Learning by doing: 4 Tips for Skill Development in a startup

You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing and falling over

– Richard Branson

We have by now established that a startup demands not just one but a multitude of skills. Often we start with a driving skill of a founder or co-founders. But the demands are often quite high considering the breadth of business activities.

The discussion focuses on early days of startup, need to bootstrap – delivering MVPs etc. It also focuses on certain resources available out there for skill development to aid this journey in a startup.

1. Learning by Doing!

A startup naturally works with limited resources and time. Naturally there’s very little bandwidth for formal training to complete a job. For instance you might  be a great software developer but you’d still marketing material, financial modelling, design etc. The dimensions of a startup only keep increasing as the demands raise.

Although there’s no easy formal way of learning the prerequisites for creating a startup, there are certain key sources of help at our disposal.

There’s often a debate between education such as business degree vs learning on the job. Both have their pros and cons. For me, the startup experiences before and after the business degree have been phenomenally different. I do wish I had the business training before starting out my first venture.

2. On Job skill development – Resources

In a formal set up, companies usually have a time slot and budget dedicated for professional training. The advantage in this segment is that there’s often a defined area of work which can be trained. The same cannot be extended to a startup – primarily because of lack of funds and time. You are more often forced to pick up learning by doing.

There are of course some resources available which can provide some guiding pointers. The era of online training has certain key advantages of its own. Some online resources such as Coursera, EDX, Open Classrooms provide some excellent training material. If costs are a constraint, there are some courses available for auditing

Personally I have found EDX and open classrooms very effective for my area of work – product development and agile methodologies. In addition, we can always refer to Youtube. I would of course be a bit careful though, there’s a lot of content out there which is not very well curated.

3. In/Formal Learning: Mentors and Startup Accelerators

Not always do we have the luxury of time and resources to get a business degree or go through a formal course on how to run a business. Mentors can prove to be extremely valuable during early stages of a business.

We talked earlier about taking mentors with a pinch of salt. But they can prove extremely valuable in opening up certain networks, providing initial guidance.

In addition Startup Accelerators play a good role in grooming early stage startups. They can tend to be a bit theoretic at times. But they do offer an excellent network and framework during initial stages. Key advantages I have seen from these startups are the networks to present initial ideas, frameworks for funding pitches, valuation, financial modelling, etc.

4. Accelerators Vs Incubators

Some advanced accelerators also act as a shared office space. Majority of the times these accelerators are free which make them invaluable. But the caveat is the quality of the free ones. Some accelerators work in specific sectors such as cyber security, B2C models, B2B models, etc. They have an entry and maintenance fee – but the quality of network is quite substantial.

We also talked previously about incubators. These are excellent and usually sponsored in universities. A good university incubator can offer some excellent frameworks and training material for idea generation, business modelling, etc. They are wonderful for initial stages, but as the business advances you would need to think about accelerators or advanced networks.

Summary

Hope this discussion provided some pointers. Key takeaways to be highlighted:

1. Free training resources and auditing courses
2. Incubators Vs Accelerators for a startup
3. Mentors to aid initial learning by doing.

Please do let me know if you would like us to start writing about any topic which you think would be of value.