Learning from Failure – Identify a Real Audience

The first step for an entrepreneur after identifying a business idea is to identify and validate is the idea has a certain audience and target market. Having a few group discussions or surveys of potential customers is a good way to do so. Working purely on a hunch may result in an entrepreneur realizing certain facts and trends later on and facing difficulties along the way.

Travelll was a startup which was trying to leverage the power of social media to the travel space and ended up creating a travel inspiration portal. The team felt that this was a model which was successful in a lot of other spaces and should be replicated for travel as well. Despite a reasonable start, they realized that the audience for this space was very limited. People travelled only 1-2 times a year, as against other activities such as fashion, photography which were more engaging and regularly used by customers. The startup tried to pivot along the way, but eventually closed down.

Advice – A ‘real and substantial market’ is required to build a scalable business.