3 Steps to becoming a successful Entrepreneur: Insights from Saygin Yalcin
Becoming an entrepreneur is an exciting journey, but it requires hard work, dedication, and a willingness to take risks. Saygin Yalcin, the Dubai based serial entrepreneur and founder of SellAnyCar.com, shares his insights on the essential steps to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
From identifying your passion and developing a business idea to securing funding and building a solid team, Saygin Yalcin offers valuable advice trough his Social Media channels and also his book he recently published to help aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of starting and running a successful business. We spoke with Saygin about the 3 crucial steps.
The first step
Saygin Yalcin: “First, it’s always about identifying this entrepreneurial spirit, asking myself, do I actually want to become an entrepreneur? Do I have the character traits that position me optimally for it? There is so much information available on the internet about entrepreneurship. No matter where you look, there are these mainstream coaches. For me, this is totally fine because it meets a need. However, giving the impression that entrepreneurship is just that first step is wrong. The subsequent steps are the real craft of entrepreneurship.”
The second step
Saygin Yalcin: “In the second step it is crucial to identify how to generate or evaluate a business idea. You don’t have to be an inventor, you just need to be the best executor of the idea. But you also need to be able to understand what makes a good business idea. It might solve your own problem, but not the problem of someone in the market or of many people. Then, actually the step is to start building a business plan and asking questions like: Do the numbers make sense? How large is the total addressable market? What are my unit economics, meaning the basis of my business on an economic unit level? What are my projections for the next five years? What are my assumptions? There are many questions to ask and calculate before starting to design a logo or even coming up with a name for the company.”
The third step
Saygin Yalcin: “It’s about saying, who is my team? What kind of people do I need? What people do I need to hire with what budget and when? Then you have a really good overview. This can take about 90 days for me with a lot of research. It is only then, when you do not have enough money yourself, that you should seek potential investors. You need to understand how to carry out financing rounds, when to do them, and whom to approach. After that, you need to focus on business intelligence, which involves the daily operations of the business. It may take ten or even twenty years to build an empire, and not merely two or three before attempting to sell it. It is crucial to understand that building a successful company takes decades of hard work. Although valuations may be high today, they may also decrease drastically the next day. The true value of a company is determined by building a profitable and self-sustaining company in the long term, preferably a very large one. And that takes decades of hard work.”
Source: L’officiel Cyprus, Sara Douedari
About the Author
SayginYalcin Saygin is the Founder & CEO of the Middle East's (ME) first & largest car buying service, SellAnyCar.com and Founder of the first & largest online private shopping club in the ME, Sukar.com, which has been acquired by Souq.com, making him Partner at the Souq.com and Jabbar Internet Group, becoming the largest ecommerce company in the Arab world, with 3000+ employees. In its largest acquisition outside the US to date, Amazon.com has acquired Souq.com Group. He has been selected as a UBS Industry Leader, a network of Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals. He was also Advisory Board Member & Academic Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the Canadian University of Dubai. He was referred to as "the region's online business guru" by the National newspaper in the UAE, while Arabian Business named him as "one of the region's finest young entrepreneurs and a major part of the entrepreneurial scene in recent years". Fortune magazine (mag) named him in the 40 under 40 list, as one of the most influential young people in business, Entrepreneur mag ME awarded SellAnyCar.com, with Saygin at its helm, as the "Fastest Growing Company in the ME", while the National newspaper sees it among a handful of tech companies to "have the potential to break the $1bn barrier". In a cover story, Entrepreneur mag ME titled him as "undoubtedly one of the youngest & most successful internet entrepreneurs in the ME”, awarded SellAnyCar.com as "Technology Innovator of the Year”, while Khaleej Times awarded him as the Technology Leader. Gulf Business selected him as 1 of the Top 10 Entrepreneurs in ME. In a cover story, Arabian Business counts him as 1 of the most successful entrepreneurs to call Dubai home. During the World Government Summit, HH Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed, Minister of Interior of the UAE, presented Saygin as an inspiring story for the country, in the presence of world leaders, incl. HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
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