What resources can give your startup an unfair advantage at any given time? How to eliminate the noise when you are looking for the right resources? How planning can help you choose the right resources, save you money and time? All these questions are answered below but before that, there are some thoughts from the author.

Thoughts from Anastasios Pardalis – author of this piece: 

It seems like I like to write pieces about “small secrets to your startup success” so starting from this one I’ll give a number to each one and I will categorise them to “Secrets” for the sake of simplicity. I write based on research and personal experience. For example, we’ve talked about “Simplicity” at the first piece of the “Secrets” (if you haven’t read Simplicity, read it here), I’ve learned the importance of simplicity after investing too much time and money and eventually failing Groupmates. I chose to write about resources as the second “Secret”. Many think of resources as money, time and skills, but as you will hopefully realize and learn from this piece, when the entrepreneurs behind a startup have a creative approach to resources they are able to achieve more with less. Let’s get to the good part now!

When you search “Startup Resources” on Google you will get over 48 million results (see image on the left). Resources are provided by prestigious magazines such as Inc and even from sites that were created solely to provide startups with lists of resources, they go as far as even categorizing the resources (see image below). Most resources come in the form of tools. Have you ever thought of a resource as a book, though? For example, The Idea In You:

Startup Resources Categorized

There is clearly a need for startups to find resources. As a startup yourself, you know that if you are able to do your job cheaply or even free of charge, it will help you stress less over how to find the financial resources that you don’t have so you can focus on actually building your business and making money from your Minimum Revenue Product (MRP), remember “Simplicity”. There is a problem that I have personally faced and you might have or will face in the future, there are so many resources available provided by even more sources and at times it can be difficult to know which resource to use for each stage of your startup journey, and you end up spending more time fingering out whether a “cool” free tool is useful for you and why. The best way to avoid this is probably planning with clear milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Planning and KPIs

When you decide that you want to start your own business there are many stages that you are going to go through. For each stage, you need to know what you want to achieve and how you are going to get there. The latter is always more difficult to figure out. To help you with the thought process I’ve developed 8 stages and for each stage, I’ve named “Types of Resources”.

The stages are:

• Idea pre-conception – Here you need to figure out what your business will be about
• Idea post-conception – Now you know what your business will be about so what’s next?
• MRP development – Now that you know what’s next you need resources to help you develop your minimum revenue product
• MRP post-launch – You’ve launched your MRP, what now and what tools do you need in order to reach the next stage?
• Business modeling resources – Your MRP will probably help you to identify why people buy your product/service and how much they’re willing to pay. It will also help you identify what more you need to do to improve your chances of success, now that you have enough knowledge to develop your business model how are you going to develop it?
• Pre-launch resources – Your MRP is not your official launch, now that you’ve developed a strong business model you are planning your official launch. How are you going to plan this, how are you going to market your official launch, how are you going to keep track of things etc.
• Post-launch resources – You’ve launched, now you need to have continuous development, improving your operations, maybe is time for investment, you need a good one pager and more. What resources can help you from now on?

Let’s summarise below the 8 types of resources.

8 Types Of Resources 

1. Pre-conception resources
2. Post-conception resources
3. MRP development resources
4. MRP launch resources
5. MRP post-launch resources
6. Business modeling resources
7. Pre-launch resources
8. Post-launch resources

The Startup Race (TSUR) Team has worked hard for nearly a year to break down the resources types and startup process into more and simpler pieces (see image below for what is coming). As you can see in the screenshot below a startup will be able to get advice and resources based on every step of the journey.

Startup Race Upcoming Tool

What next?

If you’ve reached this part of the post then I want to congratulate you! You have now equipped yourself with many things to think about. This piece is not by any means trying to provide you with any resources, its sole purpose is to help you think about how you can choose resources based on planning. Now you know that you need to think twice wen you see an interesting resource or read about it in one of your favourite magazines.

If you have an idea of what business you would like to build or have any questions or suggestions reach The Startup Race Team here. We are also holding an online bootcamp on the 1st of July 2016, you can register here for it.

Conclusion

To summarise, having the right resources for every stage of your startup is crucial and investing in the right resources can provide you with a competitive advantage, save you money and time. It can be difficult to remove the noise, and having a plan with clear targets can help you remove some of the noise.

The Startup Race aims to help entrepreneurs to remove the noise and focus on building a successful business. Our Student Startup Race will be our minimum revenue product. We are following the process that we have developed and we are reaching our targets so far, we know that you can reach your targets if you take part in our race. To find more about the Student Startup Race, click here. Alternative, register to attend our free online bootcamp on July 1st, 2016 here

If you would like me to write a piece on resources but going into some specific kind of details, let me know @tdalis on Twitter