tech-company, lean-startupI am a Computer Science student and love programming. I have limited friend circle in my university. Neither there are much tech communities in my university. But I want to start up on my own. How can I approach and what could be the possible difficulties in competing alone?
Great question.
Build something!
Build anything! It doesn’t matter what it is. The minute you start writing code to build something new that belongs to you, guess what. You are an entrepreneur. And you are the founder of your own, very real, startup.
Perhaps the most crucial decision you will make in this process is the one of which problem you will try to solve. I.e. your product idea. Others have noticed two ways to approach this.
A typical formula others have successfully used in the past goes like this:
These are just a few of the ways to come up with a really great idea!
There are so many startups right now that lack code to make it work. So, if you can write code, you are one of the few fortunate ones that can make your startup a reality with no outside help. Just start writing.
There is a certain process for building a company and taking your products to market. This process can best be learned by doing. IMHO. So start. And learn. This will be the vital experience you need.
The first thing you need to do is find a specific problem or area you’re passionate about. The second thing you need to do is proactively and concisely tell others about what you want to try, even randomly. If you’re on the right track then having a “limited friend circle” becomes irrelevant. You can give off a contagious focus or passion, and can expand your friend circle finding other people that care about the problem. You may even discover a cofounder along the way. Meanwhile, think about the people you’ve encountered and how you can create something to help them. Think about the simplest and fastest-to-build software features that can truly help them, and how to have people care enough to pay. Tell the right people in the right ways that they can buy your service, so they’re convinced. And make the software happen. At that point, you’ve got a startup.
Focus on making the product and sales happen in the most effective way and the rest will follow. If you don’t succeed the first time, go back and repeat some or all of the aforementioned steps.
Competing alone can be done, but is more difficult. Starting a startup is very time-consuming and requires many sets of skills. One reason startups have several cofounders is that not all cofounders have all the required skills. From the way you wrote your question, you seem to be stronger on the engineering than on the marketing, so you may need a more marketing-oriented cofounder. Or you may need to learn some or all of these skills yourself.
In your search, you may discover there are more resources in your university than you thought. Are there professors, alumni, or even other students who’ve successfully started businesses, and can help you along? Do your university’s graduate programs, such as the business school, have resources? However, don’t worry too much about what’s available in your university. Just find the resources, wherever they may be. Are there nearby universities or areas that have an active tech community? What is in your hometown? Alternatively, try to get an internship in a vibrant tech center such as the San Francisco Bay Area, New York or London, or study abroad at a more tech-centric university.
The Internet is also a great place to find would-be users and refine your ideas. You might want to post a separate question on the relevant forum, about whether people would be interested in your proposed software. Look for an enthusiastic response, ideally one where people have their own (often distinct and highly specific) ideas about how and where they would use your software.
I completely agree with Mowzer doing something is the most important thing and as a software engineer we have the skills to get simple things up and running easily. However, building a business does require a degree of rigour, that goes beyond the implementation of a solution. Simply building things, whilst it feels like progress, can be the easy option for us given our skill set and we can forget other key elements to being successful in business. I have 6 steps I try to encourage first time entrepreneurs to follow, which have some overlap to those mentioned before.
Things you are interested in are all well and good as a hobby but you have to find ideas that are commercially viable to build a business.
When I say build your product or service I don’t mean physically build it. Build the promotional material that you would use to sell the product or service as if it exists.
You don’t have to take money from people to know that they intend to buy. For example, a buy button on your website could lead to a page explaining the development cycle of the product rather than a checkout page. At this point the customer has indicated that they wish to buy and you can use this to build confidence that this would have led to a successful purchase had the product been available. There are complexities here like customers abandoning carts at the final payment stage that you can build into your analysis however, in the early phases keep it simple, if someone clicks a buy now button you can count it as a sale.
It is important to fall in love with the problem you are solving, don’t fall in love with your solution.
Network like crazy and present the problem and your solution to everyone who will listen; people you meet on the bus, your parents, your wife, you colleagues, at Meetups, or conferences.
Don’t go crazy on you business plan it will change. Instead this should act as a compass through which you evaluate your strategic decisions in those early months. Measuring is critical to business.
Without a talented and passionate team your business will struggle to have any impact. Your core founding team should have a strong sense of shared purpose. The underlying value system they have should align with the company’s values. And most importantly, their skillsets should be complementary don’t fill your team with people like you.
I would like to add something to the previous answers: I know most entrepreneurs hate economics and of course i don’t suggest you to write a full business plan.
But why are most startUps forced to do business plans? It’s not about fulfill some requirement of your partners. It’s about validating your idea and get an overview.
Now, luckely you can code and with that you are mostly independend.
What I try to say is: Please validate your ideas before start coding, even if you do it for your self.
Maybe you should google “SWOT” and “Canvas Business Model”. These help validate your idea.
You also should create a/some buiness cases: A simple word file with… … What are your customer problems? … How does your tool solve them? … How do your customers accomplish that? … What information needs to be gathered and displayed?
Thats all you should start with. It will help you organize and keep you on track.
(As small addition: Define Tasks and set yourself deadlines, that helped me)
I know its a little odd to say here , but if you are in doubt, i’ve built three companies on my own and let me tell you one thing once you start everything comes to you, all you need is passion and a great idea.
I started and later found another project of little bit same kind and I talked to the founder and he agreed on joining.
Remember , even if you don’t have friends you can still have campus ambassadors, facebook admins, working interns and a list of followers
The only was to be successful , will be to stand with confidence even when you are alone and most of the time , you won’t be alone
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