Even if you have a great idea, it can be difficult to implement it. Every startup is a researcher looking for a business model that works. We tell you what to do to start a business.
Start with yourself.
Given that building a startup is a long road, at about 5-7 years, you have to go from yourself. What that means. You need an idea that you personally believe in, that drives you. Start by identifying a problem that already exists in close proximity to you: someone your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, clients have encountered.
Look for an idea that catches your eye, in a field where you have expertise. If you do not have such an idea, but only a desire to be financially successful, the startup model will not work for you. I advise you to choose, for example, a franchise with an established business model.
Formulate a vision.
Describe your idea through proven tools-I recommend Lean Canvas by Ash Maurya. Your task at this stage is through the key blocks to articulate the vision of the idea in a human-understandable form.
Test your idea
After you have described the idea, having developed a vision, you need to identify the key constraints for its implementation. The best way to do this is through expert interviews and competitive analysis. You need to get answers to the following questions:
- Does the market need your solution?
- Are you technologically capable of implementing it?
- Will it be profitable in the long term?
To find answers, I recommend:
1) Find current peers in the marketplace and understand how their business models work. Draw up a Lean Canvas for them, find out what their product consists of, their monetization model, and what the customer journey to value looks like. I can also recommend SimmilarWeb, SEMRush for website analysis, Sensor Tower, App Annie for mobile apps.
2) Talk to industry experts who understand the rules of the game and the competitive factors between players. Another source of support is network trackers, startup support specialists. Every team has a tracker and guides them through the whole startup development process, and trackers also help teams participate in external projects.
3) Conduct interviews with users of existing solutions and find out if there is unmet demand. You may then decide that you should go into other customer segments. If you think you’ve discovered a market niche and your belief in the idea has only gotten stronger, move on to creating a business model.
Build the business model
Continuous improvement of the product, taking into account the wishes of the client – this is what lies at the heart of the Lean StartUp methodology. The sequence of actions is as follows: you create a simple product, get feedback from your target audience, improve your product, get feedback again, study the data you received and go back to make improvements. There can be many such iterations – it is important not to stop and look for the very product that will meet all the needs of customers.
The Lean StartUp approach is different from the classical one. Classic means that first the product is created, then the demo, and only then do the sales start (Build-Demo-Sell). The order of Lean StartUp is different: first we make a demo of the product, then we look for clients for it, and only after that we finalize the real product (Demo-Sell-Build)
Create MVP
MVP – Minimum Viable Product. This is the earliest version of the product: it is already functional, it can already be presented to customers and the first “manual” sales can be started. At this stage, the product can be assembled by the team itself, for example, in the format of a chat-bot or a simple application. The actual goal at this stage is to make sure that the product works and solves the identified problem. Only after that can we move on to the stage of finalizing the product. If it turns out that the idea does not work, you can start over with a different product.
I recommend using low-code platforms, designers and services: for quick mobile apps building – Glide, Adalo, FlutterFlow, for chatbots – BotFather, Integromat, ChatForma, AirTable, for web applications – Tilda, AirTable, Integromat, Collabza. There are many materials on low-code available in public sources.
Find a partner
The search for a co-founder of the startup usually goes in parallel with the other steps.
A composition with three meta roles is considered optimal:
- Entrepreneur: sees a market opportunity, leads the team, and – most importantly – investors. Such people are truly passionate about their idea and inspire those around them.
- Technologist: creates the solution/technology that will close the customer’s problem.
- Organizer: builds processes within, sets and implements goals, controls the P&L plan (Profit and Loss).
This is an ideal picture for a startup – in reality, one person most often combines two roles at once. But it is physically impossible to combine all three. You need to understand which of the profiles you can fill by yourself, and for which role you need to find a person with appropriate competencies. It is important that he should be involved, reliable, and your values should coincide. You should be comfortable doing activities together.
Be prepared for the fact that the original idea will not remain in its original form: it will be transformed many times, most likely you will go through some number of “U-turns”. A U-turn is a significant change in one or more elements of the business model in order to meet performance targets. This can be changes in any of the business model items: the value proposition, the technology itself, the operating model, the go-to-market strategy (channels) or the monetization scheme. This is the essence of a startup – a constant search for a new solution, a search for its business model, and reversals within it.