5 tips for startups to lower initial costs

Never before has it been that easy to launch a successful business with just a laptop from your flat without even having a proper office. Hungary’s economy has been developing strongly in recent years. The Hungarian GDP growth exceeded any forecast in 2019. It may be a good time to join the market with some new ideas. However, many people are discouraged because they are afraid that they don’t have enough money to set off. The country’s infrastructure is well-developed and there are no costs for registering a company. In this article we will take a look at ways startups can cut the initial expenses and what is the current offer of online business accounts. Is it best to manage your payments and orders in a classic way with PayPal or are there cheaper and still efficient alternatives?

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1. Cooperate and barter

When you are just starting out it may be helpful to utilize the network of friends and acquaintances, which you have been building (not intentionally) your whole life. Just think for a moment how many skilled people you or your friends have already met in your life. Everybody knows someone who knows someone who can do this particular thing. Through your friends you can establish the first business connections. You won’t believe how many times a quick Facebook post like “does anyone know someone who can…” turned out to be more efficient than an ordinary job offer.

If you find like-minded people they might want to join your brand new company.

Maybe at the beginning you can share the profits between all of the members instead of setting a stable wage, which can be hard to pay month to month, if the company’s income is not yet that regular.

Also, remember that value is not solely in cash… You will be surprised how previous your services and skills might be for some people. Offer a mutual agreement with other companies to do something for them for free in exchange for their products, resources or services. It is a popular strategy in the business world and it’s called “barter”.

2. Freelance market and outsourcing

You probably have your own set of skills and as you are just starting you need to calculate how many things you are able to do yourself, how many you are willing to learn and for which tasks you will need to have some specialist.

If you have some spare time, googling, watching tutorials and learning about the thing you need to do might be an option, however time is also an asset.

There are multiple online platforms and sites like for example Fiverr, which let you hire someone to do a simple task for you for literally $5. Whether it’s translating, copywriting, designing, you name it.

You need to learn to ease your budget by outsourcing the pricey tasks to individuals and companies who already have resources to do it cheaper. It’s a simple strategy. You want to create a new product? There is no need in setting up a whole factory from scratch, as it’d cost millions of dollars. Imagine how many things are needed for it; land, workers, machines. Instead, you can utilize already existing factories, which are willing to create this product for you. It is significantly much cheaper to order them to do it for you.

3. Watch Out For International Money Transfers

We live in the age of globalisation, with the majority of the world having a connection to the Internet. This means that anyone can become your potential customer and you probably don’t want to limit yourself only to the local clients. However, there is a catch. Handling money internationally can get quite expensive very quickly. Most of the mainstream banks ask as much as $25 for a single overseas transfer. Some of them charge you even for receiving payments from abroad.

Fortunately, the online remittance market is well-developed and you can find thousands of offers for cheap money transfer services.

There are also convenient money transfer platforms who let you set up your business account and monitor all of the orders and transactions to make accounting easier.

You may think that the most obvious choice is PayPal. However, as in this article we cover ways to lower the costs, there are actually cheaper alternatives. For example, Transferwise for Business, which has over 4 million users already, offers much cheaper transfers and lets you receive payments in major currencies for free. Read this full review and research about TransferWise offer for businesses to learn more about fees and features.

Another convenient platform for businesses is Tide Business Banking. Interestingly, you can handle everything you need just with their well-designed mobile app. When it comes to notable features they have automated bookkeeping and integrated invoicing. There are no monthly costs for having the account. If you want to learn more about Tide for businesses this article explains their features and fees. You can also find customer reviews there to learn about the first person experience.

Hopefully, with these few simple things in mind you will feel more confident about starting your own business, as one can do this without an incredibly huge budget.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash