Index Of The Blog
Challenges Faced By Tech Startups
Starting your own company is exciting and challenging, no matter the industry in which you wish to focus. Looking at the tech industry, startups face their own unique hurdles and opportunities, and the road to innovation is guided by goals that some businesses in their early stages struggle to meet. Still, we believe that–with the right ideas and the right guidance–tech innovators can certainly find success. As such, we’ve put together our take on the 12 Most Common Challenges Faced by Tech Startups in 2020, with insights into how they affect the businesses they impact and why overcoming them is vital.
Let’s dive in!
1) When and How to seek Funding
This is perhaps one of the most common and most challenging of the issues that tech startups face. Knowing when and how to acquire the correct depends on many factors. It certainly impacts a start-up’s ability to fully develop its vision and technology. When it’s time to launch operations, additional resources are needed, and how and what type of investors to seek is a complexity often not understood by founding technologists. Certainly, a critical element, if not mindfully assessed, will impact the other challenges we are about to discuss below.
Overcoming this can seem daunting, and at times impossible, but companies that are shrewd and strategic in getting their message out, are more likely to attract the attention of angel investors and venture capitalists who would be willing to bankroll their innovation.
2) Creating your Network
The discussion of funding ties neatly into the second challenge. While it’s not always about who you know, it’s still crucial that tech startups know how to reach out and build network relationships that will either boost their brand awareness or help them better navigate within their sector.
Building relationships with experienced members of the tech community provides startups with valuable voices who can let them know where they’re struggling and offer advice and support as the business strives to grow. A network provides a myriad of different resources from the concrete to the intellectual. They’re foundational in helping you build your customer base, and magnifying your message.
3) Confidence
The process of crafting your startup requires confidence, and a willingness to step outside of your comfort zone. As you work to innovate, you need to be willing to challenge yourself and to grow your vision, to acknowledge when you’ve become complacent, and tweak to make things better. It’s rare that the first version of your idea is going to be the best version, and it takes guts to admit to that.
Too many startups are trapped in the comfort zones of their founders, unwilling to attempt anything new. As such, their voices get drowned out by those who are more established, and are doing something similar. Innovation requires bravery, and in a crowded field of dynamic businesses, timidity is a property you can’t afford.
4) Identifying and Onboarding the Right People
It’s nice to imagine a world in which, should you have good ideas, others will flock to you. While there are scenarios where this happens, it’s usually on a small scale. Truth is, many startups struggle when it comes to finding a team that they can rely on, execute and develop its vision.
Without the right team, it’s more and more difficult to spread your brand, to craft your content, and to operate in a way that supports your solutions. Building a committed and creative community within your business is essential, but many startups haven’t quite figured out how to find these individuals. In crafting that perfect team, all of these elements are essential.
5) Creating Publishable Content
Content creation is crucial to spreading the message of your brand and helping potential clients understand exactly what it is you’re doing. But crafting content is time consuming, and for smaller startups it can be hard to create the volume of content needed to get the word out and attract attention.
You want your voice heard, but you also want to put careful thought into how that voice sounds, and what you intend to say. Startups that can’t achieve this are likely to go unheard, and suffer lack of presence as a result.
6) Time/Project Management: Focus, Focus, Focus!
Carefully planning as to how you spend your time, and where that time is spent is essential to success; however, many tech startups still struggle with time management. In some cases, this is because their team focuses too much on one element and neglects others until it is too late. In other situations, it’s simply that those who have founded the company are less experienced at managing teams or multiple departments, and–as such–they underestimate how much time a given task will take.
The dangers of poor time management are evident to anyone who waited until the night before to study for an exam, but the frequency with which this problem arises is shocking. It’s important that startups put careful thought into managing projects and administrative tasks, lest essential work fall by the wayside and derail the organization.
7) Finding your First Customers!
When you’re the new kid on the block it can be difficult to win the trust of the businesses or individuals that your product serves. With little brand recognition, potential clients might simply ignore you, opting to work with the firm whose name they’re more familiar with.
The key to combating this is putting ample energy into marketing and sales, and working hard to shape a brand identity and proliferate it. You’re doing something innovative: something new and different. It’s essential you aptly convey that to the folks who could very well go from complete stranger to brand evangelist.
8) Wild Expectations!
When you have an idea you truly believe in, it’s easy to get carried away. Ambition and innovation go hand in hand, and both are powerful forces for the betterment of your startup. If misapplied though, they can also be damaging.
It’s important that startups work to square their hypothetical ideas with concrete reality, and not lose their priority focus. If they do, it’s all the more likely that issues like time management or project oversight will fly out the window. Chasing the stars is a wonderful dream, but it’s important to get your feet off the ground before you plan where in the galaxy you’ll travel.
9) There’s Always Competition!
While this might seem obvious, it can be shocking to some startups just how fierce and intimidating competition can be when they first start out. In the infancy of your company, the competition can be incredibly frustrating, when you feel like you’re a toddler playing football against NFL all-stars.
It’s essential that startups treat competition as a learning opportunity: seeing where they’ve lost out, and examining how their rivals are winning. It’s these lessons that help startups stand up to their competition, and to ultimately succeed. Letting the competition drive you crazy will only make it harder to learn these lessons.
10) What Makes You So Different?
Another challenge that seems to tie in with others on this list is lack of differentiation. If customers don’t understand what makes your solution unique or special, then they’re less likely to find reasons to go with you than with a competitor who has managed to get their message across.
In a packed field of tech solutions, having an identity that allows you to connect with potential customers is essential. If you allow your innovations to simply blend in, it’s far less likely they’ll be noticed, and ultimately enjoyed by clients.
11) Building and Nurturing Your Team!
Much like time management, being able to keep your team under control is essential. As your business begins to grow, you’ll be faced with more and more projects, more and more people, more and more complexity. From the get-go, it’s crucial that startup founders know how to work with their people and keep an eye on everything that’s going on.
In many ways, the early life of a startup always feels like chaos, but one of the best ways to mitigate that is to bring order wherever you can. Ensuring that everyone know what they need to be doing, how they’re connected to their coworkers, and when certain goals need to be met goes a long way towards bringing that stability.
Another potentially arguable factor, is the concept of stakeholders. Your starting team are as key to you as your investors. They are all stakeholders. You need these people to stick with you through thick and thin. Don’t be afraid to reward them with heavy stock options/shares, these people will make it happen to the same extent if not more than your financial investors. Your initial team, if built correctly is the core of your company, and has contributed more than those people arriving later, reward them in such a manner! You need them to stick with you!
12) Don’t be Afraid to Seek Help!
It might sound like a grade school cliché, but if you refuse to seek help or advice when you need–simply opting to fight through the problem alone–you’re far less likely to achieve what you set out to do. Startups are inherently about tackling new challenges and new experiences, and being able to work with others to navigate these Challenges Faced By Tech Startups when you feel overwhelmed is vital.
Asking for help doesn’t make your business weak or stupid. It’s the very thing that makes you stronger and smarter, and better poised to thrive.
This is Where ForesightOne Steps In.
We work with MarTech innovators to help get their voices heard, and their solutions evaluated and acquired. With years of marketing, sales, and technology experience on our team, we strive to identify and remedy the Challenges Faced By Tech Startups business face, be it content creation, the search for funding, or the development of a brand.
Building a MarTech or AdTech company from the ground up is difficult, and allowing ForesightOne to step in and launch your products and services, provides you with more time to continue to launch your innovative vision without taking on further operational Challenges Faced By Tech Startups.
