Today is the age of start-ups and small businesses. People are willing to take the risks involved, the government and investors are looking to sponsor good  ventures, and the user-base is ready to try out new offerings. Despite it all, according to Failory, 2 out of 10 new businesses fail in their very first year. 9  out of 11 startups end up having to shut operations.

Why is this the case? Is there a fundamental issue with the product itself? Most often, the issue is with product scaling.

Product Scaling refers to ensuring that a product is robust enough to survive the market scenario, and grow to make a healthy profit. While it is important that the environment is conducive for growth, here are five ways you can experiment and figure out what works for your product.

1. Plan your Idea as a Business model

The first step in setting up a company is to have a good idea, one that solves a pain point for the customer. The customer needs to care enough about the problem, and the solution must ease all or some aspect of it. However great the idea, it cannot succeed without a great business model. Effectively, this conversion becomes the first major step in your startup journey.

A good business model rides on the startup idea and aims to reach its customer ensuring they see value from the product. It takes into account the current state of finances and charts out a course that will enable you to keep up with the ups and downs in your startup journey. This process includes identifying the right channels to reach out to your customers, and setting up an infrastructure that can sustain business growth. The right business model will help you navigate challenges, while holding up the other ends stable.3

2. Visualize revenue entrance to signal confidence

How do you craft a business model that can sustain your demands? Let us look into some of the nuances to keep in mind while planning your business model.

• Target persona : What is the business segment you are targeting? Who is your ideal buyer?
• Value Proposition: What is the main pain point of your buyer? How are you going to address their issue? Will the solution/s completely address their problem?
• Marketing Plan: How are you going to reach out to your prospective customers? How are you going to interact with them at each stage of the  marketing funnel?
• Customer Success : How are you going to provide continuous value for your customer, once they decide to buy your product? What kind of support/assistance will you offer?
• Pricing Strategy: What price strategy are you going to adopt? How are you going to plan your pricing as your business grows?
• Resource Planning: What are the resources you need to keep your business up and running? Have you covered everything from labor to license’s?
• Business Planning: What are the activities you need to perform to ensure your product sees a successful run? Who are the people who can help you  here – be it advisors, partners, or third party agencies?

With all these pointers in mind, plan your basic infrastructure. Put together a cost estimate. Analyze. Repeat. Keep working on the infrastructure until you achieve a satisfactory mix of cost vs services offered.

3. Prototype to confirm adopters

Once you have arrived at a reasonable infrastructure setup, you need to test it out in the real world to understand if your assumptions and reasoning are correct. Put together a prototype and observe how your customer receives it. Get their feedback and you know what your next set of activities should be.

There is no set business model that will work for your company. Study popular and successive business models and use them to start with. Fine tune them according to your requirements. Iterate based on feedback and reception. Do these right at the beginning of your Go-To-Market phase. Change your entire model if needed. Arrive at the business model that works for you, and create your own story.

4. Locate your ideal 2 years ecosystem

You now have your business model and your first working prototype that has given you satisfactory results. What next?

This is where the real-world test comes into the picture. While so far the product has always been in your control, you start encountering factors like the environment that you put together your product in, your customer market scenario, market changes like new technologies and price fluctuations,
unaccounted for events like the pandemic, constraints with respect to money, resources, time, demand, supply……. The way to deal with this is to account for uncertainty in your business model, have room for change, and grab opportunities as they come, even if it means adapting your business model to newer events.

5. Declare your proofs to create further interests

Do not panic if your first prototype fails. Infact, panic if it works. Only the mistakes you make will help you make the right changes to your business model. Intensify the testing process as your pattern evolves. Plan, create, make mistakes, fail, learn, reiterate, repeat, succeed – This is the only successful model.

Ensure you document the hypothesis, reasoning and results at every stage. As your business model evolves, you have arrived at a successful strategy that works, with the needed proofs to show the world, or reach out to investors, if that's on your mind.

At the end of the day, keep your business model dynamic. A market shift, buyer persona change, or even changing the order of what you plan to work on next might be necessary as your product grows. After all, growth is based on the market and customer preferences, and these are factors that change rapidly in today’s world.

These are all you need to move from idea to a successful business. While it may sound like too many things, this is a natural order of process, and solves the most fundamental of all problems that new founders encounter.