The sad part about offering shared office space for startups is that many of them leave and move into offices of their own when they start getting some traction. That’s one of the reasons why Evoma has different ranges of office space at different locations in Bangalore. We’re able to retain successful startups by offering them the space they need to expand and grow.
For example, HealthcareMagic, one of our stellar startup successes, moved from their office at our Borewell Road Center in Whitefield to Evoma OMR when they increased their staff. The company has since been acquired by Ebix, but they’re still located at Evoma OMR. HealthcareMagic Cofounder Shekhar Sahu credits Evoma for all the support they provided to help them grow faster.
Even so, we still need to define startup success, so we can pinpoint what we need to offer to a specific member at the right time. That’s why I’ve been thinking about the definition of startup success, and looked it up online. Even wikipedia doesn’t have a definition for startup success, and then I Googled it. Didn’t find anything particularly interesting, but it did trigger a chain of thought that I want to share with you in this post.
How do you define startup success at each stage?
1. Convert an idea for a startup into a business.
2. Stay afloat for 6 months without raising funds while you develop your proof of concept.
Get seed funding, a government grant, mentorship and other support from organizations such as the IISc MSME Center of Excellence (MSME CoE) for product testing, development and commercialization.
Prof. Parmeshwar P. Iyer, Head, Placement and Industrial Liaison, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, says that people make the mistake of approaching VCs right away. Develop your PoC, get that initial base of customers, generate some revenue. Then you go to a venture capitalist, when you’re generating revenue, profits are starting, then you want to scale up.
3. You are able to raise startup funding for expansion and growth.
Refer to the posts we already have on this blog to help you raise funding.
4. Expand to new locations.
The key to your growth as a startup is your expansion plan. Uber was founded in 2009, and the first city it was available in was in San Francisco in 2011. As of today, Uber is operational in 614 cities worldwide.
5. Acquisition or IPO.
The final frontier of startup success is what makes your investors very happy – a successful acquisition or IPO.
Now we could it end here – you could live happily ever after as a successful startup founder and entrepreneur if you went through the above 5 stages and you’re still standing, but I’d like to take this just one little bit further.
How do people look at your startup? What does it stand for? Idon’t want to say anything more, so I’ll just leave you to think about this on your own with these images.
Photo credit – Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay/Flickr