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There seem to be two schools of thought in entrepreneurship: get your minimum viable product to market ASAP, or plan everything three times over before even thinking about going live. However, most startups fall somewhere in the middle. You can plan all you want and still meet unexpected challenges, or you can dive right in and build-as-you-go.
But what happens if you start out cautiously bootstrapping and suddenly explode? It can happen, and it’s not always as amazing as it sounds. You’ll be stretched very thin, very quickly.
The solution? If you’re building up your business yourself, it’s more important to have a process than a plan.
The Simple Startup
Assuming you want to launch with a minimum viable product, you can often get started with word-of-mouth advertising and a simple website. These days, there are plenty of out-of-the-box e-commerce solutions. You likely don’t need to dunk thousands of dollars on a fancy website.
The key is to have inventory — and be ready to fulfill orders and provide customer service. There’s no point in advertising if you don’t have a product to ship or people to pack the order! So, before you launch, be sure you have:
• at least one digital channel
