Startup Navigator

Guiding Your Entrepreneurial Journey

Dietmar Grichnik, Manuel Hess

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781352010107
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350304857
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

This core text and practical handbook presents a dynamic start-up framework with building blocks and steps to help readers to increase the success rate of their new venture. Taking a data-driven, iterative, and evidential approach, it guides readers to collect their own data at every stage, helping them to make strong business decisions based on empirical facts and develop their venture in a systematic way. Throughout the learning and venture creation process users will be supported by a multitude of handy tools and techniques. Cutting edge research is applied to practice to help users maximise their chances of entrepreneurial success and gain a critical understanding of the issues at hand. Drawing on the latest industry trends and tools, Start Up Navigator offers a state-of-the-art guide to new venture creation. It will be the ideal text for aspiring entrepreneurs keen to boost the success of their venture. It is also highly suitable for university students studying courses on entrepreneurship, new venture creation and start-up management at undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA level.

1

PROFILING

Through profiling your customer - and yourself -you will be able to find the best Problem-Solution Fit for each individual situation. Fed and led by your personal entrepreneurial motivation, you will develop a unique solution to the problems of your target customers in the best possible way.

1 MOTIVATION

In this chapter:

From “playing happy” to “being happy”

Your entrepreneurial identity

Darwinians

Communitarian

Missionary

Jogging can be very inspiring

Hybrids are common

From “playing happy” to “being happy”

What motivated you to pick up this book? What motivates you to create an innovating project, or start your own company? It’s much easier to stay in your comfort zone and not go the extra mile. However, what makes us human is that, unlike animals, we strive for greater meaning. The statistics about happiness are indisputable and frightening. American Nobel laureate Edmund S. Phelps found that 95% of our overall happiness depends on our happiness in the workplace. The shocking reality? In recent years, the proportion of happy employees has decreased by 50% worldwide. Happiness research clearly shows that we should find our identity in what we do! This is one of the reasons why entrepreneurs are happier than the general population — they have signed their personal declaration of independence with their startup. So it’s time for something to change. The Holstee Manifesto (a mission statement by the startup of the same name) may show you the way (from holstee.com):

“This is your life. Do what you want and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit…

Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them so go out and start creating. Life is short. Live your dream and share your passion.”

Your entrepreneurial reward is unlikely to take the form of money-at least not at first. Instead you will find that your reward is time that is meaningfully lived instead of wasted in meaningless or even miserable activities. True entrepreneurs reward themselves: with independence, self-determination, and self-contentment, supposedly sacrificing leisure time, and yes—for most of you, for now— forgoing money and fame. Devoting all your senses and energy to an interesting problem motivates

student founders as well as company managers who, as intrapreneurs, drive innovation. Both share the passion to shape the future with their very own unique entrepreneurial identity.

Your entrepreneurial identity

The inspiration and passion we’ve just discussed is something that all kinds of entrepreneur have in common. So, what about the things that make them different? The type of entrepreneur we represent depends heavily on our social identity. Identity poses the questions, “Who am I?” and “What is my role in society?” As research has shown, answers to these questions have a significant impact on our entrepreneurial identity. Fauchart & Gruber have defined the three entrepreneurial categories or types as “Darwinist,” “Communitarian,” or “Missionary.”

“While the inspiration to start the business was to make a living, today the inspiration to get up every morning and head to work is different. Seeing the lives of more than 50 people transformed is motivating for me. Seeing them being able to make a living, having the means to go back to school, get married and so on. It makes me very happy that I have the opportunity to impact their lives positively. I think the most important thing about being an entrepreneur is to know that you are making a difference in the community; you are adding value to yourself, adding value to your staff, adding value to the nation and adding value to different people who benefit from the business.”

Vincent Mugisha, owner & founder, digital photography studio and business in Kigali, Rwanda

Research Insight:
The three entrepreneurial identities

Fauchard and Gruber examined the identities, behaviours, and actions of 49 company founders in the sporting goods industry to determine their social identity. In their research, they came across three clear types of founder identities: the Darwinists, the Communitarians, and the Missionaries. In their study, the authors show how these identities systematically shape critical decisions in the founding and building of new companies and thus “shape” startup directions and set path dependencies, for instance, when professionalizing your venture and addressing different types of investors.

Darwinians

Darwinians found companies out of an economic self-interest. They are competitive and driven by their own pursuit of profit and growth. The ‘survival of the fittest’ outlook translates into a winning mentality and a drive to do things better than their competitors. A classic example of a Darwinian is Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. From the beginning, Schultz set himself the goal of creating a coffee empire that would change the way Americans start their day. Does this seem too much of a reach to start out with? Here is a more relatable, recent example: Valentin Stalf who started out without any significant banking experience of his own, founded a bank after studying at the University of St. Gallen, inspired by the famous Nike slogan “Just Do It”. In the years since, he’s rolled out his smartphone bank internationally in Europe, USA and Asia and, after several funding rounds re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• List of Acronyms
• Get started
• This is how startup works!
• Acknowledgments
• Authors’ profiles
• Contributors’ profiles
• Tour of the book
• Startup Navigation
• Startup Navigator
• 1. Profiling
• 2. Prototyping
• 3. Sourcing
• 4. Scaling
• The Pitch – Art or Science?
• Sample Pitch Deck
• Appendix
• Index