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1-Page Summary of The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Overview
If you’ve ever been involved in a startup, you know it can be chaotic. There are usually many projects and tasks to do, so it’s helpful to have an organizational system that shows what needs to be done first. This is the author’s key points on how to prioritize those things in the beginning of a startup company. It will help avoid mistakes other startups have made by knowing what strategies don’t work and won’t make money for the company.
By reading this, you will learn who your potential customers are, how to identify the market that you’re in, and why it’s important to launch your product as soon as possible instead of perfecting it.
Big Idea #1: Unlike large companies, startups need to find their customers and prove that their vision is viable.
Many business people have the wrong idea about startups. They think that they’re just smaller versions of big businesses, so it’s okay to use the same methods as those bigger companies. But that’s not true at all.
Startups usually don’t have the ability to introduce a new product into the mainstream market. Established businesses already have customers and know their competitors, so they use a process of first designing products and then finding customers.
Startups need to focus on customer development, which is different from product development. Startups should not build a product without first knowing who the target market is and what they want. For example, Webvan started an online grocery business in 1996 but failed because it focused on developing its products instead of understanding customers’ needs first.
Second, unlike big companies that know their market and how to sell to it profitably, startups have no idea whether or not their business idea will actually fly. It’s up to them to prove that their vision is viable. They must journey into the unknown along uncertain paths, facing obstacles and difficulties as they go. But thanks to their powerful initial calling, they persist and become heroes when they reach their goal.
Entrepreneurs are also visionaries. They must find a way to turn their ideas into reality, just like the scientists who created the atomic bomb did. Entrepreneurs learn as they go; they discover what customers want and how to conduct business with them.
Big Idea #2: To keep themselves following the right path, every startup needs a written mission statement and a set of core values.
In the previous key point, it was stated that startups need to know what path they will take. To help them stay on track, startups must decide on some core values. For example, a pharmaceutical company may choose one of its core values as “First and foremost we make drugs that help people.” This value means when it has to prioritize profits over helping people or vice versa, it will have an answer for which way to go.
A company needs to have core values that it stands by. A mission statement is also important for a startup.
Writing a mission statement helps a startup achieve its goals. It’s easier to do this if you write down your mission statement first and then start working toward it.
Every startup goes through a rough patch in its early stages, and it’s during that time when the mission statement becomes especially important. The core values are more static than the mission statement because they can’t change as much with new products or markets. So how do you develop those key parts of your company? The mission statement should answer questions like: why does our staff come to work? What are our goals for growth and profit? How do we know what good work looks like? With authentic core values and a good mission statement, startups have a much better chance of staying on track for success.
