At the moment there is a mirage of some sort related to startups. Everyone wants to create the next Facebook, Google or Uber but they end up creating another free image manipulation app competing with Instagram, cause that’s what the world needs right now.
I’m all in for creating new and exciting stuff but somehow people miss the point of startups. The startup definition from Wikipedia is:
A startup company (startup or start-up) is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, **fast-growing business** that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service.
So, a startup is a business. The definition of a business is:
The activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money.
A lot of people in startups create the product or service and don’t charge money for the damn thing, because most of the time the product or service doesn’t have real value for the market. The result of that is a nonbusiness.
90% of startups fail because they work on shitty products nobody needs.
Everyone wants to work on hip and trendy products but what’s missing is the boring businesses that actually make money not burn money. These people usually just want the small startup life, not the struggle of a real business.
If you see a problem, think how you can solve it and how you can make money from it from the start. If is something you can’t make money from give it away for free, open-source it or write about how you would solve it and move on.
Don’t waste time building something useless, focus on problems in your community or solve issues you encounter everyday. Look at a market that is undeserved or maybe a small niche you could serve better. Let’s work more on things that helps our society (pain killers) instead of things that are just cool to have(vitamins).
Businesses create jobs, bring value to customers and make peoples’ lives better. There are indeed companies that really need years to take off and be great, but frankly most startups don’t deserve to live.
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