Learning from Failure – Business is for Profit

The first rule of business is that we are in it to make a profit. If we cannot, it will not sustain. There exist a lot of areas where real problems do exist, though making money is difficult. We need to clearly analyse and research whether the sector we are entering is monetizable and to what extent.

Poliana was a startup which faced a harsh reality about the sector it was operating in, Politics. It was a political startup aiming to make the communication between political parties and the citizens easier through the use of technology. The team’s entire focus was on making Poliana a great product by solving the problem they had identified, and not on making it a business. What they realized was that owing to the nature of concept they had and the space they were operating it, it became very difficult for them to make money out of something which deserved to be free.

Advice – A startup should definitely be based on solving a problem. However, care should be taken in assessing whether the problem is in a space in which the business can generate profits.