Be ready for client surge anytime

A few days ago, we all saw in this newspaper the coverage of the plight of a family blessed with a set of six babies, a gift of God for which they were completely unprepared. Goodwill from readers and wellwishers poured in, and everyone pitched in to make sure the family was not overwhelmed and could really enjoy the great occasion.

Similar is the fate of a young start-up with an exciting product that catches the fancy of its target customers, raising expectations and usage, so much so that their success in getting the customers' interest lays the foundation for failure. Since the growth is unexpected and start-ups are usually strapped for resources — their nascent infrastructure gets strained, leading to customer experience deteriorating — it leads to the demise of the product itself.

This brings us to the conundrum: should a start-up spend time in shoring up the resources to support its untested idea or should they be quick to the market and test the idea as they go along? While the former is more conservative and, probably, something that is more reasonable in thought, it risks investment into untried areas. On the other hand, going with the flow is fraught with issues of scaling and bad customer feedback.

This lesson was learnt quickly in the last few weeks by the new darling of Silicon Valley start-ups, Quora (www.quora.com). Started by some smart people with a lot of experience in places like Facebook and Google, they set up this invitation-only site with questions and answers on any topic.

Users can ask any question and anyone who is a member can answer. Something as simple as this has caught the fancy of a very large number of great influencers and growth has been exponential.

Vibrant questions

I have been asked by many for the invites and I even see a vibrant set of questions originating from — and about — Dubai and the region. More heartening is the fact that there are a lot of people answering them, raising the quality of the responses and the interactivity makes it an invaluable resource.

Quora's success had the same pitfalls, they had trouble keeping up with the growth and users complained of slow responses and delayed e-mails. But, their response is the learning — the team threw all they had at it and built enough capacity overnight to scale up to user expectation. This proves that while getting more customers to use your service is the biggest measure of your success, being ready for them and to be able to provide the service effectively and efficiently is the essential measure. This is achieved by a resource that is not on the top of the agenda of most start-ups in the region — exceptional teams.

Formative years

The quality of the team gets tested at such times and hiring people better than you is a great way of making sure that you create a team that can take the stress and pressure that accompanies the formative years of any start-up. While I am an advocate of outsourcing and focusing on the core — I believe the core team is something that needs to be given far more emphasis in start-ups here.

Young companies usually consist of a single ‘owner' or idea person, the rest being glorified employees. It is unreasonable to expect great success when only you ‘own' and the rest follow.

What is needed is to share the vision and the ownership with smart people. This way success will be long term, quicker and scalable as there will be more people who will share the passion and in depth knowledge on the subject and will, in turn, reduce the risk of failure and dependence on a single person.

Since no single person has a monopoly over ideas and also its almost impossible to execute a good idea alone, the depth of the team can make or break the start-up.

The biggest test comes on judgment day — the day someone wants to buy you out. Reality dawns that the value of the company is tied to you as the only central pillar. Remember, you can only cash the value of your creation when it runs equally well without you. So, make sure you have ‘team building' as an essential item in your shopping list while putting together that great idea into reality towards a stellar startup.

The writer is an entrepreneur, mentor and angel investor based in Dubai. He is also the secretary-general of Indian Business & Professional Council, Dubai.