When you are starting up, there are several small and big decisions to make. It is important to think of all aspects and understand what works best for you
Let’s quit jobs, start ze business. O yeah!"
Just seem to hear this a lot these days. Good idea.
A couple of
computers, maybe more. Passion, goals. Lots and lots of inspiring people, success stories, books, videos and what not.
Cool name. Cooler logo. Website (lively, engaging, informative, entertaining, all-in-one). Brochures, e-mailers, Facebook page, Youtube virals, Twitter account—all done and ready. Ah, lovely. Now what?
Office space required. Can’t believe the rates! We’ve already spent all the money. We need employees as well. but hiring is expensive too! We didn’t know that when we were looking for jobs. And people don’t want to join startup companies. Even after we hire people, how to get them to work as a team? Why is it so hard for people to get along?
Meanwhile, we have to identify and meet clients, work hands-on, deliver products, take responsibilities, handle finances and between all this, try to lead a life. What if we don’t get any work in the first month? What if it gets worse and goes dry for two months? People will leave, we’ll need to spend again to hire, HR, managers, good lord! Let’s go get whatever projects we can get, let’s get the expenses under control, and think about choosing projects and focus later. Boom! There. This’s turning out to be a bit different from what we dreamt of.
The general questions are do we set up a company first and look for work, which involves marketing as a major task, and which also includes the pressure of the investment already made. Or, do we start off with one project, and slowly build the company while finishing more and more projects. We chose the second one, and it worked for us. Some business cards, one laptop and internet, and one project. The next project got us a workstation, the next couple of projects got us an office space, some more equipment, and our first employee. Some more projects, couple of more recruitments. Functioning office.
There’s no huge investment and no break-even point here, but it’s slow. Annoyingly, painfully, slow. But the good part is that the initial projects, which are much, much more important than we actually think they are, can be chosen. This makes a lot of difference.
So that’s just one side of startups. That’s not what this article’s all about. This is. After you’ve set your start-up in place, the processes.
Being a startup company (I’m sticking to the service industry), with, say, around ten people, the processes that you need might be a bit different that those in a large company, which is most likely to be like the one you’ve just quit from, to start the business.
Then, making small divisions inside your already small team—for client servicing, project management, marketing, implementation or support—might not really be a good idea. These work just fine as departments, and in projects and organizations of larger nature. The more the hierarchies and processes you push into a small team, the longer it takes to get a project out. In simpler words, do not have processes for the sake of having processes. Be open to experiment. You might end up being unique, which usually is a good thing.
So then what do we do? I’ll go with what we did. We let the people who work on the particular project, talk to the client. The client talks to them. This just goes without two more layers of filtering of information. This even proved to be more efficient, since the same conversation isn’t repeated inside the company twice or thrice, and then from the company to the client, back, and down the two layers again. What this does is, it eliminates the need for someone who has no idea about the project, to learn about the project and talk to the client. Also, it avoids the need for him to get back to the implementation team, to answer the clients’ questions. Overall, less time wasted in getting matters across. If you grow above a particular number of people, this model does not and will not work.
Again, these might not apply to your company, but there sure will be something that does. Identifying that is the key. All the best with your startup!
Rajaram Rajendran
The writer is an entrepreneur, designer, digital artist, wannabe musician and a jack of all, who thinks black & white photography is very cool.
To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line 'Rajaram Rajendran'.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent the magazine's.
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