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Your pre-start business checklist

Use this handy checklist to help make sure you’re on the right track before you go into business.

3 minute read

Starting a business can be challenging but it’s the chance to invent something of your own, be your own boss, and employ others.

To help improve your chances of building a successful startup, we’ve put together a number of things to consider and to tick off before you start. 

Conduct market research

The internet is a helpful place to start your research to find out what’s happening in your chosen market. Here are a few things you could search for:

• your main competitors
• comparative prices and services
• industry trends
• social media opinions and blogs
• supplier and set up costs.

You can get an idea of demand by using data collected by third parties, or stats.govt.nz

Validate the market

Nothing beats asking a potential customer directly if they’d buy what you’re offering, at the price you want to charge. To help you do this, profile your ideal customer by describing their demographics (for example, gender, age range, location, income level, profession). If you’re targeting businesses, then you can profile their characteristics (for example, business size, location, what they sell).

Once you’ve identified your ideal customers, talk to the people or businesses that match and ask them what they:

• like about your idea
• don’t like about your idea
• would buy and how often
• are prepared to pay.

The key is to get honest feedback (even if it’s not what you want to hear) so you know what people really think. From this initial research, if you can demonstrate a clear competitive advantage and the business opportunity has a stable long-term future, then it’s looking promising.

Talk to industry insiders

Suppliers, industry associations, chambers of commerce, or local business support agencies can provide you with business tips. They’ll have a good working knowledge of your industry, market trends, the latest innovations, as well as insight into the volume of purchases (and therefore sales) of similar businesses. Your local Regional Business Partner will be able to connect you with the right resources and experts. 

Ask industry experts:

• if the market will grow
• if your pricing is realistic
• the best way to distribute
• if you have a compelling competitive advantage.

Test with actual customers

One of the best (and maybe only fool-proof way) to uncover if your business has a future, is to start selling to real customers. How you do this will depend on the type of industry you’re in. You may want to mock up examples or prototypes, offer your work for free to get a foot in the door, produce limited runs of your product or launch your business part time while you’re still working. Balance market validation techniques with the cost, so you’ll feel confident to keep going if the feedback is positive.

Tracking what customers will actually do can give you a better estimate of demand.

Identify your set up costs

Determine how much cash you’ll need to borrow or raise yourself to fund the business in advance, especially if you face very high costs for equipment or inventory. A reality check here is critical if you need millions to start and you know it’s out of reach.  

Set up the basics

It’s a good idea to make sure the obvious things like electricity, gas, phone, internet, and water are available to operate your business if you need them. You may need to comply with industry standards such as:

• health and safety regulations
• noise controls
• hours of operation
• qualifications
• licenses and permits.

Use the Compliance Matters tool from business.govt.nz to help identify what you may need to consider. Your industry association will also have guidelines to access.

These main pre-start points can give you valuable market and industry information, and a much better understanding if your new business idea is viable. Use this collection of insights, research, data, feedback, and conversations to guide your decision to launch.

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This article is solely for information purposes and is not intended to be financial advice.  If you need help, please contact BNZ or your financial adviser. Neither BNZ nor any person involved in this article accepts any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage arising out of the use of, or reliance on, all or any part of the content.

References to third party websites are provided for your convenience only. BNZ accepts no responsibility for the availability or content of such websites.