Tips for Developing Initial Ideas Before a Career at a Startup

Everyone can set up a startup, but not everyone is suitable for a career there. It takes extra tenacity and resilience in various conditions and situations because in this world there is no instant success.

To start the above topic, in #TuesdayStartup second week of August 2019 edition DailySocial invited the Co-Founder and COO of Lacak.io Danny Jiang as speakers. He shares many tips about entrepreneurship in the startup world, which of course is highly correlated with developing the initial idea of ​​establishing a startup.

Lacak.io is a fleet management startup for SMEs in the logistics sector who want to reduce operational costs and vehicle safety with technology.

Here's a summary:

The real reality of working at a startup

1. Do not have the freedom to set working hours

It should be emphasized here, that many people set up a startup, which means that the founder has the freedom to set working hours, which is very unequal to the systematic working hours of employees in general. This assumption is not true at all.

Danny explained that when he decided to become a founder, in the early years even until the startup was really stable, the founder would not have free time. To think that 24/7 time will not be enough to get all the work done.

"Freedom at that time only existed in the mind, in reality that was not the case at all. So we had to be prepared for the next five years until the startup was stable, having to work day and night every day," Danny said.

2. Passive income doesn't come instantly

Another view is that a career at a startup is the same as being financially free because you have a business that you don't need to monitor all the time. This assumption is again not true.

When just starting out, the founder must be ready with the possibility that his business will not be able to make a profit. Some even have to burn money for years because there are no consumers who really want to pay for the services they make.

"This must be instilled in the founder's mind that establishing a startup is not necessarily in the near future unlimited income."

3. Can't fully do what you like

Danny continued, many people leave their old offices and are interested in starting a startup because they want to do what they love. This assumption is not entirely true.

In fact, he estimates that only 20%-30% of jobs are really in line with interests. The rest? The founder has to do all the work, which is frowned upon though. This means that you have to be willing to meet people to sell, recruit new people, do the bookkeeping, not just coding.

"If you want to run a startup, like it or not, you have to deal with it all."

4. Ready to endure

Another fact that prospective founders need to realize is that it takes years of resilience to be ready to deal with various pressures. Such as startup conditions that cannot provide income in the near future, no one wants to buy products, and other challenges.

When it's bloody pioneering, until the time for the startup to shine, it means that the founder has proven endurance.

"Enduranceit's not pushing the founder to run sprints, for example. But the will to run a marathon, slowly but surely. If pitching to investors andjudge will not be successful, if enduranceIf it's loose, it's easy to give up."

These four realities must at least be realized by prospective founders before actually starting to execute their ideas.

Getting started with the right initial idea

1. Look for opportunities from problems in the field

According to Danny, as long as there are problems in the surrounding environment, it can be a potential business. When you have solved the problem, people will definitely want to pay for the product we make.

Most importantly, the solution that we want to solve this basically must be a field that we are good at. If not, the solution will be less sharp.

For that, the founder must have a strong passion as an entrepreneur. If they don't like what they have to do, they won't be able to survive in the startup world.

"PASSION that's what makes an entrepreneur survive."

2. Create added value from existing solutions

The point here is that the founder doesn't have to start from scratch. As long as there are solutions offered by other startups, the next problem will surely arise. Which we can use.

"Can you? copy from what is already there, but by adding value. Look at the example from Shopee, they entered Indonesia later than similar players who had previously operated. But now they are quite ahead and can catch up because they offer free shipping promotions."

3. Start small and focus on consumers

Danny gave an example, this Track.io started not as a fleet management because it conducts various researches, but is only limited to companies that sell tools to monitor business processes. Consumers vary from various industries, there are rentals as well as logistics.

Over time, because the company had limited manpower, it finally decided to survey consumers to focus more on service. It was found that the tools sold are more beneficial for logistics players because they need tools to monitor trucks digitally. They are also listed as active consumers who always need this solution.

From there it finally made the team excited to go deeper into the problem fleet management. DHL also showed interest in finding a similar solution. After 1,5 years of research looking at DHL's problems, Track.io is finally officially established.

"Initially, we focused on the problem of one customer, namely DHL. Then after one customer was satisfied and willing to pay for our solution, there was an opportunity to scale up so it can attract a lot of consumers. Now we have connected about 2 trucks with the Track.io solution," he concluded.