04/01/2022
How to launch your startup in 2022!
Investors are hungry for new prospects, and there’s every likelihood the new administration will offer support. How can you catch this wave in 2022? Here are the vital first steps for entrepreneurs to start the new year right.
No. 1: Awaken
The Awakening is just what it sounds like. The openness and sense of urgency that comes from an epiphany. It may begin with a hazy idea or something inspiring you’ve read or heard. You’re jolted into an awareness that there’s a new role for you in the world, and you start to imagine your next moves. What might happen, you ask, if I give it my all? Here is where you commit to your dreams.
No. 2: Embrace the Maker mindset
To test your idea, you must prototype. Whip up a primitive offering and see if anyone will pay for it. This approach is ingrained in the essential archetype we call the Maker. No startup can succeed without a Maker, without the fast prototyping, iterative mindset that needs to run through the team.
Sputtering startups nearly always lack Makers. This is the opposite of the “write a business plan” or “create a slide deck” mentality. Makers resemble speedy and practical scientists. They accelerate learning by quickly testing one or two elements at a time. And you can test much more than you think — your pitch, the phrasing of a sales offering, even exploring which Facebook advertisements get traction.
Fast-moving startups prototype and test all sorts of things. Best of all, once you get the Maker bug, there’s no going back.
No. 3: Shift
Entrepreneurs are doers. The Shift is where you move from thinking to action. How do you know you’re starting to Shift? You meet (physically or digitally) with others who “get it.” This is about joining. You sign up for a stimulating program, join forces with a colleague on a project, or mentor another entrepreneur or startup. You actively collaborate, even when you aren’t sure where it may lead.
This is the stage where you seek out and find leaders and mentors who can teach and guide you. The Shift is also where you begin to get serious about that idea that stirred you awake. Or pivot to a better idea. Another kind of Shift: The recognition and faith that you can come up with a second or even third concept. The confidence that you can learn from a failure to pursue a new direction.
No. 4: Be the Outsider
In “The Entrepreneur’s Faces,” we detail 10 archetypes who go through the entrepreneurial journey in their own unique ways. Many thrive by embracing their type, while others are hybrids, a mixture of types. But there is one archetype we can all learn from: the Outsider.
This entrepreneur brings what’s called the “Beginner’s Mind” – essential at the exploratory, idea stage. They are especially good at deconstructing a current market or service to spot elements to innovate. Not surprisingly, Outsiders launched Airbnb and Uber. This is about challenging the status quo, and asking the probing “what if?” questions that more seasoned pros often neglect to consider. Cultivating your skills of perception and analysis is key to entrepreneurship and comes naturally to the Outsider.
No. 5: Find your Place
Place matters, especially in the midst of a pandemic. Entrepreneurs thrive with stimulus and serendipity, and they are masters at creating their own neighborhoods, whether in San Francisco, London, Lisbon or in digital networks of their own making. Place is about joining or building a community, and we recommend that you engage as fully as possible in an ecosystem — whether it’s a physical or digital accelerator, incubator, university or something less formal.
No. 6: Be the Conductor
Gaining confidence along the way, entrepreneurs develop a keen sense of how to tap a multidimensional strategy. Growth ultimately often comes down to team dynamics, to balancing the optimal synergy of talent, passion and skill, to orchestrating a vision on a broader plane.
We call this archetype the Conductor, someone who explores models that scale, constantly seeking more building blocks to elevate their evolving platform. Conductors such as Ben Silbermann of Pinterest and Marc Benioff of Salesforce are excellent examples, each having pioneered prosperous platforms. Nearly every entrepreneur and startup can benefit from the holistic and growth-focused techniques of Conductors. Sometimes, you might say, it takes a platform.
No. 7: Launch
Entrepreneurs do not panic or delay. You ship, sell, open for business. In short, you follow your gut and launch. But when the pandemic hit, thousands of CEOs and businesses listened to bean counters instead of their intuition. They chose hibernation over activation, cowardice over courage. Many missed out on one of the greatest opportunities in a generation to stake out new markets and customers.
The supreme value of launching, of learning on the run from real interactions with paying customers, will only increase in importance. Vaccines promise to soon curb this disease, and entrepreneurs with the right mindset, teams and strategies will be at the ready for whatever comes next.
The year 2022 will be a great time to launch!
