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Passion and drive are essential for new and established businesses, but especially for start-ups. What are the other critical factors successful start-ups must have?

Key metrics

The most crucial aspect of any business will inevitably be revenue, so you need to:

•                Identify where it is going to come from

•                Identify the sub-metrics that will generate revenues

•                Have a very clear go-to market strategy

You need to be totally focused on moving your key metrics, and align all activities around moving them. Depending on your business, this could be the number of people using your system or how engaged they are with your product. If there are any blockages or you can’t move a key metric then you need to revaluate.

Be nimble

As a start-up you really need to analyse your competitive landscape carefully. If there are established market leaders you need to ensure you have a strategy to disrupt their dominance or accept being a fast follower.

Being nimble and adapting your business model (or product offering) to the market is essential for long terms survival and growth. Looking back we had a pretty significant pivot point early on, where we realised our initial offering had limited scope for growth. We grew into new markets – the home improvement sector – which had more potential for growth, and have not looked back. More recently, we listened to a persistent problem homeowners were having and adapted our product offering to align with their needs.

Raising money

It is important to know when to raise money for your business. Investors will be looking for a ‘no brainer’ proposition. To be entirely convincing you need to demonstrate your start-up has:

• A demonstrable business model that is sustainable 
• A clear grasp of the competitive landscape 
• A clear market to chase, i.e. scope for growth
• A clear plan on where the investment will be spent

Innovate to grow

Being competitive by nature means being innovative in your space. That not only involves lateral thinking, but getting an unbiased opinion from others. Don’t rely on friends or family – they will tend to tell you it is a good idea. Get objective, critical, contrary insights from people you trust. On the technical side, cloud services like Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) for data hosting or centrally hosted office and messaging software, allow you to be up and running quickly and efficiently. Besides being easy to set up, they offer you the opportunity to be disruptive in your sector. This could provide the leverage to challenge a dominant, established market leader.

Get passionate, get excited

Last but not least, you and those around you really need to be passionate, and excited, about your offering.  You really can’t underestimate the value, and impact, of this – especially in the early, ‘start-up’ phase of your business.

David Vitek is the CEO and co-founder of hipages.com.au