Over the years I have had to meet many entrepreneurs from different countries who are faced with certain definitions when they decide to undertake and this time I will classify them into 3 groups.
The first group relates to entrepreneurs who want to undertake – mostly out of necessity – but do not have clarity on what to undertake, that is, they do not have a business idea. The second group are entrepreneurs who want to undertake, they have the idea, but they do not know how to take action or they do not know how to start. And finally, the third is that group of entrepreneurs who have already started their business, but feel that the business does not advance and does not grow as they expected.
Early or early stage ventures are those in which an entrepreneur (1) is still proposing and / or defining her idea, (2) prototyping her business model, that is, evaluating if the idea has potential customers who are willing to pay for those products and / or services, or (3) who are beginning to generate their first sales and need to make the relationship with customers profitable. At this stage it is essential to find the solution to the problem we intend to solve to successfully start any venture since defining and designing products or services that add value to customers differentiating themselves from those that already exist will always be the main challenge of every entrepreneur.
Differentiation and having a clear and robust value proposition is where we should have the focus at this early stage. A question to evaluate that would be: Why is my product or service different? How will I make potential customers choose me and not the competition? What is the main pain that customers have and how do my products or services solve that?
This means having a lot of clarity about who are those customers who will buy what I intend to sell. Can you imagine selling dresses for women between 18 and 60 years old? Do you think that would be the right thing to do? I put it another way: Do you think that the needs, concerns, dissatisfactions, preferences and / or tastes of a 25-year-old woman with a 50-year-old woman are the same? Obviously not. Possibly the type of fabric, design or style is very different from one another. Knowing your customer’s profile, market size, tastes, preferences and frequency of purchase is also important. Can you imagine that the segment of women between 45 and 55 years old does not wear dresses given the weather conditions or another condition versus the segment of women between 18 and 25 years old that if they use it for a fashion theme? Or that for example a woman usually buys a dress 2 times a year? It would be somewhat difficult to sell sandals in an extremely cold place, as well as to sell alpaca vests in a place where the weather is humid. How profitable can be that segment of women who buy you little? At an early or early stage it is essential to have clarity of these aspects if you want to succeed with your business.
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