Rapid Business Launch in the Style of Guerrilla Tactics

If you or those around you have ever started a business or at least made an effort in that direction, you’ve likely encountered or are familiar with the dungeon of idealism and the endless “what ifs” of delivering the best product. It’s the endless loop of improving a design, product, or service that hasn’t even been launched yet and is only in the stage of trying to get off the ground. When you also ask for others’ opinions, the volume of things to consider increases daily, often resulting in confusion and, in most cases, energy drain and project cancellation.

Sometimes, even philosophical crises enter the business startup workflow, and a movement intended to create change in work life gets halted by residues of nihilism.

I’ve been trying for a long time to find a way to change this stage of starting a business. After many conversations with my friends and studying the experiences of related individuals, I arrived at a method similar to executing a project or launching a business guerrilla-style.

Wikipedia describes guerrilla warfare as:

Guerrilla warfare is a type of irregular warfare in which a small group of armed individuals use tactics such as ambushes, raids, sabotage, harassment, hit-and-run tactics, and rapid movement to attack a larger, less mobile military force and then quickly leave the battlefield.

Applying this method of warfare—which has proven effective several times—to business startup, guerrilla business launching can be defined with the following characteristics:

• Starting the project execution phase simultaneously and in conjunction with other phases.
• Performing tasks instantly and intensively as soon as the idea comes to mind.
• Allocating limited time for task completion.

What are the advantages of this startup style?
The main advantage of this approach is that it prevents the fragmentation of thoughts and switching from one branch to another, maintaining focus on the tasks. In essence, when you force yourself to work solely on the project, your mind is freed from mental pressure, knowing that the human brain is not capable of multitasking.

First do it.
Then do it right.
Then do it better.

Can everyone use this style?
It’s obvious that in this style, the research phase is either overlooked or given less importance. Naturally, for businesses with non-obvious value delivery (products or services whose value isn’t inherently perceived by the customer), the risk is much higher. However, for businesses with a simple or tested working method, the chances of success are high.

My own experiences don’t include business startups, but I’ve had projects that achieved notable results using this style. The HappyCart project was a service launched in Esfand 1392 (March 2014), where you could create and send greeting cards to your friends by simply entering basic information. The project took less than 8 hours to implement, and if it weren’t for a technical issue that arose, this time could have been even shorter. The service was advertised with a simple introduction on social networks. Over 10 days, 640 people used this service to create and send greeting cards. The project was supposed to be expanded, but unfortunately, it remained stagnant due to some personal issues.

Another example is the redesign of my blog. The previous version took over 7 months, while the current version took 14 hours. The current version is simpler and more functional, aside from being responsive.

In the coming days, I will write more about this in detail. In the meantime, if you have experience with this type of development and execution, I’d be interested in hearing the details.