Useful skills to transition into startups from a different career

Moving into a startup requires some skills more than others.

Recently, a few universities invited me to speak about entrepreneurship, and with Malaysian startups on the rise, I reflected on how I ventured into the startup world and what skills I prepped myself with to run one effectively.

Unfortunately, some people dive into startups as if they are a bucket-list item, but they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

Anyone who’s considering a startup should figure out their underlying motivations for being an entrepreneur and what this means. For some, it’s simply for the freedom of being their own boss (in this case, try the freelancer option). For others, they think startups are the quickest way to getting rich, when in fact it can be the exact opposite.. Or that it’s the hottest career in town right now (which is a terrible reason).

But for most, it’s because they want to build a product that solves a big enough problem in this world or that leaves a lasting positive impact. And those are much better reasons.

However, the media tends to glamorise startups these days. With movies like The Social Network, TV series like Silicon Valley and the famous tech publication TechCrunch, a lot of people may end up having a distorted perception that starting a company is fun, easy and glamorous.

But I always ask aspiring entrepreneurs if they’ve had a history of being: 1) super resourceful, 2) an extreme risk-taker, and 3) generally an optimist. In my book, a great entrepreneur has to have all three of these characteristics.

Have you tried to hack something in life? Have you taken huge risks in life or done something outside your comfort zone? Have you ever started something on your own? It could be a club or society in college, even a nasi lemak stall. Do you always think about what could go wrong, or do you imagine what the possibilities are?

Nonetheless, if you’re fairly certain that you’ll start a company someday, then joining one would be a good first move.

Here is an introduction to a few popular non-technical positions that startups are usually looking to fill these days. These are all essential skills for an early-stage startup founder because you’ll need to do a little of everything. If you’re completely fresh in this area, try to identify which skills you are interested in picking up, do a tonne of online research since the Web has plenty of resources, and then try to get an internship at a startup that has raised decent funding to gain some domain expertise in one or more of the following skills:

User research and customer development: This is usually the role of a product manager at a small startup, but larger tech companies have their own user research department. The job entails interviewing and surveying your company’s target market to make sure that your products fit their needs and solves their problems. You should learn behavioural psychology, study lean-startup methodologies, learn qualitative and quantitative research techniques and use research tools like surveymonkey.com, google.com/forms, usertesting.com, and netizentesting.com. This is usually the first step that a founder takes to create a product in the market.

User experience and prototyping: Before designing the visuals (or user interface) of the final product, a few steps have to take place. First, a UX (user experience) designer has to create a wireframe or prototype of the entire flow of the Web or mobile product, either using traditional pen and paper sketches or online prototyping tools such as Balsamiq, InvisionApp, Axure, UXPin, Mockingbird, and FramerJS . A good UX designer should understand user behaviour, information architecture and hierarchy, perception of overall site map/flow, user modelling, and lead with user-centered design.