An idea on a napkin
The birth of a startup or "where to start?"
Ideas come to us all the time, but someone just brushes them off and forgets in a few minutes, while others carefully write them down and continue to dream. However, some do not leave the idea “on a napkin” but bring it to life.
In this article, I will tell you what to do to give your idea a successful start.
The first step is to test your idea for viability.
To do this, we ask ourselves three simple questions:
- What problems does your startup solve?
- Who is its target audience?
- What are the analogs on the market and how do they differ?
Let's take a look at the first question.
"What problems does your startup solve?"
List the problems and how people solve them today. For a better understanding of consumers, it is better to follow the “Jobs to be done” principle. The main idea is to start with the user's problem, not with your project solving it. If you find it difficult at this stage, there is nothing to worry about, perhaps you simply do not have enough knowledge in this area and you need to contact a specialist. If your startup uses any devices (wearable devices or stationary sensors, RGB cameras), carefully study the devices you need, their cost, and leading manufacturers. For example, for a fitness app, do you only plan to develop an app or also integrate with existing fitness bracelets? Or maybe you are planning to manufacture your own bracelets? Do you plan to use available open-source maps or use your drones with RGB cameras to develop an application that will analyze land plots?
After you have dealt with the first question, you can already clearly formulate the answer to the second question - "Who is your target audience?" Here you need to pay attention to various "little things", for instance: the region of use, linguistic nuances, a formed sustainable culture of use, legislative acts, and their restrictions.
This is a fairly broad issue and each startup has its nuances.
And now we have approached the third question - existing analogs and the ways users today satisfy the need that you want to solve with your product. This is the one that will help you improve your idea and give it an accessible and attractive form for investors. You will have to shovel loads of information, install a bunch of applications and study social networks. Considering analogs, make a list of what you like and what you don't. Write down all the details on how and what works for others, and what you could improve. Pay attention to the audience of similar startups. An indicative implementation budget for calculating the payback point can also be found in the public domain.
What to do next with this? Further, it would be great to get feedback from your potential audience and check the relevance.
All these actions and knowledge will be very useful to you at subsequent stages, such as the development of a prototype (MVP), calculation of a unit economy, obtaining finance for project development, drafting technical documentation, conducting marketing research.
However, there is always another way, which is to contact a company that has created a lot of startups and knows exactly how to develop an MVP quickly and with minimal effort, how to position your product properly, to whom and how to offer it, and will do all the work for you, providing a ready-made report and services of a qualified business analyst.
Of course, this is not a full list of tasks that you have to complete, but this is quite enough to get started and understand your idea.
We will be glad to help you at any stage of your startup development and help your idea grow into a large and successful project.
