There are only 2 things a startup should focus

Heads-up: This post deals with early stage startups looking to extend their clientele

I have been busy as ever at work, but the last month is easily the *busiest* ever in my 23 years, have never worked or traveled so much. In the quest, we got some amazing customers and more importantly learnt an important lesson. We have heard this a zillion times – “An idea is not important, it’s the execution that matters”, but what exactly does execution comprise of? Apart from having a good team, I think there are only 2 things a startup should focus on

a. Usability
What looks good to you is most likely not going to be okay for the customers. Build a version-0, put it out, get feedback and ensure it’s really intuitive! A few examples..

• There is a company X who is using our product over an existing tool not because our product is priced cheaper or has more features, but ours has a clean interface for candidates.
• My dad uses Cleartrip over irctc even though he needs to pay a little more, primarily because of the neat UI
• I remember reading about what happened when Drew Houston approached an angel / VC.

  Angel / VC: ‘There are a lot of apps on the cloud that does the same thing as Dropbox, what’s new in yours?’
  Drew: ‘How many of them do you use?’
  Angel / VC: ‘None!’

  And you know the result! The primary reason why Dropbox scores is because of it’s simplistic nature to use the product.

Simplicity & good design sells, it’s a great investment.

b. Customer service

People underestimate it’s power, but this is such a great differentiator! Flipkart is not the 1st e-commerce entrant but the impact they have created is because their wonderful customer service! You can see hundreds of tweets praising their prompt delivery.

We received an e-mail from company Y introducing us to company Z:
“The tool is good, more than that their turnaround time is terrific! Would definitely recommend them”

Customers love quick responses to their e-mails and immediate answers to their queries over phone. I think this is where a startup can beat a big player. To file a complaint in a big company, you need to go through to a lot of people, calling customer care (who provides standard answers), raising support request, etc. In a startup, you file the bug directly to the guy who coded it, it’s fixed immediately and shipped soon wowing the customer.

At the same time, we lost (yeah? not sure) a customer because we couldn’t get back them for a reasonably longer timeline. I can definitely sense a really good product in this space. We broke as much ice we could, but it’s a black mark. They might not really refer us to their network.

Anyways, it’s a good lesson we learnt and our focus is just on these two to build a great product!

Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithaustell/2644625791/sizes/m/in/photostream/