“I’m sorry to the hundreds of thousands of customers who validated our idea by shipping enough packages to circle the earth half a million times over.” These are the words from , an on-demand startup offering shipping and fulfillment services. In March 2018, the company ceased operations and had laid off all employees. What happened to this innovative startup idea? What caused to its shut down? Kevin Gibbon, CEO of Shyp Are you an entrepreneur? Are you running any startup? Do you wish to develop your idea into a money-spinning business? This post is for you. It is definitely worth reading if you are falling into any of the above categories. Shyp: A Company That Once Raised A Total Of $62 Million In Funding This story is different. Credit: wearecoordinate.com With an objective to make shipping easier and possible with the touch of a button, Shyp was developed as ‘Uber-of-shipping’ app. The app had offered a very simple yet novel, on-demand approach to the shipping services and it was very popular among the people of the USA. It allowed the customer to snap a photo of gift, electronic, or other items they wanted to send and then enabled users to enter destination and pick-up time. The company had provision for picking up items in shortest time, packaging of those items, and delivering to the requested destination. That was really an excellent idea as it redefined how postal services or shipping companies deliver an item. It is now a history and that taught every one of us a bigger lesson. What Went Wrong? Was it based on a poor business model? Yes, you can say. “ ,” About two years ago, we reallocated resources and shifted our focus to a more profitable customer cohort: small businesses. But, we decided to keep the popular-but-unprofitable parts of our business running, with small teams of their own behind them. This was a mistake — my mistake Gibbon wrote. The other factor, “We charge a $5 pickup fee, and that includes the packaging and coming to your home. And all items are not created equal. Shipping your shoes versus shipping your TV, it actually doesn’t sound like it makes a lot of business or financial sense. It doesn’t,” said Gibbon No, it is not true if you are thinking that bad user experience could also be one of the reasons. Shyp offered unparalleled customer experience with well-designed functions and user interfaces. “Everything Begins With An Idea.” Every startup, be it at the initial phase or grown-up, needs to read key takeaways from this story. What Do We Need To Learn From This? On-demand technologies now don’t attract customers be it a grocery, automobile, or maintenance service Everything is already available if you are choosing an on-demand model You need a long-term strategy to run a business You need to evaluate customers’ needs often Only fundraising can’t make your startup successful Sustainable ideas make sense rather than copying and pasting On the other side, Yerdle co-founder Carl Tashian shared the reasons what kills startups. He wrote, Behavioral, cultural, and interpersonal issues are among the biggest killers of startups, but they are seldom discussed in public. It is undeniably true. There are many factors we need to keep in mind when we are discussing the success of a startup. Many buzzwords come and go and the same happens with trends. For instance, we have observed the massive success of on-demand businesses. According to one source, 86.5 million Americans have used an on-demand service. People embraced it across the world, but as they say now every on-demand model has to undergo a reinvention to prove its potential. “It is of utmost importance to keep up with the changes.” Technology is deeply deployed regardless of the domains. Many startups have turned out to giant tech organizations and their services are used by people over the world. It is not true every time that you need to think something groundbreaking or out-of-the-box to get success. You need to think differently, that’s the point. Need an example? Here it is. Tapzo is acquired by Amazon Pay investing around $40 million If you are not aware of Tapzo, let us clear that first. Tapzo is an Indian startup that aggregates various apps like Uber, Ola, other food delivery services like Swiggy, Zomato, entertainment-based services like Book My Show, and bill payment services like BillDesk and many more into a single app. That sounds interesting. You need only one app to access app-based services. Focusing on how your idea can be of use makes difference. Mergers and acquisitions become mainstream news in day-to-day life. In such circumstances, how you leverage technology to implement your idea is worth to discuss. Whether you are focusing on a technology-driven idea or you want to spread awareness about your startup through technologies — in both cases, how you select your resources can be the key factor in the success of any startup. How You Select Your Technology Partner? Do They Help Validating Your Idea? Do They Help In Ideation? Before we proceed further, here are some questions you need to answer: Are you clear about your idea? Who are your users? Are you solving any problem of the user? Have you written or illustrated your idea? Do you have multiple ideas and its dimension to select from? Can you do a demonstration of your idea well? If you are not able to give suitable answers to the any of above questions, you can take help of startup technology partner who can sit with you, talk about your idea, help validate it, define the scope of the idea, and identify probable risks associated with it. From suggesting a right stack of technology to the end accomplishment, startup consulting service can help to test your idea through Proof of Concept ( ). Furthermore, if you want to test your basic idea with minimal features, there is a process to build (Minimum Viable Product) before you go for the actual implementation of an idea. POC MVP All you need to do is find experienced startup technology partner who helps right from the funding needs to the maintenance part to ensure its growth. If you want to know in-depth services, take a look below: Discuss your idea Validate and define Prototyping and risk analysis Design and development Quality assurance and testing at every level End-to-end support for product launch Maintenance and feedback Experience and expertise together can get the job done. If you want to build your own business or execute your unique idea, don’t wait. With 30+ years of experience, customer-first approach, and skills to provide end-to-end IT services, we @ are helping startups and entrepreneurs to shape their ideas into reality. SPEC INDIA Think about how you can better implement your idea with the help of right technologies by selecting right . Startup IT solution provider

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