How to Launch a Startup in 2024: Crucial Tips and Strategies

We know it and you know it already: building a startup is not easy. Although we are tempted to be overwhelmed by “the overnight success” syndrome, plastered all over by media, forgetting that it’s easier to look at the success of others from the outside. And more importantly, forget about other’s failures, who paved the way for other’s success.

At Tapptitude, we work with startups, whether we help them define their product or develop it directly. In this article, we want to dive in 7 situations that come in handy when trying to understand what you need to take into account to make sure your startup has a real chance of success. Some of the failures might happen because the founder does not pay enough attention to the situation or they find them too obsolete to try to find solutions.

We don’t want to tell you to stop building your startup altogether if you realize you have left out any of the issues, but to take your time to ponder about them. We’re pretty sure that if you’ll pay close attention to any of these problems, you will make the right decision when deciding whether or not to continue building on the idea you have.

10 Things to consider before launching your startup 

1. Do your research

The primary cause of startup failure is building something that has no market – therefore, something that is not needed nor wanted. There are cases when products are built to solve a problem that was created during the creation, but it doesn’t always work like that.

Here’s the deal. If you, as an entrepreneur or as a founder, can’t express what the problem is, it certainly means you don’t understand the problem, if there really is one.

Another thing related to this is if the problem actually exists and you are not aware of it, you won’t be able to know who has the redacted problem, how people who have it deal with it and how to ease it for them.

2. Make sure the problem you want to fix is real

Coming up with an innovative idea or concept for a new mobile product is the first step in the development process. However, even when you think you have a great idea that’s going to attract users like a magnet, you still need to make sure that is really the case. In other words, you need to validate – or invalidate – your product idea.

Before you start recruiting, investing, and developing your product, you should make sure that there is a real need for it on the market. We always place great emphasis in the product definition and discovery phase of the development process on the problem-solution fit. Providing a solution for something that has no market, in other words, for an imaginary problem, is one of the main reasons why many startups fail.

Through user interviews and market research, you can figure out if the problem you’re trying to solve really exists, and whether it exists for enough people. Remember, you want to solve a problem that affects enough people to make it worth building something and turning it into a scalable business. Do the work to validate the problem, the market, and only then, think about building the solution.
 

3. Know your audience better

To build a great business that has the potential to change the world somehow, you need to have a great market.

A great market means:

• Clearly defined customer segments
• Customers who experience a strong problem, that makes them want to do something about it
• A considerable amount of people who can buy or use your solution

In the words of Marc Andreessen, “market always wins”, which can be explained in: the possible success of a product is at the intersection between a great market and a great team.

4. Get users to form a habit around your product

It is said that it takes 66 days to break or change a habit. And to make sure the change actually occurs, one needs to be motivated – and this is the most difficult part. Unfortunately, because of this, a surprising number of startups encounter this issue. Basically, they have to struggle to get traction and engagement until they either pivot or enter the dead zone.

As a startup founder, what you need to do before you’re building anything is to get a deeper understanding not only regarding the problem per se, but also about:

• How deep it affects the lives of those who have it
• How much it costs them
• The type of cost.

This is critical for products that are created for new markets and it needs strong behavior hypotheses that need to be tested and validated.

5. Craft a startup go-to-market plan

If you manage to solve the above-mentioned issues, you have reached a new challenge. The one where you have the solution, you have the buyer personas, and you are looking to find practical ways to reach out the defined target.

We’ve seen this before. A great team of smart startup founders who created what it seems to be a fabulous innovation, but who have no clue about how to get the product in the hands of those who would use or buy it.

When we say no clue, we mean this: they don’t know where those people are, therefore they have no idea what channels should they use to reach them, thus no information on how much it will cost to acquire and convert them.

Once you look at the CAC (cost of acquisition) and TOC (time of conversion) and compare them to your CLTV (customer lifetime value) and cash flow, you might draw an interesting conclusion regarding the financial viability of your startup offering. Since this case tends to be common, we wholeheartedly agree with what Peter Thiel says: “Poor distribution – not product – is the number one cause of failure.”

6. Plan a budget for at least 12 months in advance

Planning your budget to build your product is great. But it’s not enough to have a development budget; instead, make sure you have a runway for 12 months, at least. The first year of a new product is by far the most challenging, and you need to make sure you can cover everything you’ll need, from iterating on your product to a go-to-market plan.

Many founders, when they plan their budgets, plan for building for the two platforms, iOS and Android. What they may not consider are the costs that come with maintaining the backend infrastructure needed to keep the app working once it’s live, or how those costs might increase as the app sees more users downloading it from the app stores. Not to mention, for an app to be known, it has to be marketed in the first place. Website costs, agency or in-house marketing team costs, and advertising costs are all things that should be taken into account for the first year of activity. We’ve long since passed the time when building a good product and launching it was enough to make for a successful product.

7. Build unfair advantages around your product

Whenever you are creating a new business, your purpose is to serve a market and capture as much value ass possible from it. When the market is great, it’s a well-known fact that you will always have competitors, whose purpose is to get as much from it for themselves, and implicitly away from you.

Therefore, when creating a startup you need to find new means and ways to defend your competitors, by creating advantages that are hard to overcome. Having the ability to create them, adds a strong layer of value – the “secret sauce” investors need and make your business stand out and to have better chances to become a strong player in the market.

8. Recruit top tech talent

The problem is that technical talent is scarce, and most of the time expensive. This is why many tech startups that only have non-technical founders, struggle to recruit tech talent. But, this is not the biggest issue – what is critical is when your non-tech team approaches a problem to which only a tech solution might be the answer.

In this situation, you have two options:

• To get a tech co-founder or a CTO early in the team, to make sure you can build something valuable fast enough, to make sure you can reach the market
• To find a tech company as your development partner – if you choose the latter, it’s highly recommended to build a startup where technology isn’t the core value of your business.

For the past 5 years, here at Tapptitude, we have been helping non-technical founders to build stunning products, in spite of them lacking tech knowledge. We do this by taking an active role partner and focus on defining, building and launching products that aim to solve significant issues and grow into sustainable businesses. Find out here how we do this.

9. Plan a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first

It’s pretty common for startup founders to forget what they try to build, by becoming way too enthusiastic about it and to imagine several other potential features. In this way, the risk of not creating something right for a specific audience, is high.

An MVP, as the name implies, has to be the minimum product you put in front of your potential core users, to prove if it works for the specific audience. This way, you manage to spend fewer resources on something that might not even bring value and also to give your users the chance to understand and use the product.

The thing is that users don’t have enough time to process all the wow-super-cool features your product has – hence, why you should keep it short, simple, and crystal clear what value will the product bring to them.

When you already have a customer base, it’s the perfect moment to add features. It’s easier to market them since people already know about you and they will pay more attention.

10. If validation stumbles, remember to pivot

Pivoting, in startup slang, means to change the strategy. Contrary to the popular belief, pivoting doesn’t always mean making a radical change that shifts the entire perception completely; but to make adjustments of a few aspects of the company. For instance, pivoting could mean:

• Platform change – from web app to mobile, or vice-versa
• Transforming a feature into the entire product
• Or the opposite – by including the product per se as a feature to another one
• Shifting your focus on a different target audience
• Adopting a new revenue model for monetization – for instance, ads or freemium products
• Swap to different technologies, to cut down costs and to create a more reliable product

But, then again, it is imperative to take into account if it’s time to pivot your startup. You should start thinking about it if:

• Your marketplace stop responding
• One thing gets more traction than the others
• A change in your perspective
• The competition is too fierce

Before you go

You might have noticed that very few things on our list are related to de-risking your product idea. Instead, many of the things we’ve just discussed are related to de-risking your business venture as a whole. The fact of the matter is this: there is so much technical know-how in the market nowadays, and access to it is so easy, that building a product is pretty straightforward once you have a plan. It’s everything that supports a successful product launch that takes up more effort and planning. This includes knowing whether you’re building the right thing for the right audience, having a 12-month budget runway and what that actually means, having a go-to-market strategy, and knowing what to do with user feedback once you get it.

This is where Tapptitude can jump in and take on some of the heavy lifting, both in the planning and execution. Our approach is to help you build the right product, at the right time, with the right team, thus helping you de-risk your product and de-risk your spend. We’re the ideal partner if you’re looking for someone with whom to share the journey of building a product that delivers value at scale in the way you envision it.