TOP SKILLS YOU SHOULD HAVE TO SUCCEED AS A STARTUP
Starting and running a startup is not an easy feat, and it requires some skills to achieve this feat. Many startups fail within the initial three years of launching because the entrepreneur doesn’t possess these skills. These skills will help you from the planning stage past the break-even stage, from the thought and decision-making phase up to the phase where you’re running a successful business.
What then are these skills you need to succeed as a startup?
This piece covers the most important skills you need to succeed as a startup business in Nigeria or anywhere around the world.
The ability to conceptualize ideas and turn them into marketable products
Business ideas pop into our heads daily, and we get excited when they do. However, most of these ideas fail to come to fruition because a great number of individuals don’t have the skills required to turn ideas into commercially viable products. This is what some people will call “Business packaging skills.”
If you have an idea, the easiest way you can test your idea for viability is by carrying out market research to find out the idea’s demand in the market. Alternatively, you can consult with venture capitalists and expert investors who’ll tell you whether your idea and the product is commercially viable.
Ability to Raise Funds for a Venture
Raising funds for a business is one of the significant challenges faced by many intending startups. It takes the right skills and strategies to raise the fund. Some of these skills include excellent written and spoken communication skills, ability to motivate and manage others, presentation skills, excellent organization skills, ability to work under pressure, and budget managerial skills. To facilitate your fundraising efforts, build relationships through personalized communication, surprise and delight donors, adopt creative means of powering up fundraising campaigns, have great communication and relationship skills, persevere, understand your avenues of raising funds and adapt accordingly, be able to stay on top of fundraising trends at all times and most of all have great follow up skills.
Excellent Human Resource Management Skills
Surely, no one can do everything. Although startup founders are expected to everything, from opening the office to sales and accounting, you should know the skills you lack and hire people to handle it. You need to have the hiring, and human resource skills to both hire the best options and manage them to produce optimal results for your startup. This can be in the form of getting partners or in the form of hiring employees (if you can pay them).
Motivational Skills
You need to inspire your employees to walk on coals for you. Okay, not literally. As a startup, there’s a high chance that you have few employees, and in most situations, there’s more work, then labor needed. You need to have the motivational skills to motivate your employees to go the extra mile to ensure your dream venture becomes a reality. Motivate both by action and by words. When you can’t motivate your employees, work will move on a slow speed, leading to a greater chance of startup failure.
Marketing Skills
As a startup, the chief salesperson you have is you. Whether you have a marketing team or not, a significant aspect of the marketing falls on you because your startup is your brain idea. No one can market it more than you. You need skills that’ll help you sell your product and find customers willing to pay for it.
Networking Skills
Startup founders need excellent networking skills to connect with customers and partners that’ll help their business move forward. Most of these customers and partners will be found at events and conferences, and when you miss attending these industry related gatherings, you risk being in the dark. Attending and networking at events and conferences helps you strengthen your presence in the industry and helps you grow your startup faster.
Growth Mindset
Trends change every day, and new technologies are introduced into different industries. You need to stay on top of information and trends in your industry and adapt to the changing times if you wish for your startup to succeed. Be open to knowledge and learning and know when to unlearn and relearn according to your business demands.
Ability to bounce back from failure
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail; what matters is how many times you bounce back. The skills mentioned above are necessary for growing a startup idea to success; however, this last skill is needed to start up again – if you fail. Surely, no one wants to fail, but the business world is unpredictable sometimes. The most successful startup founders are individuals that failed and tried again to achieve success.
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