Entrepreneur's Handbook
INTRODUCTION
Many entrepreneurs start new businesses with big dreams, big goals and great excitement, but most of these businesses fail. (Global Startup Ecosystem Report, 2018). When looking at the reasons for failures, the inadequacy of the business idea or the team, the business model not being competitive, lack of capital, timing error can be listed. However, even when all of these are true, entrepreneurs have a problem of success. The firm named "Butigo" mentioned in the case study has set up the right team to do the job, has set up a competitive business model, started to work at the right time, and presented a capital that seems sufficient to start. Despite this, he was almost in danger of extinction at the beginning of the work and afterwards he was able to get the job together with the combination of awareness, effort and luck. So even if companies do everything right, if the probability of success is so low, how can entrepreneurs increase this probability and approach success beyond just being lucky?
The answer to this question is, above all, to be cautious about the initiative. It is important to have a vision, to believe that it will be successful, and to be optimistic. However, this does not prevent risks from reducing. The entrepreneurial tendencies of companies and individuals are identified in the literature with taking risks, being innovative and being proactive. (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996; Covin & Slevin, 1989). But actually, entrepreneurs don't like to take risks. Good entrepreneurs are people who minimize risks and work to remove uncertainties. The outside observer says that the entrepreneur takes risks and is very brave, but good entrepreneurs are people who have already made their preparations, have mastered their subject and see what needs to be seen, and do what needs to be done. From this point of view, the entrepreneur is the person who is aware of the risk he takes and manages it. Just like the common point of the athlete who is competing on the field or the artist performing on the stage is to practice and training, the way for the entrepreneur to show good performance is to study the desk lesson, to recognize the various situations he will encounter and to anticipate the negativities he may experience and to accept them and practice to overcome them. As in a well-known saying, "The way to perfection is through preparation." Otherwise, it is identical with ignorant courage. The ignorant person is someone who is closed to learning. Such a person can take every risk, unaware of the possible negative consequences. If he gets lucky, he can be successful. However, it becomes difficult to continue work in the first failure. On the other hand, a person who knows what he is doing and knows what he cannot do is open to learning. He acts with the best he can in his circumstances. Even if his job fails, it forces him to learn from his mistakes and do better. Therefore, the courage of such an entrepreneur comes not from his ignorance, but from his knowledge, practice, and acceptance of any situation that may happen to him. This person does not engage in a job he does not know, but enters a resource he is willing to lose. So when he loses, he sees it as an opportunity to learn from his mistakes, and he has a breath to try again.
Existing companies are structures in search of initiatives while they are the executors of the business on activity (Yang et al., 2018). Most startups don't even have a proven business model yet. For this reason, startups are not small versions of large companies, as many experienced entrepreneurs and investors say (Blank, 2010). There are many stages that initiatives must go through to find the right application, and many assumptions to justify. For this reason, an initiative that is still at the idea stage is based on belief. It is necessary to turn belief into data and data into practice. Feasibility analysis comes into play at this point. The entrepreneur conducts his research in the field he believes in. If the product appeals to an existing market, it is a little easier to analyze. In this case, there will be competition for an already existing demand. Uncertainties in the business model are either very little or everything is very specific. However, competition will be tough. For example, opening a new restaurant or a wholesale production facility is such a business. Competition will be based on price, quality, brand and preference variables. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to express an opinion about the future of the business if the business idea is trying to create a new market. Because there are too many uncertainties. However, once the uncertainties are cleared, the entrepreneur will continue to have the advantages of offering a unique business model in a market where no one is competing. In such a business model, the innovative use of technology and the production of data-based knowledge is probably too high. For example, companies such as Yemek Sepeti create a competitive advantage in this way and offer consumers different values such as accessibility and convenience beyond the price-quality dilemma with their marketplace business model. Marketplace business model is the general name for platforms that unite buyers and sellers and increase accessibility and availability by eliminating intermediaries. Since the early days of the Internet, companies that have scaled the most have had a marketplace business model.
Although feasibility analysis is largely addressed for the needs and demands of the market, the entrepreneur's resources, talents, business partners and vision should also be included in this analysis in terms of showing the harmony between the entrepreneur's business and what he / she has. Feasibility analysis is necessary in order to take an x-ray of the entrepreneurial team and to make the necessary interventions. Investors in particular need such a detailed analysis when evaluating an entrepreneurial team to find value to invest. The entrepreneur may find it difficult to analyze these indicators on his own. However, it will be useful for him to develop this practice if he learns to put himself in the investor's shoes and look through his eyes.
This section describes how initiatives that both address an existing market and create a new market can prepare and practice with feasibility analysis in order to eliminate uncertainties and reduce risks. For this, firstly, the harmony between the resources owned by the entrepreneur and the business idea will be examined and then the investment attractiveness, which is understood by revealing what is known about the market, will be discussed.