Who should do the assessment of a Venture? Why?

Why are start-up assessment tools important? 

What is one of the most common mistakes that a start-up makes? Self-Assessment or self-evaluation is the answer.

Commercializing your idea is business, product- market fit validation in the real-world scenario with real customers is smart business tactics but continuing with the same business model in the everchanging world without risk assessment of the business is a suicidal practice.

Getting unbiased feedback is vital for a start-up. In order to sustain, start-ups should know the pain-points in their businesses, where they are lacking and formulate a performance matrix accordingly to help them strategize a fool-proof future ready plan. For ease of doing business, now a days several self-assessment tools backed by experienced mentors are available online.

But, can this be done on own. No. Any unidentified problem and circumstances can lead to risk if left undetected, and/or wrongly assessed.

Start-up evaluation should always be done by a third party or by experts who can help start-up measure the short- and long-term impact of the current business model keeping in mind the constraints of resources, time, manpower and funding. Some of the rating agencies that evaluate the start-ups are - Startup ratings, Fitch ratings, F&P Ratings, Moodies Ratings and Crisil Ratings.

This will not only help you in formulating risk-mitigation plan but it will also increase credibility of the start-ups in front of the venture capitalists.

But who are the Best people to assess your Start-up?

Ashish Jain, Co-Founder, The Start-up Board says, “Startup assessment is Best performed by any of the following  

1. Business leader, managing strategic business unit in a large company

2. A leader, who has been an entrepreneur in the past

3. Someone with at least 10 years of experience, to have gained on-job perspective of the business

4. Anyone who knows and have interest in nurturing of a startup business”

The mentors with expertise in their particular fields will help you proficiently in risk analysis and identify the threats in order to help you resolve them.

These experts can detect risks of any nature, determine their severity and outline the priorities to tackle them.

Ashish whose idea behind starting The Start-up Board was to support founders with business connections, growth and investment avenues, believes that assessment is a structured way to sit with someone who knows similar (may not be same) space and can give insights based on the experience and perspective assessors possess.

The Start-up Board is soon coming up with an assessment tool called myBizScore to assess the ventures in an unbiased manner, with consistency in assessment and input quality.

Their team of mentors, who will undertake the assessments, are from across the globe with expertise in varied sectors.

Some of the experts who have on-boarded The Start-up Board team as mentors are former top-notch heads from companies like IBM Research, Samsung, Honeywell and Indian Angel Fund.

Ashish opines those experts who have multiple skill sets like business leader, managing strategic business unit in a large company and someone with at least 10 years of experience along with interest in nurturing a start-up business will be the criteria for myBizscore for assessing the start-ups. Or, an expert who has been an entrepreneur in the past with at least 10 years of experience and have interest in nurturing of a start-up business will be the minimum criteria to shortlist the mentor.

In a global business environment, it is critical to be aware of all the risks, get a complete picture of enterprise risk portfolio so that it can be addressed quickly in an accountable and transparent way.