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2024 | Buch

The Power of Entrepreneurship Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

From Startup to Unicorn

An Essential Guide to Build, Scale and Sustain Value for Platform and Tech Startups

verfasst von: Anil Sethi

Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to help make your startup successful, this book is a must-read. It covers the unique challenges of technology and platform-driven entrepreneurship, providing entrepreneurs with the tools they need to sustain growth and relevance.

Technology startups face the risk of failure even after finding a product-market fit. This is due to limitations in scaling. Platform-driven startups can scale rapidly. However, they carry a high risk of failure. This book helps entrepreneurs identify the factors that can sustain technology startup growth, make early decisions, and limit risk. It also offers guidance to platform startups to mitigate the risk of failure. Featuring examples of successful startups as well as others that failed, the book offers a holistic view of entrepreneurship that highlights its importance to the broader ecosystem.

This book is ideal for entrepreneurs who want to take their startup to the next level and sustain its growth. With a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and sustaining competitive advantage, it is equally relevant for family-run companies that prioritise sustained value over generations. If you want to succeed in today's highly competitive startup landscape, this book is a valuable resource.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
1. The Power of Entrepreneurship
Abstract
This provides a perspective of how some of the most significant steps in the history of civilisation have resulted in an impact on humanity. This has been profound but not always inclusive. My motivation of writing this book is twofold. One is to help technology and platform startups to create, scale and sustain value. The second is to create inclusive startups, since we can only sustain our relevance when all our stakeholders benefit from our association.
Anil Sethi
2. The Entrepreneurial Mindset…
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the different kinds of startups. It also addresses the one question that every prospective entrepreneur asks: what background do I need to become one. An overview of how to start up different kinds of startups is also provided.
The kind of startup you start becomes the foundation of identifying, mitigating and addressing issues to minimise your chance of failure and maximise your opportunity to scale and capture value. These issues and opportunities are very different from technology startups from platform startups. Finally, the relevance of milestone planning how this helps in controlling and managing investor expectations is also discussed.
Anil Sethi
3. Pitching to Investors: Conveying the Essential Aspects of Technology Startups
Abstract
One of the greatest challenges for startups that can address different markets or different components of the value chain is to identify value which will increase over time. This chapter helps startups to identify sustainable value.
Technology startups also need to address specific elements, including technology, market, manufacturability and go-to-market, in order to identify the value. In turn, these become the blueprint that smart investors assess them on. Being able to address these and pre-empt the risk of not being able to do so also help entrepreneurs to monetise the value created.
Anil Sethi
4. Go-To-Market Strategies, Investor Options and Tracking Value
Abstract
Once a startup identifies its target market, it’s imperative to define the appropriate go-to-market strategy. This depends on an understanding of the customer requirements and how it expects to create value, reduce risk or save costs with the startup’s solution. Having a clear understanding of this can help the startup to not only drive up conversion, but also to maximise revenue and create a more long-term lock-in with the customer.
This chapter also covers different kinds of investors, as well as their expectations, benefits and risks. As every investor comes with strings attached, understanding their expectations helps to select investors with the best fit.
Finally, this chapter also helps the startup to recognise how its value can be sustained and monetised over time.
Anil Sethi
5. Technology Startups: Machinery and Manufacturing
Abstract
This chapter, together with the following two chapters, addresses challenges of technology startups. Here, we cover issues and challenges of technology startups around machines, manufacturing and manufacturability.
Although manufacturing does create process IP and manufacturability is a fundamental step towards addressing the market, the process of setting up manufacturing entails many risks. Further, decisions made here can have a lasting impact on the ability of the startup to scale. These decisions can result in dramatic dilution of the founders’ equity.
Anil Sethi
6. Technology Startups: Maximising Product Value, from the Customer’s Perspective
Abstract
As the tech startup scales its manufacturing to address customer requirements, it needs to recognise the value of their solution for its customers. The perception of value for its customer reflects their ability to capture revenue. Without this understanding, the startup leaves money on the table.
Often, tech startups decide to do certain things because they can, rather than because they should. The distinction can dramatically increase the funding required and delay the time and money required till the startup finds a product-market fit and ensures its ability to deliver.
The multiplier effect of money shows the ability of each dollar spent by the startup in different activities in increasing its valuation. Recognising this helps the startup to maximise stakeholder value and outsource other activities.
Anil Sethi
7. Technology Startups: Value Transition, Pre-Empting Risks and Sustaining Relevance
Abstract
This chapter discusses the reasons why customers buy from tech startups. It is never for the technology excellence, but rather for how the customer perceives the tech solution. This can be for one of the three reasons: competitive advantage, revenue maximisation or cost optimisation. Knowing the real reason helps the startup to lock in a customer, maximise its own revenue or assess the timeline of its own solution.
Another area discussed in this chapter is value transition. This happens in every industry as the end user perception of value moves and the incumbent solution providers are unable to pre-empt or create relevance for the new customer need. Recognising this helps the startup to create tomorrow’s value.
This chapter summarises the learnings of the previous two chapters in order to capture the sustainability of value for technology startups.
Anil Sethi
8. Platform Startups: Foundation
Abstract
Platform startups are not about what they do, but what they enable. This is because being a platform means getting complementary users together, whether these are buyers and sellers or products, services or aspirations.
The cornerstones that drive scalability for platform startups is discussed, as well as the common problem of starting from zero, also called the cold start problem.
Finally, ensuring co-founder and investor alignment and how to get this to facilitate scale is also covered.
Anil Sethi
9. Platform startups: Pre-Empting Challenges and Identifying Opportunities
Abstract
Startups funded by tech entrepreneurs struggle to scale due to the tech. This chapter looks at how this hurdle can be overcome. Another question to address is how each user can be converted into a market channel, whether it is by validation or perceived value in the eyes of aspirational users.
We discuss the impact of the user personal information in driving sustainability of the platform’s relevance. These include productising the users or their interests. Pre-emptive actions based on user data, which can increase traction and time spent on the platform are also discussed.
Anil Sethi
10. Sustaining Platform Value
Abstract
This concluding chapter of platform startups discusses how to use the user’s emotions to keep them onboard. The journey of the platform startup evolves to gradually own increasing slices of the user’s time. These enable the platform to become partially closed over time, locking out future competitors from accessing the market. A startup’s opportunity to capture value depends on its ability to recognise how value will transition over time. This chapter provides guidelines on how to recognise this.
The ‘R Value’, which was originally used to track the risk of the COVID pandemic to spread, also provides an indicator of the scalability of platform startups.
Anil Sethi
11. Waves of Value Transition
Abstract
Value transitions in waves over time. A new wave occurs because of a paradigm shift in technology or a dramatic or urgent need. Two areas of tech transition are in AR and VR glasses, as well as with AI, including OpenAI, Bard and LaMDA. An example of an urgent need was COVID, as this resulted in supply chains collapsing and a majority of humanity confined to their homes.
A new wave results in an explosion of entrepreneurial activity, as incumbents are unable to sustain relevance with user need. The waves provide opportunities to create dependencies. However, a tech wave like AR is not a competitive advantage itself, but can enable a startup to use it as leverage to create one. An overview of the waves is discussed together with innovation opportunities for startups.
Anil Sethi
12. Identifying the Right Investors
Abstract
There’s one truism for any startup: you’re always raising money. It is thus imperative to know how to raise funding. With the recognition that investors are often onboard for the life of the company, it’s important to identify the investors who have the right fit. This chapter covers the different kinds of investors and the various elements that they look for before they invest.
The risks of first-time angel and strategic investors are also discussed. Strategic investors provide startups with opportunities to create an exit option as well as to use the investors’ credibility to capture dramatic value. These options are discussed with examples in this chapter.
Anil Sethi
13. All About Equity
Abstract
At the founding of the startup, the entrepreneur often has little idea about the distribution or the protection of the most valuable component of the startup; its equity. This chapter discusses the distribution of equity in case of a lead founder or several co-founders starting a startup. There are risks of a co-founder leaving the startup or leaving and joining a competing company. We discuss how to protect the equity from the departing founder and ensure fairness for those who stay to build future value of the company.
The cornerstones of shareholder agreements that entrepreneurs are adversely impacted by and others that can benefit them during funding rounds are also discussed.
Anil Sethi
14. Scale or Sale
Abstract
This chapter covers the critical point in the life of every startup: should it continue to scale towards an eventual IPO or should the founders exit. This question is critical as it forces the founders to ask where the value will arise in case the startup is sold, as a large majority of startups do end up getting sold after raising anywhere between $10 m to 200 m.
If the startup decides to scale, having raised $10 to 50 m, we discuss the various funding options and their implications. If it decides to sell, the two options that account for a majority of exits as well as how to maximise the value on exit are also discussed.
The option of a partial exit that can maximise the value to the startup or directly for the shareholders and how this can be structured are also covered.
Anil Sethi
15. Why Entrepreneurs Fail
Abstract
Entrepreneurs often fail, and this is the reflection of trying to create the future and the risk it entails. But there are many reasons that can be identified and the risk of failure mitigated. Some failures happen because of co-founders, some with getting the wrong employees, not having a performance measurement system or not firing them quickly enough and others happen due to the lack of a product-market fit. As a startup’s survival is based on the number of pivots it is able to make before the funding runs out, identifying a customer’s articulated need and converting it into a dependence is price of entry into startup that can scale. Failure risks and how to mitigate them are discussed in this chapter.
Anil Sethi
16. Does Geography Matter?
Abstract
Location, as they say, is everything. With this in mind, this chapter provides an overview including technology, market readiness and investor expectation for startups. This is both for prospective entrepreneurs and for startups that consider relocating. The expectation for entrepreneurs in general is covered for the USA, Continental Europe, Asia, Switzerland and the UK. The relevance and possibility of finding a support system including incubators, opportunities to license IP and setting up a manufacturing base are also discussed.
Anil Sethi
17. Purpose
Abstract
Location, as they say, is everything. With this in mind, this chapter provides an overview including technology, market readiness and investor expectation for startups. This is both for prospective entrepreneurs and for startups that consider relocating. The expectation for entrepreneurs in general is covered for the USA, Continental Europe, Asia, Switzerland and the UK. The relevance and possibility of finding a support system including incubators, opportunities to license IP and setting up a manufacturing base are also discussed.
Anil Sethi
Metadaten
Titel
From Startup to Unicorn
verfasst von
Anil Sethi
Copyright-Jahr
2024
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-53894-0
Print ISBN
978-3-031-53893-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53894-0

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