A lot of times, what prevents aspiring entrepreneurs with great ideas from kick-starting their business ventures is the lack of sufficient funds and the lack of confidence to start something with no money. Although not having money is a valid concern, with right set of skills and strategies, one can still go ahead with his or her business plan. It might not be a smooth ride, but it’s definitely not impossible. In this article, we have picked 5 ways by which one can start a business with little or no money.
1. Start with what you have and what you know
To begin with, it’s always better to use resources that you already have or are readily available to you free of cost. Use your existing skills, expertise and knowledge and if they aren’t enough, develop new skills and accumulate more relevant knowledge instead of hiring consultants or depending on external assistance that demands money. Use your own laptop, make use of free wi-fi whenever its available, make use of free advertising and marketing options, try to do all the work by yourself. Such strategies will help you cut costs.
2. Take up small jobs to raise money
How about helping your neighbour’s children with maths for couple of hours a day and getting fees in return? How about providing catering services to small birthday parties once a week? How about offering a local delivery service? It’s advisable to pick a couple of such jobs to generate some money to help yourself and your business. If you already have a job, hold on to it until your business venture starts earning for you. However, you should also be sure of saving sufficient time and energy to work on your business.
3. Provide services to collect funds initially
Starting a service-oriented business is comparatively easier because you don’t need a lot of money for it. Therefore, create services and sell them to fund your product based business. In short, instead of raising money and building your product, which is a conventional way, you first build products for someone else, make money and use it to create your product.
4. Try various funding sources
It’s always good to look out for funding. Some banks and financial services offer credit for startup ventures. You could also use an incubator that might be ready to share their resources like office space and human resources with startups. They offer financial assistance too in many cases. Another option is to make use of an accelerator, which is same as an incubator except that the former is primarily focussed on funding. One more option that is being largely used these days is crowd-fund. There are platforms that allow public to invest in your startups. Of course, to try these options, you need to have a workable business model ready and in most cases you need to convince funders that your business is profitable. Also, once you get some funding, it is important to avoid overspending.
5. Initially create only those products that the market is already ready for
You might have a brilliant idea, but what if the market isn’t ready for it? One needs to be aware that what you plan to create is not necessarily what the customers want at that point. Yes you can always create new market for your product, but when you are just starting your business, it’s better to create something for which the market is already ready. This helps you sell your product sooner. Once you make money, you can invest it for the product that you wanted to create.
So these were some of the tips for someone who’s starting a new business. There could be many more useful ideas that might come handy when a budding entrepreneur wants to start a new business with no money or in some cases, limited money and resources. Certainly, having little or no money shouldn’t stop you from kick-starting your business.