eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
With a highly appraised educated population, Zimbabwe is surprisingly unsuccessful with start-ups. Start-ups, after all, are almost invariably linked with innovative minds. So wherein lies our problem?
Well, for one thing start-ups all over the world have a high failure rate, circa 75 percent according to Harvard Business School senior lecturer Shikhar Ghosh in a 2012 Wall Street Journal article.
But Zimbabwe’s failure rate on start-ups seems to be at around $100 percent.
Some of the start-up ideas that have emerged in this country are truly novel, as novel as Facebook, WhatsApp and Uber when they hit the market.
Start-ups across the world face both management mistakes and company-level reasons for failure.
But the key difference between innovators in Zimbabwe and innovators in Silicon Valley, for instance, is that in the latter there exits an establishment of venture capitalists (VCs) that forage for brilliant ideas that can be transformed into businesses.
I have followed the histories of start-ups that became giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, PayPal and a host of others, and a clear trend is that all of these now behemoths were saved from the brink of failure by VCs who had faith in them when no one else had.
For instance, between June and July, 2004 the fledgling Facebook received $500 000 from Peter Thiel, president of Clarium Capital.
And in May 2005, Thiel and Accel Partners invested $12,7 million, giving the social media platform an $87,5 million valuation.
As the figures above show, venture capitalism is no joke, especially investing in a start-up. But that’s exactly what Zimbabwe’s start-ups need.
Who is willing to step up?
The following are excerpts from what Business Weekly considers is the best guide on Startups; Building, Growing & Celebrating Start-up success by Frank Guber.
Harsh Realities
Coming up with ideas takes time. It’s difficult to come up with ideas when you sit down and try to think of them. The best ideas come to you naturally or organically. Keep notes in your everyday flow and you should be able to capture some good ones.
You may come up with a genius idea only to discover that it has been done before — no worries; a little competition never hurt anybody.
Google launched when they were plenty of other search engines out there; Gmail came after Hotmail, AOL Mail and Yahoo! Mail. The iPhone was not the first smartphone to launch, but it innovated on a trend. Some entrepreneurs see competition as validation for their idea.
As much as you like the idea of being a visionary; you may consider working on someone else’s idea and become their co-founder. It’s even possible to buy ideas on various websites.
It’s easy to fall in love with your idea, but be wary of getting too attached. You’ll probably have to change it or pivot to survive and keep up with the environment around you — like these companies did:
Twitter grew out of Odeo, a personal podcasting service.
Instagram (bought by Facebook for $1 billion) was originally a location-based service Burbn.
Pinterest came from Tote, a shopping app that sent updates when items you liked went on sale.
Flickr grew out of a game called Game Never-ending.
Groupon was originally The Point, a site for organising around causes.
LivingSocial started out as a Hungry Machine, a small team making Facebook applications.
Fab.com was originally a social network for gay men.
Finally, your ideas aren’t considered valuable —they are a commodity. Coming up with ideas is hard, but its not the hardest part by any means. It’s just the beginning of what will be a long, up and down start up journey.
Should you tell other people about your ideas? This is huge debate that entrepreneurs have all the time. But someone has probably had the idea before and execution is arguably more important than the idea. Not to mention that you may end up pivoting or changing your idea at some point. For these reasons, its common practice for entrepreneurs to talk to venture capitalists or apply to accelerators without having them sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Investors are not going to go out and copy your idea. What I would be more worried about is an investor sharing your idea with a competitive start up in their portfolio, which has been known to happen. But the odds are pretty slim. As for sharing your idea with other entrepreneurs, most people won’t have time to drop everything and work on your idea-they have their own to worry about.
Celebrate: Enjoy the Journey
Coming up with ideas is fun. I love it. Who doesn’t love thinking big and trying to change the world? So enjoy the process and the eureka moment when you come up with a good one. Try to relish the idea generation stage, because you get to be so creative and think about problems worth solving. Entrepreneurs love this part of the process.
Chuck DeMonte of GrooveFox says its “one of the best parts of being an entrepreneur, creating.”
“Coming up with new ideas is the best part of entrepreneurism.” Echoes Jamie Walker, founder and CEO of SweatGuru. And the idea generation doesn’t stop once you have an idea to work on you’ll constantly be coming up with new ways to change it and tweak it to delight customers even more, evolve with a changing landscape, or expand your business.
One way to make sure you enjoy your start up journey is to ask yourself a few questions right from the beginning:
Who do you want your customers to be?
Do you want to sell directly to consumers or to businesses?
Which type of consumers do you want to sell to-moms, male, twenty-somethings, rich people, poor people, fashionistas?
Which type of business do you want to sell to-small businesses or big corporations?
Your customers are the people you will be interacting with day in and day out and you want to be sure you enjoy being around them. I love the passion and drive of entrepreneurs and with Tech Cocktail I get to hang around, write about and interact with them every day while also working with amazing brands that are interested in connecting with our audience online and off. So make sure you are comfortable with your chosen clients or customers.
Another question you should think about is this: How big of a problem do you want to solve? Do you have a passion to change the world? Or change your community? Or an industry?
If you are more interested in money, this aspect is less important. But is passion is something you are looking for, you will have more fun along the startup journey if you pick a project that’s meaningful to you. You will also have a greater chance of making it through the tough times.
Final Thoughts
Ask yourself if your idea is something you are willing to be obsessed about for the next five to ten years. If not, there may be another idea that you would love to do for the long haul. Be patient, it will come to you.
Bre Pettis is a shining example of following your passion. When MakerBot released its first 20 prototypes, thinking they would take two months to sell, they sold out instantly.
“I didn’t realise how important (being obsessive) was,” says Pettis.
“We were just obsessed with getting it the best it could possibly be with the resources that had at hand. That meant that I answered all the support emails and support calls for the first two and half years and then it turns out that’s not normal, other people just hire people at that point,” he laughs. “If you are not obsessed with your product, f*** it, screw it, and don’t do it . . . Kill it right now and get on to the next thing.”
Today, there are more than 35 000 MakerBot machines in the wild. The company raised $10 million in funding and was then acquitted by Stratasys for $403 million in June 2013. And it all started with a maker, a teacher and his obsession.
