There are thousands of businesses that open their digital doors each year and whilst it is exciting to be operating a new start-up as a digital entrepreneur, it is one of the most difficult times you’ll face throughout your entire career in business.
Although thousands of new businesses are started each year, only a fraction will survive their first year and only a fraction of those thereon will survive the second. After ten years, only a few remain. This is the case across all industries.
Whether you are running an e-commerce business, provide professional services, or are a digital marketer, keep on reading for some very valuable information.
5 Problems You Will Face as a Digital Entrepreneur
As a digital entrepreneur, you will come face to face with all these problems and how you handle them will play in your long-term success and survival.
1. Accounting and finance
This is, by far, the biggest problem faced by a new digital entrepreneur. Accounting is vast and complex (and not exactly the most interesting thing in the world!) and for these reasons, many new business owners put it off.
To stay on top of your company’s books, we recommend looking into a comprehensive piece of accounting software or completely outsourcing it to a third-party accounting firm. The latter is best, but there are some good software solutions available, too.
Finances and tax are the most common reasons new start-ups fail, so make sure you are always on top of it. If not, get it sorted as soon as possible!
There’s a reason why every single successful company has a visible social media presence… because it works. Social media is now the most popular and lucrative marketing platform there is and simply by having a presence on websites such as Facebook and Instagram, you set your company up for success.
Social media platforms let you reach your target market across the world, humanizes your business, and lets you connect with your customers through widely-used and popular services.
3. Recruiting staff
Knowing when you need a helping hand in-house is one thing, doing it is another. Whilst you can get by in your company’s early days by utilizing contractors and freelancers, to grow properly and truly make a success of your business, you will eventually need to hire fully-fledged staff.
Recruiting is a long and drawn-out process that is time-consuming and can be very complicated. When your business gets to this point it is always going to be a good idea to outsource to recruitment agencies—let’s face it, you’re not going to have a HR department to do it for you at this point—who will handle everything for you for a flat fee.
4. Creating a website
You simply can’t get by without a website anymore—businesses that fail to establish a web presence will not last very long.
Fortunately, creating a basic site is relatively easy. If you are an e-commerce company, you may want to turn to the likes of Shopify or Prestashop. WordPress, on the other hand, is better for providers of non-tangible products and services.
When you start your business, make sure you have a basic site that is active and working. You can always invest in a swish re-design further down the line.
5. Knowing when to scale up
If any group of people is known for being eager to grow, it is the digital entrepreneur. We can hardly blame them, however, trying to reach your long-term goals and grow too quickly can result in wasted time and resources.
Scaling up your business is one of the final start-up challenges a digital entrepreneur will face. How you’ll scale up depends on your company, what you offer, and the industry you offer in—it is a data-driven decision and process that needs a lot of thought and planning prior to execution.
This Is Not an Exhaustive List
These are just, from our experience, five of the main challenges a digital entrepreneur will face when starting up their own company—there are many, many more! By knowing what your primary challenges will be, you will be better prepared to face them and, hopefully, come out on top in a world where lots of start-ups are destined to fail from the beginning.
