TUCSON, AZ (Arizona Cat’s Eye) – Companies are significantly easier to get started in today’s world than they were twenty years ago.
This is all due to the internet.
But with increased accessibility comes increased competition.
About 25 percent of small companies fail in the first year and about 50 percent in the first three to five years. Only about ten percent of companies in general make it past the ten-year mark.
Ravi Budhu is in his second year of building a start-up company.
The company is called YourLabs, and it serves as a knowledge evaluation system that assists professors in identifying where and how students are making mistakes on problem solving questions.
As with any young company, Budhu expects YourLabs to face some serious hurdles.
“You as a small start-up, how do you differentiate yourself from those bigger companies; and how do you kind of convince teachers, schools and districts that don’t have a lot of money to purchase your product and get it in there.”
Andrew Chaifetz, a senior at the University of Arizona, has been working on his company, NoteBowl, for more than three years now and is running into similar challenges.
“Working with administrators and to understand what their needs are as administrators and then also trying to deliver them a product that they love.”
Like YourLabs or NoteBowl, many start-up companies nowadays are software based. Whether it is through a click or a tap, founders of these ventures aim to have their product as easily accessible as possible.
As Budhu’s user-base grows, he anticipates having to overcome a flurry of additional obstacles.
“Okay now I need it support, I need customer service, I need to keep all my servers running, so that other half of it you know is something that we’re planning for the future, I think we have a good plan in place, you just never know when people actually you know start hitting your system.”
Chaifetz, on the other hand, is just working on chasing the dream.
“If I can be working on my own thing, making an impact, doing something that i love, um, helping people out, making life easier for a bunch of people and also myself hopefully if I can ever, you know, launch it before I graduate.”
Chaifetz hopes to launch NoteBowl by June, and Budhu plans to launch YourLabs version 2.5 in March.