Today it is extremely easy to jump into the pool but it may not be as easy to swim.
No, I am not a life guard at the local summer swimming hole. I am an entrepreneur. A tech entrepreneur to be exact. And that first sentence at the start of this piece is not only a cautionary note for summer recreation, it is a good thing to consider if you are in the process of starting your own “market disrupting” tech company.
After all, it takes very little to be a tech startup in today’s world. Oh, sure, you need to have a good idea and a way (or ability) to build the technology. But for those with those fundamentals, with little more than a $500 laptop and a good Wi-Fi connection, you can be a tech startup too.
With a reasonable idea and the drive and determination to bring that idea to life, the barriers to starting are incredibly low and apparently very popular. If you don’t believe me, go to any local Starbucks and look around. Lots of people sitting and tapping on the keyboards of their laptop.
In fact, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an incredible number of people do just that every year. The flip side of that coin, according to that same agency, is that most will fail before they reach their second anniversary.
Why would that be? After all, it is so easy to start? Why would they fail?
The allure of starting a business, being independent, and no longer being at the will and whim of the large corporate matrix is often offset by the reality that starting may be dependent upon a good idea, but succeeding is dependent upon whole a lot more.
While the barriers to starting a tech company are low, the barriers to success are incredibly high in today’s world. We think that it doesn’t need to be that way.
As one of the area’s premier co-working service providers, we see startups from an entirely different perspective. We arrived at our business on a different road than most of the co-working companies in the region. We are a team of tech startup veterans and have seen – and experienced – firsthand what it takes for a fledgling tech startup to succeed.
From our own direct experiences, we know that as a tech startup the entrepreneur tends to be a domain expert. They have an extremely high level of skills and knowledge but it is very narrowly focused on their domain expertise.
They probably lack the broad business knowledge, the specific marketing and sales or operational skills needed to succeed. Whether that is a lack of business experience, a need for technical resources, technical training or office space, these are the fatal barriers to success for them.
Recognizing that, when we began to develop the idea and plan for extraSlice, we knew that we wanted to redefine how to approach entrepreneurship for technology startups. We wanted to develop a concept of a co-working community that was more than just another co-working space.
So we did.
Today, extraSlice is a community, it’s a technology platform and it’s a place for tech, created to reduce the barriers to success for technology startups by providing affordable workspace, tech training, technical resources and business support services programmed into a seamless, easily accessible platform. By molding space, training and services into a seamless, accessible program, we are breaking down the barriers to success for tech startups in the region.
extraSlice: It is a community, it’s a technology platform and it’s a place for tech.
