SWOT: An Analysis You Should Apply on Your Startup Company

What is SWOT and How Does It Impact Your Startup Company Condition

Starting a new business is always a hard time. The early stages will ask you much energy, time and everything that you have. All of your life, focus will be needed to be concentrated on the business you are trying to build. When you survive these times, then you would come to the next level which is not less weary; bringing the business up into the surface. There are a lot to take to make your startup company be known by public, indeed. Many things should be done, and one of them is the precise analysis.

Not only analysis on the market that you should do, a thorough analysis of the condition of your startup company is something that you should not miss. SWOT is one of the popular techniques to do the analysis of your business.

When you start a new business, you need a perfect plan at the beginning, of course. Things like what products you want to sell, what name will you use as your brand, the budget, and how is your position towards the competitors which already be in the market are some important things to think about before you finally establish your own business. When you use SWOT as the technique of analysis, you will find it more easily to define all those things mentioned earlier.

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat.

1. Strength

This is the analysis of what strength you have in the business you plan to run. The strength may come from the quality, location, or any other factors which make your business more superior comparing to the competitors you have.

List the strength you have, so that it will be easy for you to identify your superiority towards those similar businesses. The main point is that so you have the authenticity or distinct characters which differentiate you from the competitors.

• Weakness

Not only the strength, you should also list the weakness you may have. Be honest, that’s the main key. Every business, mainly the startup business, should have flaws in some points. Recognizing the flaw of your company is important. When you do know these flaws, you could avoid them when you should do the promotion. Or, in some points, you may even use this flaw as a strategy to get more sources for your startup company such as partnership in training, or insurances.

• Opportunity

When Strength and Weakness are mainly the internal factors, this “O”, opportunity is the external factor. When you done with the two internal analyses, then you can start to see the opportunity that may available for you in the market. Which path that you might take so that you can start to introduce your products to the market.

You can also estimate the opportunity that you might have in the business by counting the budget; how much do you spend for the promotion program or advertisement? It will be better for you to make the budget planning at the early stage of the business for short term, such as 3-6 months, so that you can analysis which program that is efficient for the business to use later on.

• Threat

Another external factor to be analyzed is the threat. The threat doesn’t always mean the attack from the competitor in the form of new brilliant ideas or any kind breakthrough that may conquer the market. The threat is also the analysis of how your company would be in the future based on the decision that you have made today. Besides, there are also some things that you should think about and put them into the list of threat, such as the availability of the sources, how long the customers stay in their taste and still use the same products you offer, including the break-even point, the time when you can get your initial capital.

Running a startup company is obviously not an easy task. SWOT is a simple technique that you can apply when you want to establish a new business, or even when your business is in the developing stage. The analysis of the strength, weakness, opportunity and the threat you have will help you better in developing your business.