“If You Have an Idea, Get Started”
Victoria Ransom - Tips for Entrepreneurs
Wildfire Interactive is an icon of a successful startup. Since founding in 2009, the company with its software platform for streamlining social media promotion campaigns, have grown to more than a hundred employees in four offices worldwide and have only taken $4 million in venture capital, most of which is unspent as they now have self-sustaining profits. Speaking to us at TiEcon 2011, where Wildfire won the TiE50 Award in the Internet/Social Networking category, CEO and Founder Victoria Ransom gave us her thoughts on what it takes to build a successful business. Her advice is featured in this HP Startup Central Tips for Entrepreneurs episode titled, “If You Have an Idea, Get Started.”
Ransom’s primary tip to entrepreneurs, particularly those coming out of business school, is to avoid getting too caught up in strategy around your ideas. She recommends getting a prototype out early and testing your idea quickly to see if you find traction. Wildfire, she notes, was never envisioned to be a company, “We just started with something and it worked and we iterated.
To maximize opportunities, Ransom suggests that entrepreneurs look for fundamental shifts to happen and then build ideas quickly from them rather than trying to build something within an existing space. “If you have a business idea and it’s in an existing space, you’ve really go to ask yourself why is your idea going to be different than every other idea that’s come along in this space or why do you have some special competitive advantage to succeed in this space that likely has others in it?” she notes. On the other hand, making a new market provides a much better place for entrepreneurs to compete.
Finally, Ransom lists a few other key attributes of successful startups. Being strategic, finding the balance between being thoughtful but not over-thinking, working hard and hiring well are all important she says. In particular, hiring your first employees as you scale is a difficult step that she sees as essential.
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