Blockchain for Startups: How to Succeed and How Not to Fail

Blockchain has the potential to transform every business structure and it is no secret that it’s hard to start and run a blockchain project successfully. It takes more than just a great idea to get a project off the ground when it comes to an ever-evolving and dynamic technology— it needs a dedicated team with the vision, experience, and resources to succeed.

Blockchain–the concept/technology as influential as the Internet itself progressed from the period it was deemed overhyped to the time it became an integral part of a number of businesses, banks, and governments. Although the technology has made a prominent place on a very high level in a variety of processes, it has found partnerships among a number of large brands.

A general assumption has been made that disruptive technology is only practical for the world’s big names and, as a result, has unintentionally become very inaccessible for mass use.

Our intention today is to remove the assumption and make Blockchain Startups a technology occurrence that companies and industries of all sizes and across all categories can implement on mass scales. While several implementations of use cases of Blockchain in Enterprise have already been set up, the startups need to change with Blockchain’s power behind them.

This article is intended for you to get to know Blockchain’s start-up capabilities and how it can be used not only to make your business efficient but also to mark it as a highly innovative brand. We can help you identify how Blockchain Startup will influence your processes and make them even simpler. In addition, if you want to dive deep into the ABC of Blockchain technology, go to an in-depth handbook on Blockchain’s Entrepreneur’s Guide.

Now, without a delay let us get on with what Blockchain can do for your startup business.

What can Blockchain able to do for Startups?

Can Make You Early Adopters

Just like the Internet’s beginning days, the Blockchain system was very underdeveloped. There are a number of critical elements to tackle before Blockchain becomes a big size trend.

There is an excellent opportunity to conceive and develop a group until space becomes too filled with Blockchain business applications for companies that are willing to act as quick movers and pursue the flag strategy in the field.

Through spending time and resources to build a business model with Blockchain at the core of the processes or even a large part of the operating structure, start-ups would automatically be given an advantage over others working in the same field. All start-ups need at a time when thousands of companies are working in the same category battling for the same piece of the market.

Secure Your Business Data

Anyone, including your company, can enter the blockchain revolution, but cyber security is a challenge for businesses of all sizes across industries. Entrepreneurs have a lot of security options for blockchain at their fingertips if they know where to look.

Noting the incredible proof of security that Blockchain systems come with, they are ready to soon become the de-facto mode of collecting and organizing business data–and a primary answer to the question as to why companies are using Blockchain.

All the data collected in the ledger has been automatically encrypted with the newest and largest cryptographic methods, and the warehouses are accessible only through a key-value mechanism that validates and authorizes identification before access is granted.

In fact, Blockchain’s distributed system for small businesses significantly reduces the security risk. Since the decentralized process cannot be controlled by any single entity, attackers cannot change the data without notifying everyone in the network–something that protects against manipulation and restores power to the actual users.

Antiquated Processes can be Replaced With Digital Systems

A number of startups run on some type of legacy technology or obsolete infrastructure, which not only increases the cost of conducting business but also renders it inefficient and largely inconsistent. In fact, a large number of critical processes in nature are manual, meaning they are greatly vulnerable to the risk of human error.

Startups will be able to solve a large number of these problems with Blockchain for small businesses. It is understood that the technology decentralizes the pool of data separated between a large number of different systems–something that addresses the needs of startups to rely on manual labor to collect and process data.

Blockchain Can Be Employed For Bettering the Business Process

Payment And Money Transfer

One of Blockchain’s most common applications in a startup is the use of payment technology and money transfer technology. Today’s situation is that Blockchain is ready to transform transactions and startups are known to work with a number of vendors worldwide for delivering high-quality, low-cost services.

Blockchain’s cryptocurrency feature allows cross-border transfers simpler and much more cost-effective than traditional payment methods, which are hampered by high transfer fees.

Distributed Cloud Storage

Distributed cloud storage includes solutions for decentralized cloud storage on a peer-to-peer basis. By using the combination of cryptography and Blockchain to protect both transmission and node files, decentralized cloud storage makes your files immune to hack and Blockchain a useful startup element.

Distributed cloud storage system comes into being in layman’s terms when every component of cloud storage, such as data processing, distribution, and storage, is put in the blockchain ecosystem. Once that happens, everyone who has access to the Blockchain can see any information–how it traveled, who accessed it, and how it was controlled. Such a system helps to provide full accountability, traceability, and transparency for the cloud and entities that use or manage the cloud.

Protection of Digital Identity

Identity management is another key application of Blockchain in the industry. Management of identity is something the world is suffering from. Regardless of the size of your company or staff, you are never free from leakage of your identity on the internet and in the worst-case scenario in the hands of the hackers.

In the case of startups, what happens is that they sign up and subscribe to a number of websites, which can be malicious in some cases, in an ode to achieve growth and productive results.

Contracts Creation and Abiding

As you are just beginning, there are a number of contracts you will have to enter into – with your interior designers, food and beverage vendors, your offshore software development company, and a number of other third-party stakeholders.

With so many contracts to be made and assured to be followed, it can be very useful to use Blockchain in industry, via the Smart Contract Route. Since we have addressed the idea in our Smart Contract Guide before, we are not going to get too much into the process here, but what we can tell you about Contracts and Blockchain is that breaching the Smart Contract is impossible for any of the parties involved.

Supply Chain Management

There are a number of different ways to make Blockchain more real-time, open, transparent, and effective when it comes to the Supply Chain Management system.  Here are the different applications of Blockchain under SCM:

1. Establishing Trust

It is important for smooth operations to have faith in diverse supply chains with many participants.

For example, if a producer sells his goods to suppliers, he/she should be able to rely on them to meet the safety standards of the factory. In addition, trust plays a vital role when it comes to regulatory compliances such as custom enforcers. Blockchain’s transparent existence in the supply chain is well designed to avoid fraud and trust-building, marking trust as Blockchain’s primary business application.

• Provenance Tracking

Provenance monitoring and record-keeping become very simple in the blockchain-powered supply chain management system for easy access to product information through RFID tags and embedded sensors. Everything about the item can be monitored via Blockchain directly from the source to its status. In addition, provenance monitoring can also be used in any aspect of the supply chain to detect fraud.

• Cost Reduction

When Blockchain is used to speed up administrative processes in the supply chain, the additional costs incurred in the system will be reduced automatically with the security of the transactions guaranteed.

Second, eliminating intermediaries in the supply chain reduces the likelihood of product duplication, and fraud, while saving them a lot of money. In addition, distributors and consumers in the supply chain can process the payments made with cryptocurrencies rather than depending on the EDI.

• Quality Customer Support

Blockchain is used in Industry in two ways to enhance the quality of customer support.

Data cleaning whether due to incompetent data import tools or human error, CRM users around the world have to deal at some point with incomplete or duplicate data.  With blockchain in place, a customer can have their own personal block with a cohesive and accurate image of their personal information, past purchases, subscriptions, etc.

Therefore, blockchain helps these companies completely bypass the issue of inaccurate, obsolete, and duplicate data records. As a result, this provides better insights into customers and helps companies to engage them more effectively.

Loyalty programs aim to drive profit by adding value to the experience of the customer. However, they prove to be cumbersome for customers and yield a low ROI due to their variable mileage, volatile value, and related privacy concerns.

However, brands can make use of blockchain to reimagine and reinvigorate their loyalty programs in a way very similar to cryptocurrencies. Consumers would have a single decentralized wallet compatible with all brands with blockchain. These would not be bound to be overly diluted by the rules and limitations of individual brands and point redemption.

The customer will have much greater control over the entire experience and by giving those better deals; the brands will complete their wallet.

• Advertisement and Promotion

While necessary for businesses of all sizes, the need for promotion is something that is unknown to start-ups who are just starting up and need market awareness. Even after being one of the most important elements of a business, there are a number of loopholes in the advertising industry that make it unnecessarily expensive and opaque for startups.

When you introduce Blockchain to the mix, there are a number of things on the promotion front that are sorted and streamlined.

Let us look at the advantages of using Blockchain for decentralized advertising in your business.

1. Reliable Ad Buys

The problem with online advertising is the lack of knowledge of whether the people who clicked on the ads were genuine buyers or paid clickers is absolutely difficult to know. Since blockchain is transparent, however, advertisers can easily determine whether or not the clicks they receive come from the population they are targeting. The ad purchases would thus prove to be of value to money.

• Ad Verification

Many times, you see a banner advertisement on the product’s Facebook listing price as N, but when you visit the site, it shows the number, as X. Identifying and fixing problems like these are the duties performed by the ad verifiers, to whom the networks are paying heavily. Blockchain, however, helps to ensure that the actual information is exactly the same as that shown in an ad. This reduces the high cost associated with the process of ad auditing.

• Better Audience Targeting

We used to focus on more than one source as marketers to get information about the buying habits of consumers. Now with blockchain, advertisers will have the freedom to create demographics for buyers by directly obtaining the necessary information from the buyer itself. The technology would gather all the data that consumers want to share with the advertisers in their buying patterns.

• Management of Advertisement Inventory

As we all know, the ad inventory is the space advertisers have to sell ads. On a monthly basis, it can be measured. The information that goes into the entire ad inventory management cycle–space number, advertising length, keeping records of which day is assigned to which brand, the amount of space placement wise to be charged, etc. –is far too much to manually handle. Brands can not only handle the stock better but also get payments from advertisers on time by using smart contracts and blockchain.

• To Generate Funds

The amount of funding they earn is one of the biggest signs of success for any start-up and the one that makes them develop to their full potential. The moment your startup is backed by investors, you are not just looking for an establishment, but you are also getting enough money to support your growth and expansion needs.

There are a number of reasons that not only brought equal demand for VC and ICO but also increased the number of fund investments for the ICO fund model. However, the ones that make ICO ideal for you are:

1. Easier

Compared to the VC fund model which requires entrepreneurs to come prepared with market validation and financial response that shows how good the project or concept is, ICOs have much fewer benchmarks to meet, making it easier for entrepreneurs to raise funds via the ICO path.

• Global

While VC funding operates within a fixed geographic boundary, while you are in India, ICO can be collected from UAE stakeholders.

• Speedy

Unlike the timetable for VC investment to raise funds, ICO only lasts for 30 days. Making it very quick to raise money for entrepreneurs.

Therefore, here were the few benefits that come with Blockchain’s integration into a company. However, like all the real, confirmed benefits, these benefits do not come without their set of challenges. Especially when the technology is as disruptive and less explored as Blockchain, it is obvious the instances of companies facing a challenge in their implementation.

Let us look at what problems Startups face and the possible solutions that can be found in the business process to address and implement the technology.

Major Challenges Startups Might Face And The Probable Solutions

Presence of Legacy Systems

Startups who really want to benefit from Blockchain will need a DLT-based network, which needs technical to know about capital. The solution to this is to invest in professional Blockchain developers who know how to incorporate the software into the existing system and then implement it into the existing system on a small scale.

High Hack Incidents

Blockchain does not come without hacks and instances of breaches of security for something anointed to be highly secure. The internet is filled with Blockchain hack events, which cause people to lose millions and millions of money, making protection the biggest factor, which prevents Blockchain from being totally accepted by Enterprise.

The solution to this problem is to use the environment of private or permitted blockchain instead of permitting less or free blockchain. By having Blockchain, you add another level of protection to the system, making it immune to hacking. In addition, as the number of stakeholders in this case decreases, the transaction time increases by multiple, making it easier to handle multiple transactions at once.

Complexity in Regulations

The biggest obstacle facing the implementation of enterprise blockchain is the lack of regulations to protect businesses when something goes wrong. While a range of laws is coming up to improve the Blockchain adoption rate, there is still a long way to go when you will have a law in place.

Now that we have seen how Blockchain can make Startups more efficient and the likely challenges along with how to conquer them, it is time to look into the Blockchain platforms that you’re going to have to work around to use the technology in your startup.

Blockchain Platforms Where Startups Can Employ

Here are the platforms that trusted your startups to build a Blockchain enterprise-grade framework.

• Hyperledger Fabric
• VechainThor
• R3 Corda
• Hedera Hashgraph
• Quorum

As you could see, compared to standard public blockchains such as Ethereum or Bitcoin, the business blockchain systems usually have much more bandwidth, less latency, and much less complex consensus protocols. 

With this, not only do you know why to invest in Blockchain to boost your start-up efficiency and Blockchain’s various applications in your business, but also how to develop yourself as an innovative business, and also what platforms to use to make it possible. What is left is to contact and Hire the Best Blockchain App Development Company for Blockchain App developers and get started with your startup improvement.

Reasons Why Enterprise Blockchain Projects Fail

Blockchain technology is undergoing a rapid prototyping and implementation process, like other technological breakthroughs before it. However, while interest in blockchain remains high, there is still a significant difference between the excitement and the reality of the market.

About one in ten businesses say that they have implemented blockchain projects, or are in short-term planning. This is mostly because, according to tech experts, most of these projects never make it past the initial phase of exploration.

Here are the major reasons why enterprise Blockchain projects fail:

• Disregard Governance Worries

Human actions or motivation are rarely addressed by the technological management of public blockchain projects, but organizations need to be aware of the issues that could pose a risk to their project’s progress and should consider joining groups to help establish such models of governance.

• Lack of speed

Since they simply take too long to develop, most blockchain startups fail. Before they lose momentum, we need to do a better job of getting businesses on the right track for quick success.

Money can help projects get started, but it eventually dries up — and this is directly correlated with how long it takes to get up and running a company. When companies had from day technical resources and expertise, they could concentrate all their efforts on developing their product and save precious time and money.

• Misusing or Misunderstanding of Blockchain

Most blockchain projects are used by distributed ledger technology (DLT) to record data on a blockchain, but lack features such as shared consensus, tokenization, or smart contracts. That organization seldom uses the full set of blockchain features raises the question of whether blockchain is even required.

• Assuming Blockchain is Simply A Storage Mechanism or Database

Blockchain is structured to provide an independent, unchanging, trustworthy record based on untrusted parties ‘ actions. This means it is different from a standard database because it is impossible to change blockchain entries.

• Depending on smart contracts as a mature technology

Smart contracts may be the most important feature of blockchain-enabling technology, but with scalability and manageability there are still major challenges and it will take two to three years to mature.

• Thinking That The Technology is Ready For Production Use

Many blockchain systems and innovations are too experimental for large-scale manufacturing work that comes with security and network management services standards.

• Misunderstanding a basic technology with a complete system

Blockchain is a foundation-level technology but is not a complete framework, missing features such as user interface, business logic, the durability of data, and mechanisms for interoperability. “When it comes to blockchain, there is the implicit assumption that a complete technology solution does not separate the foundation-level technology from it.

Conclusion

It can be difficult for anyone to keep up with blockchain and other complex tech innovations, particularly those who are busy running their businesses. To ensure that you are up-to-date, and in the loop of new technologies and how they affect, entrepreneurs then Contact Fusion Informatics or Email us at [email protected]. Let us assist you!