'Overnight Success' generally takes a long, long time to achieve. Is it even possible to make a profit, create savings for customers, and help your sales channel partners make money— all on day one of operations?
While it may seem like a difficult thing to achieve, with the right technology it can be done.
But there’s a whole host of supporting factors to be considered by anyone attempting to produce that technology.
An article in cio.com reveals how one company not only became profitable on day one, but is approaching $2B in gross sales since opening nine years ago.
Here are the findings from the study about the company.
* A startup must have the right talent and experience in its leadership team. It’s no surprise that VCs and other investors scrutinise the founding team before making the decision to take a risk. In the case of the company in study, the founders themselves had enough capital to start their venture without the need for outsiders. That’s a huge bonus because it preserves equity.
* The right tech solution addresses the right-sized problem. The widespread need in a market can equal wide acceptance of the solution. But determining the proper problem and market size are only the beginning. Next comes the solution itself, which must be, in a word, elegant. When a tech solution is pleasing, simple, effective and frictionless (elegant) it is easily adopted, and difficult to stop using.
* Nothing really happens until you ship. No revenue, no customer feedback, no product improvement, nothing. So, you should ship your product as early as possible, right? Not so fast. If you ship too soon, you run the risk of disappointing early users and destroying your reputation. On the other hand, if you wait too long you could end up with a fully functional product that never reaches the market because you crash and burn at the end of a too-short runway.
Every company needs to determine its own sweet spot for releasing a product that’s neither too early nor too late in the development cycle, in order to start the flow of revenue and gain crucial feedback while offering an acceptable customer experience.
* Nothing can replace direct human contact, especially when a customer or prospect has a burning question or urgent need. As it turns out, the now 700 call center team members at TravelPass Group, through direct customer interactions and feedback, have accelerated innovation for its sites ReservationCounter.com and ReservationDesk.com. And more customer contact is probably the answer to the question of innovation, no matter what industry a company operates within.
Immediate value creation in a startup situation is not common, but it can be achieved if you can get the right people working on the right solution that launches at the right time, and then relentlessly improve that solution. It might be a simple formula, but it will never be easy.
