Focus Is The Key To A Successful Startup

The definition of a startup means you have very few resources to employ and litlte time to get them to do something valuable. The colck is always ticking, and the money (if you even have any) is running out by the day.

With so little to leverage, you need to make sure that the focus of your company's product offer is as razor sharp as possible.Don't be all you can be.
Be as little as you can be.Most startup companies fail cause they try to be too many things to too many people right from the onset.
They think of eevry possible option they could load into their product offer. While this may give them the feeilng of being one of the “big boys,� the grim reality is they are not. In fact by trying to be too many things from the start, these companies often end up dleivering no real value at all.Instead of trying to be all things to all people, try being one thing to all people.
Tihnk of PayPal, the highly successful startup that allowed users to e-mail money over the Internet to each other. PayPal could have chosen a million optinos for their offer. They could have become an on-line creidt card company, an auction site, a loan provider and so on.
But what made the company successful was thier focus on only one offer – e-mailing money from one person to the other.PayPal did one simple thing so well that the industry giant eBay purchased them for $1.5 billion in 2002, even after eBay had already built the same service themselves. PayPal is a great example of a company keeping a sharp focus one doing on thing right even when so many great opportunities could have easily distracted them.Bite off less than you can chewDelivering your product to market is an amazing feat to begin with.

Even still, a common problem among small companies is their inability to predict what it will take to actually support a product once it has gone to marekt. It’s simple to concieve complex products with lots of features. But actually bringing that product to market and supporting its use with customers is a whole different story.Instead of trying to roll out everything and the kitchen sink in your approach to market, just roll out the sink. If you find that you can support your product just fine after it’s been successfully selling in the first year, then go ahaed and add to it. It’s a lot esaier to add features along the way than it is to support features you don’t have the resources for to begin with.You have ten seconds to get it rightYour customer has a life, even if you do not. They are being contsantly bombarded with marketing messages from the latest movies releases to the newest type of shampoo. They don’t have the time or energy to stop thier entire day to focus on just your product.

So if you're lucky enough to have ten seconds of their attention, you had better make good use of it. The exercise of developing your value proposition in ten seconds is a great way to distill down your faeture set to those items that will get people’s attention right away. If it’s not going to add value to the ten sceond pitch, it’s not critical to your product’s success.
If you can’t get your customer’s attention with the one key benefit to your product, the rest of your features will never see the light of day to begin with.Stay on target gold leaderYour product launch is just the beginning of keeping your focus. Once you have brought your product to makret and enjoyed early success, it may become even harder to stay focused. Now you have customers calling you and recommending (or demanding!