Starting a business is hard. Extremely hard. At least it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. And what’s scary is that for all of the risk, money, time, and effort involved there’s no guarantee of it paying off. You’re welcome for the “pearl of wisdom“ there. I know my first few sentences are nothing new, but boy it feels good to write it out and admit, that starting up a company, especially one in a space with a new product and unknown market, sometimes feels impossible. However, in the Studio Bridge journey so far, I am convinced that company success, sustainability, and growth are a factor of 3 key things intersecting.
The 3 keys?
- A product that genuinely adds value and solves a problem
- Market timing (this is the market seeing enough need/value to purchase)
- Perseverance
I know there’s nothing new about the above 3 points either, however, I’d like to breakdown how I consider the relationship between the 3, and what excites me every day about this entrepreneurial journey.
Let’s start with #1 : A product that genuinely adds value and solves a problem
Pretty obvious. But if you don’t have a product that adds value or solves a hard problem for people, then don’t bother wasting time to sell it. Simple as that. For Studio Bridge I am one million percent positive we check this box. It’s obvious with our current client’s experiences, and I know it from my own experience. After all, the idea for the product originated by solving a problem I was facing in my role as Head of Production.
But let’s say you’ve got a product that you genuinely feel solves a hard problem for people or adds value in some way, yet you still haven’t been able to get clients (or at least not as many as you thought you’d have given the amount of time you’ve been selling). This brings me to point two, market timing.
#2 Market timing (this is the market seeing enough need/value to purchase)
The market has to be ready to adopt your product in order to grow into a sustainable business. This is where perseverance comes into the picture. As an entrepreneur, it’s imperative to have a sustainable burn rate, which allows you to continue evolving your product so that you intersect when the market timing is right.
If you have the right product, and you’re able to survive long enough as a company to intersect with the market timing/adoption, then you’re in a position to have a successful business. At least this is how I view it. The journey of building Studio Bridge as a brand and a product that is genuinely focused on making people’s work easier and more efficient is exciting. We continue to get more and more feedback on how we can make things even better. It’s truly rewarding!
#3 Perseverance
To all the entrepreneurs out there waking up every day chasing their dream of building useful products and solving hard problems, keep up the great work. It’s only a matter of time before your product and perseverance intersect with the market adoption. Oh, and last but not least there is another element that shouldn’t be ignored and that’s obscurity. You can have all three conditions above but, as a wise person once said, “No one can purchase a product that they don’t know exists.” With that said, be sure to share this post and Studio Bridge with all of your e-commerce friends, it would be greatly appreciated