Developing Business Idea and Vision
Searching for business idea or creatively developing an idea is definitely a challenging task for new entrepreneurs as these ideas can hardly be found in their daily routine. In fact, it is the very first challenge faced by all entrepreneurs when they are to start a business from scratch. According to Lohitkumar et al. [3], in order to do so, an entrepreneur should be able to possess the ability to see what others cannot see or simply known as “envisioning the idea”. When others see problems, an entrepreneur must be able to see opportunities instead. Only then, these opportunities will eventually turn out and forge into a business idea. In other words, an entrepreneur has to be able in bringing innovative products into existence by “creating value out of nothing” that is able to satisfy the public.
Raising Capital for Start-up
According to Mkandawire [5], another challenge that new entrepreneurs usually face when starting a business after developing an idea is the challenge in raising capital for their business start-up. In fact, knowing only the core of a business idea is definitely not enough for a business to get started especially without business capital. Hence, an entrepreneur himself is responsible in searching for investors to raise the capital for his own business. It is one crucial step to be done and indeed a challenging task for new entrepreneurs.
Finding the Right Business Location
Finding a good business location is a challenging task for an entrepreneur. As mentioned by Lohitkumar et al. [3], the location selected has to be an efficient location to ensure the future development of the business. In order to do so, an entrepreneur has to take into consideration the infrastructure, where clients are based with rapidly growing population, good road network and other amenities at a good place. This aspect can be considered as an internal challenge as a strategic place usually requires higher rental which in turns causes new entrepreneurs to face financial crisis.
Unforeseen Business Challenges and Expenses
As an entrepreneur, unforeseen business challenges and expenses can be said as one of the greatest challenges to be faced. This is because unexpected problems will strike without warning. Thus, an entrepreneur must be always prepared for whatever that comes to them and solve the challenges or crisis faced. In fact, these unforeseen business challenges come in many forms, for example like unexpected law suits, inconsistent government policy, bad debts from customers.
Finding Good Customers
The other external challenge that new entrepreneurs will face in starting a business is finding good customers. Finding good customers is a challenging task and it is in fact necessary in contributing to the success of a certain business. Good customers can help to build a business where they will always try to do the right thing that can benefit both the company and themselves [3]. Besides that, they will always appear loyal to the company besides being very forgiving if there is a mistake or apology made by a certain business. Furthermore, they will also provide constructive comments on the service of a certain new business so that improvements can be made to it by the entrepreneurs. However, good customers like this are not many to be found.
Dealing with Competition
Competition is another obvious problem that all entrepreneurs will face when starting up a fresh business. Most of the new entrepreneur’s view competition as a huge trouble as it makes their business to easily lose relevance in the eyes of their customers and eventually losing those customers. For instance, the increasing number of new businesses every day has brought upon competition to new entrepreneurs as their business ideas might clashes with those newly established businesses. Hence, causing them to face the risk of losing customers due to the customers’ influence from other business choices.