Council Post: Three Difficult Decisions Startups Must Make

Kevin Leyes is the Chairman of Leyes Enterprises and the CEO of Leyes Media, an SMM and PR agency, and Team Leyes, an urban jewelry company.

Being the leader of a startup is not easy. There are situations that will always take you to the limit. No matter how hard you work or how resourceful you are, things in the first few days are often full of stress and anxiety. Every decision you make to keep functioning can lead to a complicated situation.

One of the most difficult things is trade-offs. There are usually two scenarios at this point. The first is very easy, and you get positive results in the short term. The second can lead you to a difficult decision in the short term but bring you the best results in a longer period of time.

Decisions are always complicated because you don’t have the necessary data. In the best scenario, startup owners have little data at hand, and in the worst, they must act on their hunches. But can these situations be made more bearable? Let’s see how to act in each one of them.

1. Becoming Profitable And Sustainable

For everyone who starts out with a venture, their goal is for it to become a great company that generates millions of dollars. However, in their early days, startups struggle to close each quarter successfully.

Here, we are faced with difficult decisions regarding profitability. You have to figure out how to reinvest the money properly to make the necessary improvements that will lead to success. To do this, you must look deeply into each line of processes and how much resources you devote to them.

The decision you must make is to redirect resources from a line that does not generate enough to innovate and generate more money. But I must emphasize that a decision like that involves losses in the short term.

So that you don’t get overwhelmed with decisions of this kind, the best thing you can do is to let yourself be carried away by the information. This can help you avoid the uncertainty of taking a path that will lead you to earn more. Always try to handle all the necessary data — it’s a way to make it bearable.

2. The Path Of Growth

Usually, a startup is born to solve a specific problem. It is usually in a market sector that has not been served, and the idea can fulfill needs. The problem is that these markets or niches are very small.

For this reason, another difficult decision faced by startup owners is to move from a company in a small niche to one that competes in large sectors. This is a big job because to face new challenges, you need more resources and a team that can serve existing customers and create a new product for the new market.

Launching into competition in large markets is a puzzle, but there is no other option when you have already covered your entire niche. Therefore, this should not generate complications. If you are already a leader in your market, venture into going big — of course, always with information and a product to match.

3. The Cost Of Experimentation

We come to the third big decision that startup owners and leaders must make: whether to stay put or squeeze the money.

All startups are about innovation, but to keep innovating, there is a cost. To keep growing, a startup must move from a product that already works well to another in which it must invest to prove its results.

So that you don’t break your neck with experiments in your startup, have good risk management. Set short deadlines and defined returns to be able to experiment safely. This way you won’t waste money.

If you don’t get the desired results in the given period of time, you should decide whether to experiment a little more, which leads to more investment, or close it and give it as an unrecoverable investment.

The truth is that the world of startups is always difficult, but to avoid stress, you have to know how to make decisions and live with the consequences. In order to be successful, you always have to take risks. If you don’t, you may not get far.

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