At every stage of a start-up, an entrepreneur will encounter unique challenges. Some of the challenges may be specific to the industry, but the majority will cut across. These challenges which range from employee turnover, market access, competition, among others, will not disappear at any stage of the business life cycle. Such challenges are unavoidable. The entrepreneur can only minimise them.

As this year’s Entrepreneurial Leadership for Start-ups webinar begins tomorrow, we bring you some of the most common challenges entrepreneurs face throughout the start-up journey and urge you to join the global participants, if you have not yet done so, to equip yourself with skills to handle these challenges.

1. Idea to Product/ service development

This is a very critical stage in every business. Without a viable idea, there is no business. What is it that you are proposing to sell to potential customers? At what price and in what location? These are some of the critical questions to ask at this stage. To start any enterprise, your most significant objective is to be certain of the need you are seeking to provide a solution for. This is a challenging stage because you ought to research to ascertain the company’s viability before you sink in your money. This is what Harvard Business Review calls ‘existence stage’ in their article titled The Five Stages of Small Business Growth. 

In testing your business idea viability, customers must find solutions that are helpful to them. That way, it will mean that a particular solution can be profitable or have a clear direction for profitability in the future.

Studying the competition and knowing the exact needs of your potential customers becomes very critical.

2. Traction stage of start-up

When you start any enterprise, understand that the business will go through different phases before it matures. These phases are the traction, transition and the growth phases. Many enterprises do not live to see their second birthdays because the entrepreneurs are not aware of these phases and the fact that each stage requires a different set of skills set and actions.

True, you have proven that you have a viable business idea that can be monetised and therefore have already invested in the running of the business.

But the traction phase will help you to clarify your business objective and the market segment and therefore the retention rate of your customers. It is at this stage that most start-ups start to struggle with cash flow and investment capital challenges. According to Martin Zwilling, to the Entrepreneur, “traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model and sustainable growth. Investors want evidence that the “dogs are eating the dog food,” and your financial projections are not just a dream.”

This is an important stage of every start up. As an entrepreneur, you need to make the business attractive to potential customers and investors who will ensure enough sales and investment capital.

As an entrepreneur, you need to develop constant lead generation channels to feed your business.

3. Transition

Every entrepreneur desires to transition a business from a small business to a profitable venture with predictable revenue. But that will only be possible if you are able to use the data collected from the traction stage to guide your decisions and polices going forward.

At this point, levers of the business growth, including strategy, cost per acquisition and competitive business advantage, must be at the entrepreneur’s and the team’s fingertips. You must have the capacity to determine at this stage what policy or strategy works for you and what doesn’t and adopt the right direction without any emotions. You must also start to think about the skills needed to be brought on board and which role to discontinue.

This is a delicate stage that needs to be managed very well if the business is to grow. Due to poor leadership, taxation, labour force, market, and others in Africa, the transition stage can be tough to attain.

Take, for instance, a Uganda Business Impact Survey 2020 report that concluded that at least 90 per cent of businesses expect to make losses because of COVID-19; how do you transition your business despite such challenges?

It will take more than one head to figure out a strategy for transition, and that is why I invite you to read this last point.

4. Growth stage of the start-up

The last stage for the start -ups journey is the growth phase. This is where you want to leverage all the lessons learned throughout the phases of the enterprise to determine the growth of the business. Here, you review the systems and policies in place and tweak them to ensure growth and guarantee the success of the enterprise.

Unfortunately, only a few start-ups, reach this far.

Thus, in organising this year’s “Entrepreneurial Leadership for Start-ups” Human Capital International thought about the need for you to complete all the above stages to succeed in business.

This two-day webinar will provide practical insights into the four critical pillars and systems required for successful start-ups.

Register today and get equipped with revolutionary global ideas to transform your business.

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