First thing you have to understand is the products don't sell themselves. Build it and they will come - never works.
You will have to do marketing for your product or service.
If you want to successfully sell your product or service, you should sell a story.
When I was setting up the Mbanq Labs accelerator in Singapore, I had a chance to talk to many founders and consult a lot of startups.
What was striking to me, besides their eagerness to build their products, is how hard it was for them to clearly articulate the idea of their product in one sentence.
Product is at the center of your startup. Your product is what it’s all about. When I say product, I don’t talk about the idea. Idea on its own is worth nothing. Ideas are a dime a dozen - everyone has them but not everyone is able to bring their idea to life.
Startups are hard. Successful startups are even harder. Don’t let you tell otherwise. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be a successful entrepreneur.
All successful startups are product oriented. All successful products are customer oriented, even if the initial customer is the entrepreneur himself.
Why do people start companies? The reasons are different. Some want to get rich and famous. Some think they can do things better than the others. Some just cannot help it not to be creative.
What all the founders have in common is the ignorance. They do not realize yet how hard their journey will get and how many obstacles they’ll have to overcome to build their dream product.
For the founders - ignorance is a bliss.
The world is changing very rapidly. Markets are crashing, money is disappearing, new unions are being created, the old ones are being destroyed.
The investments are not as they were even a year ago. VC’s didn’t get any wiser but they’ve gotten more precautious. On one hand they have to spend the money cause it’s losing its value every day, on the other hand they cannot spend it on the startups that don’t make any profit.
As of today DKB is the third largest direct bank in Germany with more than 3.9 million customers.
After it has introduced the custody fees for the deposits larger than 25.000 Euros and removed its best product - a fee free credit card that could be used abroad free of charge both for payments and withdrawals it’s destined to lose some of its clients.
Startups are all about the speed of execution and iteration. If you don’t have enough financial resources to hire a team to execute on your idea 24/7 for the next 3-6 months, your best bet is to find like-minded people and start working on your pitch-deck.
Everything written below is highly influenced by my personal experience and talks that were given by the people I’m following.
What you will read here is my take on the leadership.
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