1. Competitions

Not only strong but fierce ones in the corporate world. Competition poses one of the biggest challenges for the survival of startup businesses, and even more challenging for online business startups, the competition gets tougher. Startups cannot afford to relax or be complacent but be on their toes with practically zero margins of errors – damn if you do and damn if you don’t.

To survive the strong competitions faced by business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C), startups have to be aggressive in challenging traditional and online businesses.

2. Unrealistic Expectations

Startups face challenges when they set unrealistic expectations following a booming success. Success is a short-lived experience and expectations continue.

Sustainability is the key and requires consistency.

To survive and succeed in a very competitive business world, startups will need to have highly focused realistic expectations, resources availability, potentiality of growth and factors of market forces.

3. Hiring Suitable Candidates

The team fit or synergy is an important factor that defines organisational culture in a startup company, consisting of individuals with similar skill sets, capabilities and vision. To form a credible team culture, organisations and startups need to hire suitable candidates. Recruiting a suitable candidate who will fit the job well is easier said than done. It is high on the list of challenges facing startup businesses in our digital age. When hiring a suitable candidate, organisations have to remember the golden rule of birds of a feather flock together.

4. Partnership Decision-Making

Partnership in startups is the essence in order to succeed today. In the ever-expanding and ever-changing digital age where organisations need to fight tooth and nail for their survival, startups face the difficulty of finding trustworthy partners. It is a big challenge for startups and as far as Tech startups are concerned, stakes in partnership are high. It is a known fact that embarking into a partnership will pay dividends for startups but startups should consider a number of considerations before making a decision to collaborate with another company working in the same ecosystem or industry. To reap maximum benefits from a partnership, startups should look for organisations who are reputable in the market and with the industry Big Boys.

5. Financial Management

Money begets money. Note the fact that when income increases so will the cost of expenditures. Managing company finances is one of the biggest challenges startups face and this saying No Money No Talk is aptly obvious.

The smaller startups rely heavily on financial backups from investors.

Startups need to be prudent in managing their business finances and having a reputable financial investment firm will be beneficial in managing financial crises that startups will be facing today’s challenging world of business.

6. Cybersecurity 

We are living in the digital age and small startups operating online should be equipped to counter online security threats. Hacking is rampant these days and hackers are going to take advantage of any loophole in the systems implemented in a startup firm. The rate of cyber crimes has increased dramatically during the past few years. Startups who are active online will face online security threats, be it unauthorised access to startup’s sensitive information, employee records, bank accounts information, or any other related information that is deemed important for the survival of a tech startup, they are at risk. To safeguard important online data, startups need to have robust and high-grade security systems in place. A virtual private network (VPN) connection serves the purpose of protecting a startup’s information and employee records, by offering the much needed encryption and data security to the startup’s employees, thereby restricting unauthorised access to organisational data over the web.

7. Winning the Trust of Customers

Our customer is the king, and so is Cash (flow). Winning the customer’s trust is essential. With a highly satisfied and loyal customer base, startups can scale and make progress towards excellence. Customers are the real force behind a startup’s success. Their word-of-mouth power and their presence on social media can give tech startups an edge against all traditional businesses. To win customers’ trust and loyalty, startups need to work aggressively to implement a customer-centric working philosophy so as to enable them to succeed in their pursuit of attaining the height of sustainable growth and progress they desire to achieve in this tech-savvy and challenging business world.

In order to face and tackle the challenges of the vicious dog-eat-dog business world, startups need to be resilient and focus on keeping their integrity intact against all odds.