Startup Myths and Tips

This article is written by Clinton James, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

From a basis of Mr. Utku Uzman’s background, we gather a lot from his experiences especially as a managing director at EMEA Citus Data Company. He has worked at large companies including Intel and Oracle, and did business consulting for enterprises as he was confident in his business knowledge. He then joined Citus when it was only a team of four people. Utku gives his speech at an event dubbed Startup Istanbul which is the biggest gathering of international and top experts in the digital business, focusing on disrupting traditional markets and hottest international trends.

As an entrepreneur with a startup business, it is important to unlearn some things that you have learnt previously. According to Utku Uzman, there are some myths in running a business that need to be busted or confirmed in order to enable clarity.

In his keynote speech, Utku brings up myths that needed to be addressed. In that accord, the myths that he confirmed are true according to him were that businesses need to have specific goals and plans versus being reactive to what is going on around in the market. This is because it helps the business to be more focused on its goals, aligns the people on the same goal and allows for measurement of success or failure.

The second myth that was confirmed was that there is need to hire slowly and fire fast. This enables the business to have really good employees who can contribute to its success and it minimizes bad influence on the team.

On the other hand, there are myths that were determined as ‘busted’ due to their demerits. Firstly, businesses should raise money fast to build momentum. Raising money takes a lot of time and focus. Businesses need to decide when to do it because you are going to be giving your energy into it when it could be spent elsewhere and end up neglecting other duties such as getting customers.

Secondly, attend a lot of events and workshops to gain knowledge and experience. This leads to significant time loss for the entrepreneur and too much advice from different sources may confuse the entrepreneur by causing analysis paralysis.

Thirdly, startups should build strategic partnerships with enterprises. It is important to remember that enterprises are slow and move at a snail’s pace while startups do not have that time. The engagements could tie up valuable resources and it is also difficult to align goals with different entities.

Lastly, startups should find an idea that everyone likes. This myth was busted because if your vision is to change the way something is done, it is not going to come from an idea that everyone likes but rather it has to be a disruptive idea in order to be accepted by people, including those who may have disliked it initially.

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