Leicester City’s win of the English Premier League sets the stage for many startup founders to endear. It shows how as a team you can beat the behavioural bias of risk aversion to come up tops in your field. Below are three pertinent points for you to remember as you build your startup.
Focus
Winning teams have high commitment and conviction to their startup and have a laser focus on what they have set out to do. They do not fragment the project by doing a million tasks at the same time. Do one thing right.
Speak to an accountant and he’ll ask you to diversify your risks. I would advise you otherwise, you need to focus and stay focused for some time to see any tangible results. People often conflate pivoting to fragmenting. They are two different things, while it is okay to pivot in the course of your business, fragmenting your business to lead to sub-optimal performance.
Soccer teams do not play rugby!
Team work
Startup is like a football team and it is not an individual sport like tennis. You need to build that team to ensure that you succeed.
Leicester City had good players but no star players. But they played well as a team and they were able to beat the odds.
Create Value
You need to create value for your investors and customers. This is no mean feat and it is not easy to sustain and keep your stakeholders engaged all the time twenty-four seven.
Plan your exit from day one: which means, you need to have a list of potential buyers early in your startup cycle, understand their needs, and how you can serve their needs.
You have an exit when the potential buyer can monetise your business better and if your ask is not too much.
—
image courtesy of shutterstock
Kumaran Pillai is the publisher of this publication and the CEO of Apple Seed, a venture accelerator based out of Singapore.
