[Infographic] The Anatomy Of A Startup

by Willis Wee, Penn-Olson.com

Having the chance to cover several start-up stories across Asia and also building one myself, I know it’s never easy to build and manage a business. My friends always have the idea that an entrepreneur is rich, famous and successful. But I wonder why most of them aren’t entrepreneurs. No offense but yes, I know a lot said are just words of encouragements. Entrepreneurs need that ego vitamins too, so everything is good and balanced between entrepreneurs and the TGIF laborer.

I came across this infographic by focus.com that shared about the anatomy of a newborn tech company. Catchy headline it is, I clicked and went through the information. The anatomy turned out pretty true, especially on coffee spending, at least from personal experience. I could easily relate with the content and I knew I had to write about it for the many start-up founders reading our blog. Besides understanding the “whats” of a new tech start-up, there are two takeaways for founders reading this:

(1) If your cost of operation and personal spending are above what were stated, chances are, you’re not maximizing your resources. This is of course assuming your start-up hasn’t gone black.

(2) The infographic stated 3 main problems in a start-up. As far as I believe, time issues are probably excuses rather than problems. Many start-ups out there are waiting for their hockey-stick growth while doing the same things for years. We can’t achieve a different result by repeating the same plan. Pivot fast and make things happen. Waiting and pointing fingers at “time” is plain suicidal. More below…

 

STARTUP

Admittedly, I’m a culprit of “waiting for things to happen.” In my first start-up, my partner and I were so obstinate (and perhaps arrogant) about turning our plans to reality. The truth is, some so-called grand vision just can’t work. The market wouldn’t lie.

For us, we had problems attaining our hockey-stick growth because the business model is flawed. It is dead fixed by the consumers and players. Changing it means we have to go about a revolutionary shift which we couldn’t find for years. We were just plain naive as we expect the same plan to work if we actually strive hard enough. End up, we spent more than 4 years before deciding to sell the business and move on with our lives. Not the best ending, but definitely a painful and fruitful lesson learned.

This article was first published on Penn-Olson, a tech, business and marketing blog focusing on US and Asia. Penn-Olson is a Young Upstarts content partner.