Business ownership: Startup challenges and opportunities

Be sure you have a deep understanding of your market and have specific strategies to address the critical issues of what your competition looks like, how you’ll define and differentiate yourself in the market, and what your specific plans are to scale. Make sure you have all your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted but don’t delay launch unnecessarily to chase perfection.

As an entrepreneur, it’s impossible to be good at everything. Early on, be brutally honest with yourself in determining the internal functions with which you need help. Acknowledging where you have skills gaps goes a long way toward building a solid company foundation from the beginning.

It’s never too early to think about your company’s value at exit because you will begin creating this at inception. To that end, think through your entity type options and what those will look like at exit: family transition, franchise, or an outright third-party sale. After all, starting a company with the intent of selling within 10 years looks very different from starting one that you, and possibly your family, will own and run for decades. Thinking about this early on can help prevent wrong turns along the way.