A brilliant business idea pops into your head and one movie montage later you’re CEO of a thriving company. That’s how it goes, right? Well, not quite. If you’re after some real-life tips from those who’ve been in the startup trenches before, you’ve come to the right place.
1. Follow your passion
Running a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. Will your idea keep you motivated even when times get tough?
For Tech Gym founder Rowan Smith, inspiration came from seeing his 94-year-old nan struggling to get the rehabilitation she needed following a stroke. Now he’s building robots to ensure patients can access physiotherapy regardless of their location.
This deeply personal experience is the reason he’s stayed motivated even when COVID-19 lockdowns stalled his clinical trials for two years.
“Because it’s something I have a true passion for and I’ve seen the fall out of not having this solution in place, I’m really encouraged to do more,” Rowan says. “If there’s anything that’s gotten me through the last few years, I think back to my nan and other patients I’ve met along the way. They keep you going.”
2. Angry customers are the best customers
Or at least they’re the ones you can learn the most from. Sure, a nasty review is enough to send you crying in a corner. But there might be some constructive pearls of wisdom to be gleaned.
“Your friends and family are always going to tell you what you're doing is fantastic,” says Vanouhi Nazarian, founder of Kindershare. “The most useful were angry customers. One of them said, ‘look, I’m going to take you to coffee and tell you everything that’s wrong with your website’. She said, ‘I was really upset when this happened, when I clicked here this didn’t work.’ We still catch up for lunch and it was the start of a nice friendship.”
3. Use frustration as your inspiration
Is there an unanswered question that niggles at you? The solution might be the startup idea you’ve been searching for.
After being diagnosed with a retinal condition that could result in losing her sight, Anna Wright’s question was: “If you’re blind, how are you supposed to know where the braille is?”
“I would be the person that’s constantly saying ‘this is ridiculous, why hasn’t someone else fixed this already?’,” she says.
And so, despite having no technical experience, she decided (with a little nudge from a friend who’d had enough of her complaining) to solve the issue herself. Her startup, BindiMaps, uses phone sensor technology to navigate users through locations. It's since been used to map the Australian Open precinct – including wheelchair accessible routing – and will eventually include autism spectrum routing.
4. Big dreams, baby steps
Entrepreneurship is all about taking huge risks, right? Not necessarily.
“I’ve seen people quit their job or remortgage their house and go full time into something before they have anything developed or any customers,” says Consent Labs founder (and self-proclaimed risk-avoider) Angie Wan.
She decided to take a more incremental approach to reach her “big dream” – researching and testing before taking the next small step – knowing that once young people saw the value in her sexual education program it would snowball from there.
And it has. In 2021 Consent Labs reached over 10,000 students across six states and territories, and Angie’s been recognised with a 2022 NSW Women of the Year Award to boot!
5. Don’t be afraid to pivot
Ever heard of Burbn? Well, if its founder hadn’t noticed the popularity of his check-in app’s photo sharing function, you might never have heard of Instagram either.
That’s because sometimes your beloved idea is just a steppingstone to the real deal.
That was the case for Emily Bobis, co-founder of the road intelligence startup Compass IoT: “I’d like to say it started originally with cars and we were super smart but … at the beginning we actually tracked cows.”
It was only after having a conversation with a traffic engineer that they swapped cows for cars – and stopped crashes before they happened.
Want to put these tips to the test? Join the UTS Startups community.