Look left. Danger! Look right. Danger! Stop. That’s it? Lost so early? Well that is definitely not the scenario in the start-up world.
Every start-up ‘ville’ has the Mojo Jojo Factors in them; but at the same time the Powerpuff Girls are there as well. Okay, in the real world may be you have to adjust with one PPG and three Mojo Jojos, but that shouldn’t deter you from your goals.
Today what we see around us is an effort from yesterday.
Tomorrow what we will have around us, is a reflection of today.
The start-up ecosystem works on the same principles. If you want to make your tomorrow good, don’t worry about what is going around; learn from rejections, learn from past and work for future. Here we have ten start-ups that made through all the negativity it faced in the former years.
Ampush
Founded in 2009, Ampush is a social ad-technology company that helps brands and achieve performance at scale with Facebook ads. Clients include MasterCard, Rdio, HotelTonight, Kellogg’s, Warrior Dash and Sojo Studios. In 2013 the company got Facebook’s seal of approval with it being distinguished as a Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer.
“Remember and remind yourself that you chose this path. Don’t feel bad for yourself and don’t EVER expect people to feel bad for you.” So says Jesse Pujji, one of the co-founders.
After going through all the ups and downs, Ampush managed to be on top on winning the Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer designation.
Pinoccio
Founded by Sally Carson, he really had a tough time getting educators to step out of their comfort zone. With Kodable he wanted educators to learn along with students about the vast technicalities that usually many people are unaware of. Getting educators who were not that tech savvy to learn along with students was the greatest challenge for him. But in the long run, they were successful and also designed an app for it.
Natural Selection
Founder Mattew Baylor had to completely shift gears and his company toward the enterprise marketplace. Morphing concierge career mentorship company like VocationVacations to an online consumer company such as PivotPlanet was something they were confident about; but taking the giant leap into private labeling their SaaS platform for enterprise corporate, university and large nonprofit clients was indeed a tough job.
Also read: Why do startups fail? Exploring through some case studies!
Harpoon
Founded by Andy Johnson, the major problem in locally producing goods for a small start-up company like Harpoon was the high cost of labour. Despite having the deigns, the idea he had a tough time. Later he did manage with less margin and that favoured his start-up a lot; almost gave a boost!
Think longevity and about your company’s core values and make decisions based on those, you can always work on improving the margin down the road.
Harmonia
Founded by James Adam, the major problem with Harmonia was shortage of resources. Maximizing growth with the minimum resources is something that every start-up does but for Harmonia it was indeed a big challenge. Too much work to handle as a small team, recruiting teammates and maintaining a steady stream of work to pay new teammates – all amounted to stress.
Currently they are in a better position with the new referral system that they have employed to get the best of everything.
The Starter League
Founded in 2011 by Mike and Neal, this start-up aims at teaching beginners how to code and designing websites in three months. Sounds good! So what was negative?
Well, the coding knowledge curve was in the negative quadrant for both of them.
But as we know the rules of start-up ‘ville’, no one gives up. Nor did they. They learnt it all and are now having a successful start-up earning in great amounts. Besides helping individuals, The Starter League has worked with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, University of Chicago, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and public schools to teach web development to students.
HouseIt
Founded by Griffin Thomson, this start-up was actually welcomed by the audience and then happened what usually happen at many start-ups. Overload of pending works. The stress that they had to go through because of shear volumes of unplanned work. They could have easily made a new backend system to manage critical mass but they did not chose to compromise with the goals they had set for. This proved highly advantageous for them.
Rentything
Founder Martin says that the biggest challenge for him was to get the public that would believe in him and his start-up to use its services.
But he says,” If you want to overcome “”the people challenge,”” then have a mission you believe in, be true to it, be disciplined in your execution of it, and the rest will take care of itself”
TaskBook
Founder Josh Doody, complains of competition and experience being the biggest hurdles that his team faced in making his start-up successful. Months later they finally started to grow by separating path from the other start-ups that surrounding them. They worked for months before anyone tried their software.
We listened, we learned, we failed.
In the end, hard work paid off!
Shortcutfoo
Founder Keegan Dwyer learned it the hard way. Getting the correct target demographic audience is very important in the initial days of a start-up. And that is exactly where they went wrong. Differentiating between just fans’ craze and potential client is of utmost importance for channelizing resources in the correct manner.
Thankfully, though the hard way, but they learned in fast.
And hence the day was saved not by the Powepuff girls but by entrepreneurs like them, like YOU.
It is quite possible that your startup is also going through a tough phase. So, if the struggle of these startups have allowed you to think in a whole new dimension and have encouraged you to take your startup to a new level, let us know by commenting below.
