The First 90 Days of Your Business

It’s 2018, and you are really doing it. You have long imagined your product on the end cap at Walmart and practiced what you’ll say when Mark Cuban grills you about your competitive edge. But this year, you are finally launching a business. Where do you start? Leigh Buchanan asked some of the top business minds what you should do in the first 90 days, a crucial time in your business’s life. Get these early steps right and you’ll create a sound foundation for a profitable, growing business.

- Leigh Buchanan

The likelihood that your startup will be profitable is influenced heavily by the speed at which you launch. The number of tasks you do in those early months is more crucial to success than the type of tasks you do, although anything involving customer contact helps, according to the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, which tracks samples of new entrepreneurs. “Those implementing more startup activities faster are more likely to see profits,” says Paul Reynolds, the study’s coordinating principal investigator.

Beyond the specific tasks that PSED examines—things like developing financial projections and obtaining supplier credit—startup activities tend to fall into two categories. The first is openminded discovery. Initially, everything is assumption: financials, customers, go-to-market strategy. The only thing you know for certain is your own strengths, and even there you may be surprised.

This exploratory approach is at the core of Lean Startup. It is responsible for the disdain, in some quarters, for business plans. It is behind what’s called “effectual entrepreneurship,” a research based approach that considers launching a business to be largely an act of improvisation.

The second type of startup activity recognizes that entrepreneurship is social. Doubtless you have lived with your idea for a long time. Now that you’re launching, you have to get out of your head. Figure out whom you will draw on, in what capacity, and how those relationships will work. Input from partners, advisers, potential customers, and others brings new perspectives and shape to the enterprise. Networking is like raiding the fridge: seeing who might offer you warehouse space or logo-design services or an introduction to a potential customer.