When Bill Gates dropped out of college and later built Microsoft to the most successful brand in the world, many thought it can’t be repeated. However, Mark Zuckerberg achieved the same feat with Facebook. Not so long after, the Snapchat was developed to become another social media giant by Stanford college students, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. These are examples of brands that were started in college and have now become exceedingly successful. Setting up a tech company in college is a different ball game when compared to typical businesses. Below are seven (7) things that you will need to consider to commence your business while you are still in the college.
1. Coding Skill is of Utmost Importance
You want to be able to have mastered your coding skills before venturing into any tech business. The above examples of successful college students were not without their legal controversies. The Snapchat case was one filled with Brown claiming rights over the creative inputs while the ones currently in charge of the company are those with the coding skills. Spiegel and Murphy only paid him a small fraction of their equity as a pay-off. You ought to either figure out how to begin coding now or invest the majority of your energy creating associations with experts you can learn from. Adapting adequate coding skills will empower you to interpret your ideas efficiently.
2. Identify your Target Market at the Beginning
If
you begin with your target market and work in reverse, you’ll be bound to develop a brand that reverberates with the target
market. This will also lead to an
increasingly remarkable comprehension of any changes or warnings in the way the
brand is perceived. This is not to deter you from having creative freedom, but it helps when you have identified the needs of a cohort and deliver the product to solve that problem.
3. Evaluation and Analytics of your Product
In the past traditional businesses utilizes feedback from potential customers. However, modern times have seen the use of digital marketing tools to access market needs, strength, and demands. It goes further even to project the possible reaction of the end-users that is likely to occur. Don’t just go ahead with your business based on subjective input, but try to approve it with quantitative research. It is extraordinary if individuals state that they like your site, that they would purchase whatever it is you’re putting forth, or use it all the time. However, this does not directly translate into the actions that will be taken or predict the future accurately. Using landing sites and infographics has become one of the leading methods to carry out almost perfect market research.
4. The Priority of a Start-up should be Growth and not Instant Wealth
This is an essential knowledge for start-ups, especially at the beginning of the business, you have to concentrate on development and growth. The wealth will follow consequently on the long-run. When a business grows steadily at about 5 percent weekly, it will grow to become a formidable brand eventually.
5. Beat the Best to Become the Best
Starting from college
gives a lot of opportunities for a
business. The established businesses most likely take you for granted, and
expectations are quite low. Most established
businesses offer their criticism, commendations, and training if approached by
someone still in college. In order to be a leader in your sector, you learn the
secrets of the best in your industry. Even though you
can learn a lot from reading, the greater
part of the crucial data that you will learn from
is out there. As you start your tech company,
there are much to be learned from the
leaders of successful businesses around you.
You will be
told about the mistakes they made, you
will receive education on the way they reacted to their challenges. Also, you will be exposed
to their achievements and how they achieved them.
6. Product-Market Fit
Product-Market fit is the only thing that is essential at the early stages of a tech startup. When Facebook was beginning, it the interface was not as developed as it looks now. However, that was good enough for the age it started and aided the required growth in its business. The main thing that you ought to be concentrating your resources on is the product-market fit. When the product-market fit is in place, then your customer base becomes larger, then revenue generation can now become the next focus.
7. Don’t be a Coward
Incredible things can emerge out of a child who is innocent and mostly doesn’t know any better. They don’t know how industry functions or how things are done, so they do what they think may work. A great example of this was portrayed in the musical, The Greatest Showman, where the idea of a live Circus came from his daughters. Children end up making an idea that nobody would have conceived in the market because it appears to be unreasonable. However, some of these ideas become very lucrative.
If you are lucky to still have any of your childish adventurousness left, do not be a coward, go for it. Learning drives everything, if you don’t know a concept right now, you can learn it and perfect it afterward. It is easier to take calculated risks now that you are still in the college. There are little or no responsibilities, if you are not married yet, no children, only student’s loan, then this is the time. If you want to wait to graduate and you are debt free, it may be too late.
The only way to know if you will succeed or fail is by trying. If you are going to fail, why not fail forward. Talent alone is not enough, you have to develop your skills. Operating in the tech business, you must be a solution provider. The faster you do this, the better for your growth and that of your business. Nothing should stand in your way, not even your fears, most times facing your fears not only makes you stronger, but wealthier.