Challenges faced by start-ups

Abstract

Startups face a lot of challenges in the initial few years of inception.Our study focusses on challenges faced by first generation startups, i.e. started by people with high technical or managerial expertise and generally with high opportunity cost.The report has been prepared after a personal interview with 15+respondents across sectors.Although the importance of different issues varies depending on the type of business and sector, but there are certain common challenges which most of these firms face.The study focuses more on challenges on the personal front like family support, motivation, and other similar issues.Challenges faced by these firms can be broadly classified as those which are indispensable, i.e., which are thought prior to the operation begins and those who are inhibitors to the working.Indispensable issues like finances, marketing, and others are dynamic and always integral to the system.A great deal of thinking goes into making the business plan sustainable with this constraints.Inhibitor issues like motivation, running capital requirement, core-team formation,and support from the family,giving control, managing relationships with partners, etc. are dealt in detail in the study.In our study, we found that the three main challenges that the startup's face are meeting the financial requirements which include working capital requirement and more importantly personal financial, finding the correct set of people especially the core team and getting support from the family. The challenges or issues identified in the study can be used as guidelines for potential startups.This report may be used to identify issues in advance and thus prevent or resolve these with the wisdom from similar experiences.