Entrepreneurship is a word being tossed around by everyone at every corner of the world these days. It has already fully developed in the western countries however in a developing nation like ours it is evolving slowly. It has been a few years since the entrepreneurial wave entered into Nepal. However, majority of the people are still at the darker side where they do not fully understand what it means. Treat this blog as an Entrepreneurship 101 that you learn the basics of who an entrepreneur is and what do they do.
“An Entrepreneur is someone who has a Vision and a Want to Create”
David Karp, Founder, Tumblr
My favorite definition of an entrepreneur would be somebody who solves a problem, big-small, profit-nonprofit really does not matter. You see a problem in society and you do something to change it and you would be an entrepreneur.
For a country like Nepal, entrepreneurship is the way to development. There are so many problems in Nepal that has created enormous amount of entrepreneurial opportunities. Since you are here, I take it as you are somebody who wants to start a business of your own. I am glad you decided to embark on this journey. It’s a great one and it will take Nepal to great heights. Allow this blog to help you in every manner possible.
Entrepreneurship is something that has been hyped up too much and huge standards have been set as to what kind of person can or should become an entrepreneur. Let me clear this once and for all, entrepreneurship is a skill that can be learnt. A shy, introvert 21-year-old too can become a kickass entrepreneur if given an opportunity.
It is utter nonsense that entrepreneurs are born or ideas will come knocking out your door. Ideas come to those who understand things, problems, and scenarios and have the courage to act upon them.
Remember, entrepreneurship is 1% ideation and 99% perspiration.
There is a small process that is usually looked up to before starting a business. I will break it down to 4 simple stages. For a detailed understanding, I would advise you to read books, watch movies, documentaries whatever you’d like to gain more knowledge about entrepreneurship. You can also read about the Design thinking model or watch this video. It is a very effective tool for the early age startups.
1. Research and Idea Validation – This is the absolute base of your business. No matter you already have an idea or not, you will 100% have to get out in the market and talk to people, witness the problem first hand, interact with your customer, understand their point of view. This will help you massively in demand estimation product designing, building, pricing, marketing, in fact, each and every stage of your business. Do a human centic research making sure what is it that will absolutely provide the highest value to your customer. Prepare a Business Model Canvas.
Read full blog on How to Validate your Business Idea here.
2. Product building – Initially you will start with a prototype, for example, if you are building a drone to monitor the agricultural farms, you will first build a low-cost running model just enough to ensure its working and if it is solving the problem correctly. I will always advise you to take the prototype to your customers for feedback and make necessary changes if any. Remember these customers could become your early adopters and will help you in word-of-mouth marketing. And launch your product!
3. Feedback- Now its time to see how your product is performing, take abundant feedback from your customers, partners and every other stakeholder. If you find out that things are not working as well as you’ve thought, no biggie. It was bound to happen. It is time to fix the errors and then go to the market again. Make a loop of this stage until you have things the way you want them to be. Celebrate if things work out for you. Move to the next one if they don’t.
4. Pivot – It is not ideal that you had to come to this point. This is a sign that your research or your product was not up to the mark. However, at this point, you’ve realized that no matter how many revisions you make, things are not going to work with this particular plan therefore you need to make some dramatic change to your plan to keep yourself afloat.
You need to know exactly what went wrong for you and keeping in mind the business environment that you are working in. Keep your customers and partners informed. Do not fear this stage or the change that you have to adopt, you are moving ahead with a lot of experience.
Is Entrepreneurship without Innovation possible?
Contrary to what you might have heard, YES!
Entrepreneurship can prevail without innovation. The world has set very high standards and scrutiny for innovation in entrepreneurship. Now, innovation does not necessarily mean creating something entirely new: innovators often take something that already exists, improve it, change it, make it better, and make it the best for their customers.
For example, if you want to open a food delivery platform in Nepal. It is not an innovative idea since it has already been done in so many countries. However, it does not mean that you should not do it in Nepal. In fact, it is a smart move to study how other companies do it and then study the differences between their business environment and business environment in Nepal.
The same business model can never be fit elsewhere by a different team but the factors affecting both the businesses are never the same. In such scenarios, the business has to stand out with the decisions they make in due to local factors. If we all focus on doing everything new and innovative, we will not the basic things and Entrepreneurship in Nepal will be good for close to nothing.
Read about The Need of Social Entrepreneurship in Nepal here.
Next Up
Validate your Business Idea
A huge number of startups fail every year because of less amount of time and efforts spent prior to launching the business. If you ever had a business idea but didn’t move forward with it or have an idea right now, let this blog guide you through a easy process to decide if your idea would be a successful one or not.