a cash crunch, especially when you needed them the most for your big product launch.

You need to ensure that you understand your receivables, payables, and profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow statements to make better business decisions.

Startup Challenge #3: Not Focusing On Cyber Security

In today’s digital world, your tech startup needs to be agile enough to counter online threats.

Dodging cyber-crime and tightening cyber-security measures should be given importance. This is especially true since cyber-crime rates have shot up significantly.

Hackers are constantly looking for opportunities to take advantage of any loophole within your startup’s online presence.

These crimes include but are not limited to breaking into your startup’s sensitive information such as employee records, bank accounts’ information, confidential documents, or any other imperative information that is deemed important for the survival of a tech startup.

In order to safeguard your startup from falling prey to such crimes, you should consider opting for robust security systems.

For instance, a virtual private network (VPN) connection offers strong encryption that will help to protect your startup’s sensitive information.

Read the full article here.

Originally published at https://get.tech on June 25, 2019.