The Four Steps To The Epiphany

The Four Steps To The Epiphany shows startups how to plan for and achieve success by giving examples of companies that failed and outlining the path they need to take to flourish.

As a startup, you can’t use the same methods as giant companies and expect success for many reasons. For one, a larger business can offer a product to the mainstream market but you can’t.

Businesses that have been around a while already have a customer base and an understanding of their competitors. They can use a product development process where the product comes first, then the customers.

But you must reverse this process with customer development by first building a customer base then building a product that will help them. You don’t know the market yet, so you’d fail if you tried to move forward without learning about it first.

Another reason you can’t act like a big business yet is that you don’t know the type of market that you’re going to be in. As a startup founder, you still don’t even know if your business idea is going to work.

You have to prove that the future you’re envisioning for your company is viable. Take on the mentality of a hero being summoned to go on a quest. You’ve got to go into unknown paths and overcome difficulties along the way.

Don’t forget to use the power of your original calling to motivate you to keep going where others would fail.

You’ll be tempted as you begin to use a cookie-cutter template to run your business. But it’s important to remember that every startup is different so your strategy should follow suit. The best way to determine what direction you want to go in is to start by finding your market type. The author references three that you might consider going into: Existing markets New markets Resegmenting existing markets Each one has it’s advantages and disadvantages, so let’s dive into them! Existing markets are those where you already know the customers you’ll serve and competitors that you’re going to face. Not having to find new customers is nice because it saves you time. But competing against big name brands is tough. You could instead decide to go for new markets, which would mean finding brand new niches to go after. The pros and cons here are just the opposite of existing ones. Big competition isn’t a problem, but you do need to invest a lot of effort to discover who your customers are. Alternatively, you could resegment an existing market by finding new ways to serve them that don’t exist. You might, for example, find a cheaper or more efficient way to offer a product or…