It seems that everyone wants to jump onboard the startup hype that continues to dominate popular culture. When you see Snapchat getting a billion dollar valuation for a disappearing photo app, you believe that you can do the same thing. You may be thinking that if making a ton of money is that simple then you should have no problem doing it yourself. The problem is that you may not truly understand what defines a successful company.
So you create an app and have a million people using it. More than likely these are not customers who are paying to use your app. These are just users who have downloaded your app because it was free and they were interested in seeing what it was about. On the surface, it looks like you have a successful business. In reality, you are operating a business that has no way of making any money. You are spending money to attract users but have no way of converting them into customers. This is not a successful startup. You have no connection with a specific group of paying customers, only non-paying app users.
People confuse attention with success. Just because people know about you and your company it does not mean that you are producing successful results. It is just like social media. You may have a lot of likes but those likes do not equate to dollars being deposited into your bank account. Therefore, for all the attention you are getting, you are still desperately trying to earn money.
The problem is that people do not know what defines a successful startup. Media attention, social media followers, and millions of downloads mean nothing if you do not have a business model that generates money. For all the marketing that you are doing, you need to have actual sales to validate the real value of your startup.
Read more about startup success at Singapore Company Incorporation.
