The Startup Process
This article is written by Clinton James, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Anil Advani is the Managing Partner of Palo Alto and San Francisco based law firm, Inventus Law.
His practice focuses on representing early stage start-up companies, from 2-3 "guys in the garage" through the life-cycle of the venture, negotiating angel and venture financings, customer and licensing transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.
He has also represented a number of angel investor groups. Over the last 12 years working at powerhouse law firms like Cooley Godward and Orrick Herrington, Mr. Advani has represented over 800 startups and founders (including many backed by the premier Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator), and been involved in almost 200 financing and M&A transactions valued at over $1 billion in aggregate.
Most people get lost with their own start ups because they listen to what other entrepreneurs or other third parties.
The key recipes for building startups entail having, enough focus to drive the idea, research that measures the reality, team building to make it friendly, legal platform to cease risk issues, raising money as capital, commencing on creating the business and exiting or launching the business with an effective team and strategy.
There are some of the most important things that an entrepreneur should consider before starting up the business or company. One of them as mentioned is focus. An entrepreneur should know where they are headed, not that they should listen to what other entrepreneurs say but most of them get lost when they consider third parties.
Once an entrepreneur has decided what they want they should do research. The research is basically meant to make one understand the market and know how the companies that already in market made it and if the problem that the business is solving is worth being solved. They should research on each and everything about the business since there is nothing that has not been started before.
After research they should consider building up their team. A team is made up of the founders and the key initial employees. The founders should give themselves tittles such as CEO and leader, some make mistakes at this point since the owner of the idea will always want to be the CEO. This should not be the case since it will only bring about ownership issues. The sales team is another important team. Whatever is being produced by a company should always have buyers or consumers. If none of the partners has the sales skills, they should consider hiring one since they can’t go a head without sales and getting feedback from the market on what the consumers want.
The best understanding of legal platform could mean that the business should get a lawyer. The image and reputation of a business may be messed up with if the business owners did not consider the legal issues involved. The business should also consider protecting the intellectual property of the business such as patents, trademarks, copyrights and third party claims.
Raising money is another key issue in starting up any business. The entrepreneurs should always raise 25% more of the money for the purposes of paying salaries for the first month of operations. If they are unable to get all funds they should consider other genuinely recognized institutions or angels.
Creating the business. The business should always be selling all round the year and this can be achieved if the company is pricing products appropriately. If the revenue are not increasing with sales then they should re evaluate the process.
Exiting the business. From day one the entrepreneurs should think of this before it is too late, since selling a company that has already outgrown with number of employees and investment is too expensive.
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