Bangalore: Now that you have decided to float your own venture, you would be beaming with ideas on where to get the resources from. You would have made a financial plan on what all you need to invest into, but wait and think twice, are those important or can be sidelined? In the initial days of your venture, you should steer clear from an extravagent spendings and concentrate only on the necessities. The cognition about where to invest or where not to waste the money comes only with experience. Few entrepreneurs share their insights on what they feel the entrepreneurs should not waste their money on.

“I feel the entrepreneurs should steer clear of luxuries during the initial years. An office in a posh location, high-tech interiors, all might create an impression on the customers, but what is more important is a good product. Thus early stage startups should avoid spending on these luxuries. After 3-4 years, you can concentrate on the branding, the look and feel of the office, but till then it is better to avoid unnecessary expenses. I also feel that if there is something that would benefit the employees, then you should go ahead and invest into it,” says Suresh Sundaram, CEO, Activate Enterprises.

During the initial days, your product would be known to barely a few people, hence word of mouth would be a very powerful tool. “I feel that entrepreneurs should not invest in heavy advertising during the early days, but improvise their product and use word of mouth advertising,” says Mohit Gundecha, Co-Founder and CEO, YourNextLeap.

Mukund Mohan, CEO, Jivity, says, “All my bad experiences have been around people. You should have a good mentor, but most of the mentors prefer taking cash, rather than the stocks, which should be avoided. Also, in my initial days I had invested into data entry and PR firms, both of which I founded to be a bad investment decision. The PR firm said that they would help me get more contacts and get more publicity in press, but that never materialized. I also realized that when there is an application for entering the data, hiring a person solely for data entry was a bad choice.”

Even though you might have readily available money, it is better that you save it for future, as with the current state of the economy, you never know when bad time might strike. Hence it is always better to be cautious of where your money is going, so that you can have a clear control over the cash flows and better manage your startup, even in hard times.