Seven things to do when building a startup from anywhere in the world

Building a startup is hard. Always.

And building a startup when you’re not based within an existing tech or startup ecosystem like Silicon Valley, New York, London or Berlin, then the task at hand is ultimately so much harder. Paul Graham seems to agree:

We wouldn’t be doing founders a favor by letting them stay in Nebraska. Places that aren’t startup hubs are toxic to startups. You can tell that from indirect evidence. You can tell how hard it must be to start a startup in Houston or Chicago or Miami from the microscopically small number, per capita, that succeed there. I don’t know exactly what’s suppressing all the startups in these towns—probably a hundred subtle little things—but something must be.

Based just on that, most of you would agree that we’re unlikely to see a major tech startup success coming from Nebraska any time soon. But what I’ve experienced over the years is that it is possible to build a successful startup from pretty much anywhere in the world; it just requires a slight deviation or re-focusing compared to what is considered mainstream best practice for startups.

What makes me qualified to say that? Well, when I built the very first product that lead to the founding of WooThemes back in 2007, I was based in Cape Town, South Africa. Today, I’m still based here and Cape Town is also the only physical office that WooThemes operates. The kicker is that WooThemes today is a multimillion dollar, global business that can go toe-to-toe with some of the best tech companies around.

Cape Town isn’t a great startup ecosystem and founding a startup here means you’ll have many other challenges to face that entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley for example don’t have to worry about. Everything in life however works in equilibrium in this (geographical) disadvantage isn’t all bad and you could use it to your advantage to build your own, successful startup.

This is how you do it…

1. Don’t follow trends

Following any kind of trend just for the sake of it, is a dangerous game to play; especially as a startup entrepreneur. The thing about trends, best practice and startup advice is that it’s mostly very specific to a single startup, industry or ecosystem; so if you’re building a local startup in Timbuktu, you won’t be able to copy the Silicon Valley way verbatim. Instead you’ll need to either implement an adaptation of that advice / best practice, or completely ignore it.

There’s more than enough information out there to help you figure out every challenge within your startup; your biggest challenge is deciding which advice to implement. Your scarcity is always time (especially how that relates to money, your runway and the opportunity you are pursuing), so it’s impossible to implement or experiment with every single startup trick in the book. Before you invest in any of this, really question the validity of the advice you want to implement and make sure you’re not just doing something that is trendy.

2. Build for businesses

Consumers are a fickle bunch; especially how that relates to technology. Many consumers today suffer from FOMO, are always chasing the next big thing and have become used to getting stuff for free (or very cheaply) online. All of this makes consumers a very hard target market to monetize.

Take Uber for example; I doubt they would’ve received the early traction (that kickstarted their immense success) if they had started up in Timbuktu. They needed to be very close a very specific target audience: early adopting, tech-savvy consumers.

So if you’re looking to build a startup using a Thai beach as your base, you are better off building something for other startups / businesses. B2B is a much easier market to crack, as your target audience are used to paying for stuff and would happily pay for stuff that further adds value to their own businesses. This also means that you can probably build a very profitable business with only a couple of hundred of customers, instead of the hundreds of thousands (if not, millions) required by most consumer startups.

3. Choose to bootstrap

We live in an age where money has flocked to technology and most startups have no problem to get access to that initial capital. Whilst it has become easier for startups anywhere in the world to raise money from investors, most capital markets are still not great and if you’re starting up from the corner of the earth, investors are unlikely to feel to comfortable handing you a warchest.

This is however a good thing, because it gives you the choice to bootstrap your business instead. To this day, WooThemes is 100% bootstrapped and that very decision cultivated a very specific DNA that helped us navigate some of our biggest challenges: customers, revenue and marketing (more on these below).

The thing about bootstrapping is that it is so much more than just a source of funding; it is a discipline and a way of running your business. I love thinking about bootstrapping as a way to beg, borrow & steal, which I think is the right-kind of scrappy mindset that you need to succeed when you’re not based within a great startup ecosystem. As Paul Graham mentioned above, you’ll have all statistical odds stacked heavily against you, but being scrappy will help you fight those odds.

4. Focus on early revenue

Your customers are your best investors.

All startups are about momentum and the best way to gather momentum is to make money, which enables you to reinvest those funds into your business (to further accelerate all aspects thereof). The quicker you get to earning any kind of revenue, the more you improve your chances of succeeding.

One of the best things that happened at the start of my WooThemes journey was the fact that I made $500 on the very first day that I had started to sell my product. I have no doubts that those early revenues ultimately catapulted WooThemes to the success that it is today.

This also means that you should avoid doing / giving away stuff for free, because those are really hard business models to eventually monetize. The same thing goes for freemium. Instead aim to target and monetize a much smaller group of (initial) customers that are willing to pay you. You don’t need to be profitable on Day 1, but every $500 in revenue will help drive your business forward.

5. Do unobvious marketing things

If you have ever done any kind of marketing, you’ll know that it is incredibly expensive and almost impossible to compete with the established players in any industry. Coupled with that, you’re always fighting to stand out from the crowd in a space, where only the elite are ever rewarded with free marketing (i.e. publicity on mainstream news sites). I suggest you stop trying to play this game by others’ rules, since your chances are slim of ever cracking the nod.

Instead I’d suggest suggest two alternatives to kickstart your marketing:

  1. Build a really great brand, because that is what will help you stand out from the crowd. Be personal and be yourself; people don’t want to connect with just another startup or brand. Building a brand is also free in the sense that your brand should be about the things that you are actually already doing (actions speak louder than words). So it’s just a matter of consolidating all those things and compiling it into a memorable brand.
  2. Spend all of your time on customer service and crafting the best experiences possible for your customers. They say that the acquisition of a new customer costs approximately 5x of what the retention of an existing customer will cost you. Make happy customers and they’ll spend more money with you at no cost. And on top of that, they’ll (hopefully) wax lyrical to anybody that will listen and end up doing your marketing for you.

6. Broaden your horizons

At some stage during your startup journey, you’ll have to broaden your horizons. That probably means packing in your swimming trunks and leaving the beach for a couple of days every now and again.

The best thing that I ever did for myself and for WooThemes was to travel abroad to tech and startup conferences, which allowed me to connect with so many great, like-minded people (some of which are either fantastic friends or inspiring mentors to me today).

The thing about that is that you’ll get to augment your own approach and accelerate your learning. No one entrepreneur knows everything and tapping into the experiences of others will help you figure out some of your challenges.

Entrepreneurship is also a very lonely quest and in the medium term it is imperative that you connect with other entrepreneurs to share your personal experiences and challenges. Your physical, mental and emotional well-being is important and because other entrepreneurs are experiencing similar challenges to yours, they’re best-suited to helping you work through those challenges.

7. Build something of international quality

In the end, nobody really cares where you are from. I still meet people in Cape Town today that had no idea that WooThemes was founded and are based here.

The internet is a global marketplace and our customers don’t care where your offices are, where you pay taxes or where your team is based. What they care about is the value that you provide them.

The only way to compete in this marketplace is to always build something of international quality; even if you are exclusively selling to your local market. With the internet’s ease-of-navigation and discovery, your customers will compare you to alternatives and if you don’t look as professional as that startup out of Silicon Valley, you are likely doomed.

Luckily for you it’s very easy and cheap to accomplish this, because the barriers to entry (for a tech startup) is mostly non-existent. Regardless of where we’re based, we can all use Rails (or whatever language) to develop our web app and we can all deploy that on Heroku. Similarly, we all have access to the same (worldwide) skills pool and it’s easy to imitate design best practices when creating your V1.

There really is no excuse for not being able to compete internationally and go toe-to-toe with all the other startups worldwide.

 

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