This discussion covers the meaning – Do not figure out big plans at first in the startup context. Starting a business is one of the hardest things to do. However, it can be the most rewarding experience if you strategise your approach based on your business plans. This article provides recommendation on breaking down your startup vision into realistic milestones to motivate further actions.
Although your business plan can provide a strategic direction, it needs constant adaptation. With a startup, you begin with a lot of unknown areas about product development, market and commercialisation. Even though you won’t have all the answers, to begin with, you need to start small and find a way to figure out the rest.
Do not figure out the big plans at first – Starting small in a business
The business plan in a startup is the best guiding mechanism to check whether you are in line with the business strategy. A key requirement in writing business plan is the ability to be flexible. You need to ensure that your operations are not suffocated by your business plan.
The plan is only a guide but on the ground, realities can be different. For this purpose, your business plan needs to be adaptable and constantly responding to client needs and product developments. The meaning of – do not figure out the big plans is a reminder to ensure that you don’t get caught up in overplanning.
You may recall that we explored this line of thought in balancing over-planning vs strategy while working on startup ideas. Instead of over analysis, you must be willing to iterate and experiment with your product/market.
Using Vision to build your big plans and Strategy
It is often difficult to predict the direction of a startup. You will find several examples of startups which have pivoted and changed strategy based on market response. Although the grand vision is about achieving most aspects of a business plan, practical realities expect you to listen and change as per market demand.
To be fair, these grand visions of a startup are scary to achieve right at the start. Your vision provides a great platform for you to build the business model. But it shouldn’t scare you from taking actions. Every startup journey goes through small, incremental steps.
Make sure that these small steps tie back to your overall vision in some shape or form. The business plan is still an important element of your startup. It helps you maintain a balance between the vision and goals to achieve your success.
Breaking down big plans into Realistic Milestones
The key to achieving your startup vision is by breaking it down into realistic milestones. Using these milestones, you can track your progress w.r.t business vision. Don’t fall into the trap of over analysing each step with the business plan. You’ll need to wait the right amount of time to identify its feedback.
Try to break down your business plan into milestones which are realistic and achievable. You can use SMART goals to define these milestones and track success. Your business model is a strategic indicator, don’t let that negatively influence your day to day strategy. Break your goals down into measurable targets.
I’d recommend using this for your product/service development approach while developing your Minimum Viable Product. Through this, you can reduce wasted effort and get customer feedback consistently. Pro-tip for developing MVP is by talking to prospective customers, understand their needs and getting a meeting with them for feedback on MVP.
Iteration and Change in Approach to influence strategy
At each stage of the startup, come back to the basics of starting small. You cannot figure out the full journey, it needs to be done in small steps. While we talk about product development, it is important to measure small milestones and get feedback. This comes back to the basics of agile methodologies by producing small, iterative improvements to get valuable feedback.
This can serve as a practical strategy in the customer development process. Using this approach, you can develop a marketing and sales strategy along with your product development. During the initial stages of a startup – these steps are interlinked. Both product development and sales go hand in hand. It is only after you gain certain momentum, that you can split these functions into separate departments.
Conclusion
I’ll reiterate the powerful words which influence this disucssion Do not figure out big plans at first, but, begin slowly, feel your ground and proceed up and up. Use this as a guiding philosophy to motivate you through the process of product development and assessing markets.
The most powerful tool you have as a startup is the ability to respond to change quickly and adapt. This edge is not available in large organisations where processes are a hindrance.
If you are able to prove this model with a few customers, you can very soon climb on the journey of scaling up your business and adapting the business plan accordingly. I hope you found these thoughts, useful, please drop a line below if you have any specific questions.
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An essential thought! You definitely carry a well-rounded experience with start-ups. In 2016, I had an idea for a small-scale venture, something more of the sort that would fulfill my creative thirst, for entrepreneurship isn’t in my bones. For a long time, it was a dilemma whether to try it or not for the fearing of losing big. And finally, this is what I did – figured out a small plan and gathered the experience and wisdom to understand that it wasn’t the right time in my life to take it up. My children were still small and they needed me more than I needed the venture then. I deem it a well-thought of decision to have not put my first foot deep. At the same time, I am free of regret of never having tried at all. And though I couldn’t pursue it further after a considerable amount of thought and work, it didn’t make me feel like a failure because of my pre-mental preparedness of the results. This is where really small steps matter!
Hi Nandini, thank you for sharing your experience with starting a business. It is certainly no easy task and I congratulate you for going through with this. I do think the toughest part is literally starting the business. The rest has a way of motivating us going ahead. It is brilliant to have your experience shared. What is your business called and the needs it meets? I am always curious about creative businesses – creativity is not often my strongest suite but I do have a business and startup experience which keeps me constantly excited and passionate.
Impressive write-up. Will follow this.
@Vinay, its great that you have been in the start-up flow and also figured out a few ways that weren’t the best or correct. But many like us never took the plunge.
Some because they didn’t dare and others because they couldn’t distinguish between what was an idea and what was another of those daydreams.
I would like to read a post on how to shortlist ideas for taking them to the next stage
Hi Suman, yes the startup experience has been tremendously exciting. I have been in two so far, both very diverse in their approach, profile and customer segments too. The learning curve has been fantastic and that has primarily been the motivation for the startup 101 series. It is a very lucrative sector and there is a real chance to make a difference if you are committed enough to provide a solution to the end customer. Although it is fraught with challenges at every stage, some tangible and a lot intangible, I know that my heart goes out for startups. I would love to keep this series going and hoping to hear what our readers feel about it.
Thank you for the suggestion, I would love to make a post on zeroing in on a business idea to take it further. I definitely agree, there is a world of difference between a dream and a startup. The answer is in the steps we take for these dreams to come true. So much to exchange on that front. Hoping to come with more relevant stuff as we go along :). As always, love the feedback.