Beautiful business cards, branded envelopes, colorful booklets and other activities that take time and do not affect the money on hand. Typical mistakes of startups from the idea to the first sales. How not to confuse important actions and minor ones?



Looking at other projects and analyzing one's own, I wanted to lump together all the typical thoughts and mistakes of people who had a “brilliant” idea in business. No matter what industry, every startup goes through the same points of development. The main problem is to be able to distinguish important actions from minor ones. You can sit for days in the office, raise dust in the air, solving unnecessary problems, and you can make a weekly result in 1 day.
So, here are the very thoughts and actions that seem so important, but which mean so little in reality:
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1. I have a “brilliant” idea. The main thing is not to tell anyone about it, so that it is not stolen.

Remember that feeling when a million business idea came to mind? At the start, our eyes are always burning, we are overwhelmed with the energy of anticipation and are already mentally spending our future money. It is not clear how the whole world lives without it? After all, this is simply an unrealistically cool idea! Only quietly, it is impossible to spill the word, what if someone hears and steals my diamond!



Only then you begin to understand that the idea is only 2% of success, and 98% depends on the implementation. How much was social. networks and instagrams that never happened. Most likely, you are not the first and you already have something similar, or this is not yet, because nobody needs it.

Our cool idea is cool only in our head.

When we try to explain it to someone, we ourselves will be surprised at what nonsense we carry:



Tip: Do not keep the idea in yourself, it does not cost anything. On the contrary, form a powerful proposal and present your project to friends and acquaintances. Get feedback as quickly as possible, perhaps already at this stage you will change your views and make adjustments.

2. Logo and name is the basis of success! We need weeks to choose colors, shape and style.

The first thing we think about is the name and logo, because we do it once and forever! We begin to read books on the psychology of the influence of color: blue is the color of confidence, green is calm, red is eye-catching and memorable. We make hundreds of options, discard the bad ones and draw the options again, consult with friends and think over what weeks to choose!



Most of the projects or business plans that I see at various conferences (including IIDF) or sent to me in person are very raw, but everyone has a LOGO and sometimes a silly slogan in the style: “Together into a bright future” or “ The best tools for business.
It becomes obvious: time and energy were spent in the wrong place.

For example, our Perezvoni project worked for the first year without a logo at all, and we didn’t sweat over it because it doesn’t affect the result. Our "logo" was the phrase "perezvoni.com", written in a Roboto font. Only when the 3rd version of the widget came out, we thought about the design, aesthetics and logo.



Tip: Forget about the logo at the start of your journey, do not waste your time. Come up with a simple name that says about the project and let your logo = name.

Life hack for promotion: For a long time I was engaged in the promotion of billboards in Voronezh and registered in parallel to the main site a Russian-language domain in the zone. RF, where the domain name = key request. Yandex and Google are moving up such sites faster and in bold.


Apparently Yandex bolds the domain as it contains the key request.

3. "We want to immediately cool website with good design and animation."

Before we start selling we need a cool site! We will find professionals and we will coordinate the layout for 1-2 months.



So do desperate guys who have not yet burned. Instead of making a short landing on your own for 3-4 hours and testing your idea for adequacy, we risk and pour money into the air. No, a good, structured site with good usability and design is needed. In general, high-quality business packaging is important, but at the stage when your business model is already run-in or at least there are first payments.

Tip: First, we form a strong USP (an offer that is stupid to refuse). We create a prototype on a piece of paper, write texts and think over the pictures. Then we do a landing on the designer (no programming skills are required) or find a freelancer and for 5-10 thousand rubles. get the site. Be sure to make a prototype, the freelancer will not be for you selling structure.

4. Make a business plan to understand what will be the profit in the first month of work.

Another very dubious occupation. A business plan is drawn up by a person without experience in a new field, as a rule, it is never implemented as planned, there are always changes and miscalculations. The instruction tells us that a business cannot be without a business plan, how could it be otherwise !?
Yandex shows that about 26 thousand people want to find a “ready business plan”, that is, they think that there is a magic leaflet where everything is written what needs to be done.



Just do not take it too directly, the economy needs to be considered in order to understand whether there will be a profit under such conditions.

Tip: The business plan is recommended to be made after the first battle, when you made several sales and began to understand the customer and the market better. Then it makes sense, starting from reality, to make a plan for further development.

5. Business cards, booklets, branded items and other tinsel.

All this is very cool and gives you a certain status, you have a fashionable business card, cool booklets, but you haven’t sold anything yet, but are just preparing for it. At that moment, when you confront your project with reality, you will understand that the client does not care about your business cards and stylish websites. The main thing is your offer, and business cards, as usually happens, are lying on the shelf. Therefore, you should not soar over it, make business cards, booklets, if you strongly want, but do not spend a lot of time on it.

Six months ago, I had a cool idea (as it seemed to me then) how to increase customer loyalty and stand out among the rest. We ordered A4 brand envelopes with an individual design, made plastic “accumulative” cards on which the names of customers were stamped, wrote a personal thank-you letter on a piece of paper for each.



That's not all.
When I learned that Apple has a department that is working on the smell of new products, I immediately decided that our company should also have its own smell, and we ordered a perfume, which was filled with all the envelopes. The envelopes smelled like fresh lawn.



In general, we are very confused and spent a lot of effort, but in the end so that the client said: "Well, cool."

Tip: Most customers will not appreciate the time you spent on creating business cards, superfood booklets and other tinsel. Do not give them much importance. Of course, if you work in a creative environment, then this is the place to be, but in another case, do it at least somehow. If your idea turns out to be working, then you will redo them as you wish.

6. We need an office for work.

As history shows, the office is not a necessary point to start. Recall the company "Amazon", which in 1994 started working in the garage and sold its first book there.



Strange, but many want to immediately sit in the equipped office, hire employees and conquer the World. Maybe I think too small, but what prevents to start working at home, even if there are two of you?
For example, our startup has developed so much; for the first 3 months, we worked in our own house, only after that we decided to rent an office. It was only 8 square meters, without air conditioning and in the summer there was a terrible heat. In 1.5 years, we changed 4 offices:



Tip: If you have no budget for the office, then start working at home with a laptop and phone. In most online projects, meeting with a client is not necessary.

7. Register a trademark.

The desire to register a trademark arises again because we overestimate the value of our project.
We thought about TM at that moment when the names that were painfully similar to us began to appear on the market: call, call, call back, etc.

Note: Trademark Registration lasts 1 year and costs about 60 thousand rubles. There is a big plus that you can sue domains that violate your rights.

8. Find an investor who believes in me.

Thousands of startups are waiting for the magical moment when an investor will turn them on and they will be able to translate their project into reality. We also looked for investments at the beginning of the journey, I left applications for all funds, but I was refused. Only six months later, when the project began to gain momentum, we received a letter from Rusbase 2 invitations to meet with investors, but refused all offers. I do not know how it is right, but decided to develop independently.



Conclusion: Never ask for an investor, if your project is worth it, then most likely they will call you or write you. In general, investment is not an option, try to grow organically.

9. All right, now I'm ready for sales.

Finally, a business plan has been drawn up, 2-month work on the site has ended, you have stylish business cards, a spacious office and a masterpiece logo, but there are no clients yet. The project enters the market, everything is beautiful, but it turns out that nobody needs it. The project closes or completely changes the strategy and format of the product. At this point, waking up understanding that it is necessary to distinguish important actions from minor ones.

At first, concentrate your attention only on the core of the product, and if it is viable, then turn it into a pen with a gold rim.

At the first stage, you need as quickly as possible to push the product with reality, look at the demand, make the first applications and communicate with the real client on the phone, and not with your friend over a beer, discuss what prospects this project has. For this, start-up capital and months for preparation are not needed. Do not try to immediately bring the perfect, finished product, even Microsoft constantly modifies bugs and releases updates. It is very easy to drown in unnecessary things that seem so important. I want to do everything right away, but this does not happen.

I hope these tips were helpful or at least you enjoyed reading :)
Thank!