The secrets to being a successful startup: Six tips to turn ideas into reality
It’s often said that having a brainwave is the easy bit. Far more difficult is converting entrepreneurial ideas into startup success. This year’s winners of the Zurich Innovation Championship spill the beans on winning strategies and the pitfalls to avoid.
By Vincent Landon
Starting a new business is hard work. Getting an innovative new product or service to market is even tougher. And then becoming a successful startup can feel like an impossible dream.
Most startups don’t succeed with more than two-thirds never delivering a positive return to investors. But some do make it – and make it big.
The winners of the 2023 Zurich Innovation Championship share the secrets to being a successful startup with six tips for turning innovative ideas into business momentum:
1. Stick to your vision
“It is really important to know what risks you want to take and what principles you want to hold yourself to,” says Arun Shanmuganathan, co-founder of Hence Technologies, that looks to match clients with the right lawyer using data and artificial intelligence (AI).
But sticking to your vision can be challenging, especially when others may doubt your idea.
“Don’t be discouraged by people who say it can’t be done,” says Ethan Devine, CEO and founder of Agave Biosensors, a biotech startup that designs wearable sensors for remote patient monitoring. “Any time you are on the cutting edge of something, there are going to be naysayers, there are going to be doubters. So stick to your vision, have conviction and keep fighting.”
2. Build a great team of people
Great ideas need great people to bring them to life. The team’s composition can make or break a startup.
“If you hire the right people in the right places, then you grow,” says Stéphane Favaretto, CEO and co-founder of Minalea, which uses AI to analyze insurance offers and make insurance clearer and more understandable.
It’s a view shared by Rahul Anand, co-founder and CEO of KorrAI, a startup that uses satellites and AI to monitor climate risks associated with ground motion for property insurance. “If you are persistent and put in hard work with the team that you have built, you will achieve success,” he says.
And it’s something Shanmuganathan believes has been key for Hence Technologies as it builds a team from across Africa in its technology hub in Kigali, Rwanda. “The thing I keep coming back to is the importance of choosing the right people,” he says. “Making sure they are really suited to the nature of working in a startup and able to succeed in that environment.”
3. Focus on your customers
Innovative new products and services are worthless unless there’s a customer willing to pay for them.
“You may think you’ve come up with a clever solution to a problem. But if it doesn’t resonate with your clients and customers then it means nothing,” says Lofred Madzou, director of strategy at California-based TruEra, which helps drive more effective AI performance by enabling users to test, debug and monitor machine learning models.
“We are here to serve the customer and not the other way round,” Madzou adds. “You need to be customer driven, stay close to the customer and make sure that you address their needs.”
Maxime Cartan, CEO and co-founder of Citalid whose software quantifies the financial risk of cyber threats, recommends you focus on the problem you are trying to solve, and not necessarily your solution. Especially when you’re pitching to potential new clients.
“Always adapt. Adapt the way you present your idea to potential customers. Because the greatest pitch is really aimed at the people in the room.”
More than 3,500 applications were submitted to the 2023 Zurich Innovation Championship, the highest number ever and up 28 percent on 2022. Thirteen winners were chosen to take part in a four-month accelerator phase to test the practical viability of their initiatives and prepare a business plan together with the Zurich business units that selected them.
4. Be resilient
A startup is an ultramarathon not a sprint, so prepare for a long, hard journey with unexpected events, hurdles and barriers.
“Be patient, flexible, open and don’t give up,” says Daniel Feurstein, chief revenue officer at Omni:us, which uses AI to automate insurance claims processes.
“You can mess up,” adds Feurstein. “But then you must fix the issue and get better over time. Because you don’t learn from success, you learn from failure.”
Agave Biosensors’ Devine says being an entrepreneur involves long hours and can be stressful. “It helps if you have a natural curiosity about the field you’re working in,” he says. “Then you are going to enjoy it at some level.”
Citalid’s Cartan also acknowledges that you need the right temperament to ride the ups and downs. “It’s difficult to manage the rollercoaster of emotions and successes and failures at work. So try and be stable as much as possible in other aspects of your life,” he recommends.
5. Choose collaborators carefully
Working with large corporates can make or break a startup. So choose wisely. But events like the Zurich Innovation Championship (ZIC) that match startups with industry experts can be a game-changer.
“It provided our startup with credibility, in-depth insurance industry knowledge and a global perspective to help us understand regional differences and clearly define our product strategy,” says Dirk Huibers, CEO and co-founder at Spotr.AI, a startup that calculates if a property is underinsured using AI-powered remote inspections and resources such as satellites, planes and Street View.
Feurstein at Omni:us says the attention and visibility provided by ZIC also helped accelerate a process that would normally take months. “As a startup, it is mind-blowing to have this sort of access to senior executives. It would take me at least a year to connect with this amount of relevant people.”
“Obviously having Zurich as a client is a seal of trust,” adds TruEra’s Madzou. “And if we manage to have Zurich unlock the potential of AI in the insurance industry, it has far-reaching consequences across other industries.”
6. Use your time wisely
The importance of timing and pacing the growth of your startup cannot be over-estimated.
“We went too big, too soon,” admits Sarah Baldry, chief marketing officer at Wysa, which develops AI chatbots to help millions of people with their mental health.
“We started off with consumers on app stores and grew very quickly as a lot of people are desperate to find help,” explains Baldry. “Then we grew the team rapidly to accommodate growth in multiple markets, from large corporates to public health institutions without realizing quite how much time and effort each area would take as it scaled. The lesson we learned was to take the market in bite-sized chunks.”
Huibers from Spotr.AI says you must carefully select investors and customers to work with. “Before you know it, you’re doing five different things,” he says. “We are only a small company with 25 to 30 people, so you have to say no to certain opportunities at a certain time.”
But don’t focus too long on timing, adds Minalea’s Favaretto. He believes if you have a great idea for a product or service, which meets a customer need better than the competition, then stop wavering and take the plunge.
“Go for it,” he advises. “At one moment, you need to stop thinking and forget all the Excel sheets. Disconnect from your brain and just jump.”
In other words, don’t wait to start up. There is no perfect time.
