If you’ve ever had the pleasure of coming down to Vertical Leap Towers to say hello to our SEO team, you’ll know that we have a very varied background. We have a few who used to be freelancers, someone who worked in email marketing, and even a couple of SEO lifers. This variety gives us a lot of strength in depth, meaning that most likely someone has come across a given problem before. As for myself, I’ve got a background working for internet start ups, with a couple years of web marketing and SEO mixed in.
All this being the case, here are five things I’ve learned about starting a business on the internet.
1. You’re not that original.
There are a lot of people in the world, so it’s more than likely that someone or other will have had the same brilliant idea as you. There’s a reason that great scientific leaps forward occur to a few people at the same time (see, for example, the contested genesis of Calculus) – the circumstances are right, the external stimuli are there, and fundamentally, on a macroscopic scale, people are basically the same. The upshot of this is that time to market really matters. There are generally three successful positions in any given market – the first, the cheapest and the best. Which one are you? Will achieving perfection mean you are passed on the way by a more nimble rival who is prepared to launch now and take some lumps?
2. You can’t build a business on a feature.
Until a few years ago, this was absolutely true. A successful offering needs to be more than just a couple of nice tweaks to something that exists somewhere else – how many variations on twitter have you seen? And how many of them will actually have a long term impact. As I alluded to, a caveat to this is that, as more websites open up their code to outside developers, you can, potentially, build a business on a stable of add-ons like Facebook applications. Good luck with that, though.
3. The paradigm works until it doesn’t any more.
How did sites like Amazon or MySpace or Google become the accepted way of doing things? They found a new way to work, or had great marketing, or a great business plan, and in the first couple of cases, succeeded almost in spite of themselves. The bottom line is this – the standard way of, say, setting up an e-commerce site, has become the norm for a reason – it pretty much works. The safer option is always, always, always to follow the crowd – users will be familiar, they’ll understand how to use their site, and there’ll be lots of hints and tips around to help you on your way. It certainly lowers your risk. What about voice that’s nagging away at the back of your head telling you to do something different, and that your idea is special enough to succeed? It’s probably lying, but hey. You might just be brilliant or lucky enough to pull things off. Only one way to find out…
4. A clear and transparent production cycle is vital.
Developers don’t come cheap. Talent in general doesn’t come cheap. The most successful companies that I’ve worked for have had a detailed production plan, which is shared around the company. Often, this process is lead by a production manager, whose job it is to have ownership of products – from identification of business need, consultation with stake holders, setting out the development parameters to testing, documentation and release. By taking input from all of your employees, you’ll end up with a more balanced, usable offering, as well as increasing the amount of buy in you get from everyone.
Also, hire smart, dedicated people.
5. Have an exit strategy.
A well played game of chess is nothing without an end game. Similarly, don’t enter into any sort of project without an idea of how you’re going to finish things off. It’s important, within this, to understand your own skill set – you might be brilliant at bringing a business from inception, to alpha to market and to general recognition, but are you able to handle the day to day running of a company when things settle down into a rhythm, and there’s less of the initial thrill of creation? It’s important to set targets for what you regard as success, be it in terms of visitors, purchases, turnover or something else.
In the final reckoning, there are, essentially three things that will happen to your nascent company. It will run out of money (this is by far the most likely, so be prepared mentally), you’ll end up selling to a larger entity, or it will become a stable, profitable institution under your or someone else’s leadership.
Think ahead, and plan accordingly for each.
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