5 Tips to Build Your Startup Business

Startup Lokal (@startuplokal) is a regular meetup event created by Natali Ardianto (@nataliardianto), Sanny Gaddafi, (@sagad) Nuniek Tirta Sari (@nuniek) and Aulia Halimatussadiah (@salsabeela). Invited to sit as a panel in its 7th installment of Startup Lokal, I was put together with Chandra Marsono (@chandramarsono) from Oxford English School and moderated by Sumartok (@sumartok). Turn out that this is a vibrant night attended by many new startups and future technopreneurs which learn from each other and build their network. This is some of my key points during the nights:

• Tips 1. Choose to be a celebrity or making money, pick one! You might ended having both if you concentrate on one, but when you try to do both all at once, you will running out of resources.
• Tips 2. Make money from day one Too many startup says that they use advertising as their revenue model. This is the sign that the site will fail since advertising can only be monetized at later stages where all the traffic has already built up. Find other short-term business model such as services or product selling and use advertising as other income. Kapanlagi.com did this by having mobile content company as a revenue generator to finance their website early stages.
• Tips 3. Serving a bigger client is a simpler & more profitable in a short-term business model than advertising-based business model. Get into media industry by having advertising as a business model is a tough market. Getting into retail market too soon will drain your financial resources. Getting into B to B market is simpler since you serve a bigger clients needs. But keep in mind that B to B don’t build your brand, so keep your retail business to build your brand. Bhinneka.com did this by providing procurement services as well as retail market.
• Tips 4. Brand is more important than brain. Partner with a bigger company and brand, tap in their customer database and offer value to this partner. Your own knowledge and effort to build your own market will usually take a lot more time than riding the access to market by a big partner or brand. Kaskus takes 12 years to build their own loyal community. Koprol reach quarter the users of Kaskus in 6 months after acquired by Yahoo. And you don’t have to be acquired to partner with other brand. The key is providing value proposition to this partner.
• Tips 5. Value that you can offer: product, access to market, media and attraction factor Define your strength and look for partner that complement the other value. If you have a killer product, then find the right partner to access the market. If you have the access to market, look for the right product or media that benefit your customer, if you have the media, find something that will create a wow factor.

Hopefully what I share tonight will inspire future technopreneurs!