Australia has a rich history of innovation and bringing new technologies to the world. Atlassian and Canva are perfect examples of Aussie-founded companies that have paved the way for so many new-age tech startups to enter the global marketplace and effectively scale, writes Brett Chester, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Deputy.
With the Australian tech startup sector contributing $270 billion or 6.6 per cent of GDP to the Australian economy and holding more than 580,000 jobs within the current market, there is an immense opportunity for growth.
Why startups need to sharpen their goals
However, 20 per cent of startups fail in their first year and around 60 per cent will go bust within their first three years. So, how can startups set themselves up for success? Many Aussie startups are stuck in the short term, which is understandable — focusing on the future is difficult when you’re simply trying to get your business off the ground and surviving day by day. While this mindset is necessary when a business is starting out, startups need to sharpen their short term goals to ensure long term success.
Benchmark growth with data
Most startups have long-term goals and a vision of where they want to go. The problem with long-term goals is that they are often so far away that it’s hard to know where to begin. A critical step to long-term success is benchmarking with data from the start. David Ogilvy, an advertising tycoon, once said that “people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals”, and he was spot on. Starting small with data sounds simple enough, but it’s surprising how many startups miss this critical step. It’s either they feel like they don’t have compelling data, or don’t know where to start.
Setting benchmarks from the start allows startups to check on the health of the business performance. This needs to happen frequently and depending on the team it should happen anywhere from hourly to each quarter or month, but, not year over year. It is a great way to benchmark your efforts and compare metrics from different periods to analyse what is going well and what can be improved and acted on immediately. By working in shorter-term ‘sprints’ and accessing data to assess performance, startups can be more agile and change processes swiftly if required.
Be less risk-averse and challenge the status quo
Growing new ventures on a global scale is no easy feat, but one way that Australia’s startup ecosystem can achieve this growth is to be less risk-averse and challenge the status quo in their short-term and long-term planning. Think about how your business is challenging the status quo, and if it’s not, how will you get to a place where it can. COVID-19 has put us all in a position where it is a no brainer for businesses to tap into the talent pool from across the world. Startups are no longer confined to Silicon Valley or Sydney for that matter — you can tap into centres of excellence globally. Diversity of thought and diversity of opportunity are critical when challenging the status quo.
By starting with a data-driven benchmark, the hard part is now asking the right questions to propel your startup in the right direction and being bold. By setting your long-term goal from the start, you can tackle short-term goals to take you there. Start small, but think big. Sometimes this involves flipping problems on their head and asking questions like “how can we restructure the team or attract global talent to achieve our goals?”
Tap into the startup ecosystem early
Support for Australian startups has expanded rapidly over the last decade and has been accelerated by the recent pandemic. It’s never been a better time for Aussie startups to step up to the global stage. As we know, startups follow a trajectory towards success that includes several stages, such as ideation or prototyping, incubation where the concept is validated, commercialisation where the business model is validated and finally scaling to growth. One of the secrets to startup success is to expand your network early and do not be afraid to ask for help. Reach out to other business leaders, sound ideas with venture capitalists or those within the market to see if your business has potential. Learn from those within your network who have taken the same risks before or can connect you to the right person at the right time. This will not only open up your network, but is a great step towards driving your business in the right direction.
If we should have learned anything from the recent pandemic, it’s that things move quickly and operators and owners need to remain agile in order to grow. As an ecosystem, Aussie entrepreneurs and business owners need to be a little less conservative and take a more risk-averse approach to challenge the status quo. Businesses also need to develop actionable insights from data, frequently, not year on year to make sure your startup is really healthy and continuously growing. If Australia wants to make it on the global stage and rival big startup hubs like those in the United States, then the country needs a shift in its overall mentality. It starts by shifting to focusing on your short term whilst building towards long term success.
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