From Idea to Launch: How to Start a Tech Company

Starting a tech company could be an incredibly lucrative endeavor—assuming that you have the right plan. That’s because tech is remaking the world we live in remarkable ways, and consumers are always looking for new solutions to solve problems they face, become more productive, and lead more fulfilling lives. Technological advancements can provide these sorts of benefits, but just because you have a great idea doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to attract investors and ultimately execute it.

In fact, launching a tech company starts well before you’re meeting with investors to discuss the viability of your business model. From idea to launch, there are a series of decisions you’ll make that need to be taken seriously if you want to succeed. Here are just a few tips to keep in mind as you move from ideation to execution.

Find a framework that helps you stay on track.

One of the first things you’re going to want to do if you want to succeed in the tech sector is come up with a gameplan. However, it isn’t enough to simply write down a few goals in an email to your collaborators and call it a day. Nowadays, productivity is determined almost as much by how you organize your teams as it is by how you define your goals. When you really need to succeed at both, the OKR framework is an ideal way to achieve success.

OKR stands for objectives and key results and helps you define what your top priorities are as well as what sorts of key performance indicators will be affected by the achievement of those objectives. As a result, it’s an incredibly efficient way to align your team members across departments while you work towards a shared goal. Profit.co provides software that makes it easier than ever to design OKRs and track your business’ progress as you work to achieve each objective. OKRs are reliable, too; they’ve been used by tech giants like Google, so you know you’re in good company if you choose to adopt OKR software to help your business run.

Invest in technology that makes your company more efficient.

Beyond using OKR software to help you achieve your goals, you’re going to want other tools that help make it easier to perform day-to-day operations. Keep in mind that starting out you’ll likely be a small team with a variety of roles. This means it’s even more important to find tools that help you stay agile and perform a wide range of duties day-in and day-out. Technology can help with that immensely.

A great example of how tech can help you is when it comes to picture and video storage. The best cloud storage solution offers you the amount of storage you need to safely and securely handle all of your high-quality videos and photographs, but it needs other features for collaboration, too. Being able to organize media from multiple sources and manage permissions for different users is just as important, especially leading up to a big marketing campaign. Research a few different options, like Sandisk’s ibi, to see how different platforms could help make your company work better.

Perform market research before moving forward with a project.

Too often, startups get excited about an idea and are convinced that because they’re excited about the solution others will be, too. While that’s an easy way to test initial interest, without market research you won’t truly have an understanding of what customers are looking for and how they’re already using tech to address some of those needs. When it comes to market research, a 360-degree approach will ultimately be the most beneficial, so make sure to invest time, energy, and money into this crucial process before you start setting up meetings with investors.