3 Tips For Launching a Successful Startup Business in Kenya

Starting a successful Kenyan startup requires more than a good idea—understanding your customers, differentiating your brand, and communicating your value are vital to avoid the 80% failure rate. Learn from common pitfalls and discover essential tips to turn your entrepreneurial vision into a thriving business.

Statistics collected by Bloomberg indicate that 8 out of every 10 startups end up collapsing before the start of their third year. That is a whopping 80% of startups that crash and burn when they are still in their infancy.

As an entrepreneur, you should be asking yourself why so many startup businesses in Kenya fail. If you wish to turn your next startup into a success, you should be learning from the amount of failing startups.

What do these businesses do or fail to do that contributes to their untimely closure?

In this article, I share the 3 common pitfalls that are usually the death knell of many startups in Kenya:

Failing to keep in touch with your customers

What usually happens when a businessman has a brilliant idea that he or she thinks is the next big thing in the enterprise world?

Many entrepreneurs retreat into a shell. They hibernate into their work caves and get busy implementing their ideas.

This is the wrong approach to business.

You need to get out there and talk to your potential customers. Not through 140 character tweets but a deep dialogue that seeks to understand what your customers’ passions, fears and strengths are.

Holding dialogue with your customers is the first key to business success.

Lacking real differentiation in the market

How unique is your business idea?

One of the reasons why your startup will fail is if you are trying to do what everyone else in the market is doing.

Since most of the business do not have real value that they are adding into the market, they end up closing their doors and wondering what went amiss.

Failure to communicate your unique value proposition clearly

Communication is an art and a science. Unfortunately, if you do not know how to communicate your business goals and mission clearly, it doesn’t matter how brilliant your business idea is, it will end up with the 80% that never celebrate their third year anniversary.

The above three factors mark the most common pitfalls that lead to the crumble of many startups in Kenya. Now that you know the reasons why businesses fail, I trust that you can come up with ways to salvage yours from joining the colossal statistics.