Launching your tech startup may seem like the most difficult challenge of your life, but getting your business set up is just the beginning. As you start managing your startup, you’ll find that there are more obstacles than you might have imagined. The best way to avoid many of these problems is by developing a management style that provides the basics for meeting these issues and overcoming them.

Follow Your Business Plan

When you were going through the beginning phases of developing your startup, one of the first things you did was to create a business plan. This should have been a strong plan that you intended to follow once you launched your startup. A thorough plan is helpful in obtaining funding, permits, and other services essential to the start of your business. It’s also a great resource for helping you manage your startup. Your business plan should be used as a guide for operating your business. It should also provide solutions for common problems that you anticipated facing. If you’re confronted with a new challenge, add the solution to that challenge when you update your business plan. By adding to your plan and amending it based on your experiences, it will become a more useful guide in the future.

Hire the Right Help

Your employees will become the face of your business as far as the public is concerned. Even when hiring for positions that don’t require specialized skills, you should look for a strong work history. In addition to preferring experience in filling every role, look for an energetic personality, a strong sense of creativity, and a passion for the product or service you’ll sell. If you hire someone who is just looking for a paycheck, you run a greater risk of bringing a bad employee into the mix. Someone who doesn’t care about performing well can adversely affect company culture in addition to giving your startup a poor reputation.

Know When to Outsource

Ideally, you should hire as few employees as possible to keep your operating expenses low. Later, as your startup grows and earns some success, you’ll have the incoming capital you need to hire a bigger staff. In the meantime, you can save on costs by outsourcing certain services, such as working with a third-party business that offers IT as a service. Outsourcing IT, accounting, and other administrative services will help you spend less without compromising productivity. You might even find that outsourcing gives you access to a more talented team and better resources than you could assemble by hiring your own employees.

Learn How to Lead

This is a good time to learn the difference between managing your employees and leading your team. A leader stays involved in the day-to-day operations of the business and takes an interest in each team member. While a manager generally achieves results through fear of failure, a leader achieves success through a desire to succeed. You’ll maintain a more positive company culture by becoming a leader who maintains an open door policy. Encourage your team to come to you with complaints, questions, and ideas. If a team member proposes an idea that you find worthwhile, be sure to recognize their contribution. Keep in mind that it takes an open mind and experience to become a better leader.

Devote Time to Marketing Your Startup

Managing a startup requires long hours of hard work, but, if you let marketing fall by the wayside, all of that work will be fruitless. You should set aside a little time each day to manage your startup’s social media accounts, write blog posts for your website, and oversee your paid advertising accounts. By managing your online content personally, you’ll save on the costs of hiring a marketing agency when funding is limited. This will also give you more direct control over your business’ branding campaign. That means you can create content that helps consumers understand more about your products, goals, and values.

Conclusion

You’ll also have better luck in managing your tech startup when you have someone to turn to for guidance. For many new entrepreneurs, this means enlisting the help of a mentor. If you can’t find an adequate mentor in your community or online, work on networking with other business owners in your community. The support of your local business community can be more helpful than you might imagine.