7 Financial Tips for Founders Before Launching a Startup

Manage Your Cash Flow Like Your Survival Depends on It 

The reason we word it this way, is that ultimately your cash flow is the be-all and end-all of your business’s survival. It’s very easy (and common) for fledgling startups to be so enamoured with their product or service that they either underestimate the importance of their cash flow, or worse, ignore it all together.

Once you run out of cash, it simply doesn’t matter how good your business idea is — it’s over, and there is no coming back. Thankfully there is a simple fix, and that is to be aware of every single dollar that comes in and out of your business. Make sure you know exactly what money is being spent on, and where money is coming from. 

If you’re not a numbers person, that’s totally okay, but be sure to delegate either a staff member or professional service provider to take care of your accounting for you. If either of those are out of the question in terms of budget, there are plenty of online accounting platforms that will help you with your cash flow management. 

Customer Acquisition Is Your Startup’s Lifeblood

It may sound like we are stating the obvious here, but with so many things going on when you are building your startup, at times you might be distracted from your core task, and that is acquiring new customers.

Once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit, start to systematically explore other customer acquisition channels. A great place to start is customer referrals — the costs are minimal and word of mouth is proven to be the world’s most influential form of advertising. 

Optimise and scale your approach to customer referrals, and then move on to other channels, such as social media and traditional advertising and marketing after that.

Read more about the rest of our 7 financial tips for entrepreneurs launching a startup at InCorp Global.