9 Valuable Tips For Startups & Thank You All For A Cool 2018
Recently we sat down with Nicolas Bürer, the managing director of Digital Switzerland, the association which makes Switzerland digitally fit for the future. Nicolas is also chairman of Movu, an online moving marketplace and he was managing director of Joiz and responsible for Sales and Marketing at Deindeal. He is experienced tech entrepreneur and it was a interesting conversation with valuable thoughts for founders. Here our takeaways:
1 – Define a point of no return date. When is the point where you fully invest your time and energy in your startup?
2 – Define a date to kill your startup. It might sound weird to plan your own funeral but in the startup world it is common. What if you idea is not takin off? How long do you want to suffer? Kill it and move to next idea.
3 – Don’t invest too much and too early in the technology but find product market fit first by investing in marketing. Test the water first before you jump in, otherwise you might break your neck or in the startup world lose your money.
4 – Stay flexible, don’t bet everything you have on one horse but spread your bets. Pivots might be necessary along your startup journey.
5 – Worries about money makes your thinking cloudy. Either have savings, get an investors, or wait until revenues can pay you salary before you go all in.
6 – The single most important question for founder: what makes your offer different?
7 – Investors most often only invest in startups where the team is all in. Part-time startups can take off but have a hard time finding investor money.
8 – Founders of a startup need to commit a significant time to building the startup. If there are founders which can’t invest time, they need to invest money, otherwise kick them out.
9 – If you need software, Switzerland has some of the best developers. Don’t go 100% near-shore. Have some developers locally and work with developer in lower costs countries for scale.
We at Matka create value with startups and other innovative organisations. We use agile methodologies to create technology and new business models always with the goal of creating happy and paying customers. The insights of the discussion with Nicolas are useful not only for startups but also for SMEs and corporations.
2018 is soon history and we want to thank all of you for this exciting year. Only because of our partners and friends we could double the team in Serbia from 4 to now 7 engineers and we are looking forward to a great 2019 with all of you.
We would like to thank our engineering team in Novi Sad: Stanko, Milenko, Gorna, Tijana, Danijel, Nikola and Igor. Because of you we create value for our customers. Thanks for all the hard work and fun during 2018.
We are immensely grateful for all our customers and collaborators which are too many to mention in this blog post. We’re looking forward to all the work, collaboration and fun with you next year.
Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2019!
Patrick & Stefan