Finance isn’t a token of startup success, and funds don’t make it any easy

“I want to somehow sustain my startup until I get funding. After it, things will become easy as apple pie”, a student startup owner told me during a recent session.

Most young age startup owners consider external funding as the ultimate milestone in a startup journey.

Every startup owner dreams of billion dollars valuations and multiple rounds of funding, even before thinking of an idea.

Yes, finance is a crucial aspect to scale up the operations and accumulate better resources for an organisation. However, it isn’t why a startup should begin.

In fact, unless you are extremely lucky, you can’t even raise funds without building a sustainable business model, backed by a problem-solving idea.

Also, even if a startup successfully raises million-dollar funding from the investors, accumulating finance is just one step towards establishing an organisation.

An organisation booms into a successful start-up or a company not because of funds, but because of effective handling of those funds and effective management.

Beginning a start-up is challenging, and the challenge grows with time, competition, the expectation of investors and plans to scale up the growth of the startup.

Opined is on a mission to give a platform, where startup owners can freely raise their voices. Write your stories, experiences and opinions using #StartupNotEasy and let people know the real struggles of being a startup owner.
Funding doesn’t guarantee success, determination does!

IndiaMart recently launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and its shares were oversubscribed 36 times.

However, IndiaMart was started by Mr Dinesh and Brijesh Agrawal back in 1996, with no external funding. The company raised the first round of funding from external investors 11 years later in 2007.

During this period, the company suffered severe losses due to 9/11 attacks and cash bleeding by other competitors.

Because IndiaMart was riding high on the dedication and commitment of its co-founders, the company sustained through a difficult period and ploughed back its profits into the business to expand the operations and incur expenses.

There are gazillion other startup owners who are flourishing without getting external funding. Some others, who have raised an initial round of funding, are scripting stories of success by providing returns which exceed expectations of the investors.

Funds come and go, but what stays is the hard work and determination of the founder and team to be able to sustain the enterprise despite the crunch. Nothing is stable, nor is the money and this is our purpose to give your startup tales a voice.

So, register yourself on Opined and start writing your success stories using #StartupNotEasy. Bring out the financial crunches struggles you faced, and how you overcame those to craft inspiring stories.

Everyone deserves to be heard – Grit and determination (NOT the finance) convert an idea into a successful startup or a company.