8 Steps to Create a Startup (part I )

 

“Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard.” You have probably heard The Scientist, a song by Coldplay, right? This is how you’ll feel when you start working on your startup idea.

We don’t want to scare you, but you need to be ready for each of the following steps.

1. Problem 
2. Ideation and Solution/Validation
3. Find your Dream Team
4. Customer Persona & Customer Validation
5. Prototype & Validation
6. Marketing Plan & Building a Landing Page
7. Business and Revenue Model 
8. Funding 

You’ve probably noticed the word Validation at some of the different stages, right? Validating your idea, customer persona, and your product, via your prototype, is key to success. This means you need to be ready for feedback, critics, and above all, to pivot and replan.

1. Problem

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” This statement by Theodore Levitt, Marketing Professor at Harvard, explains how customers think about problems. In fact, they may be looking for a solution they didn’t even know they needed!

This must be your mindset as you go about problem-solving. But first, you have to locate your problems.

Finding a problem to solve can happen in different ways. Awareness of a problem can arise from a new experience or a passion that you already have. Emma Bridgewater, Founder of one of the biggest pottery factories in the UK, found her problem while on the hunt for a birthday gift for her mother.  

Back in 1984, she wanted to give her mother a set of cups and saucers that would say, “I love you. I miss you.” She looked in numerous china shops and realized that all the available products were nothing like what she wanted. 

This was the moment Emma realized that she could start creating what she had imagined finding in the china shops: A wonderful array of colourful, mismatched pottery. 

We all have situations like Emma’s. These arise when we aren’t satisfied with the provided solutions and come up with our own ideas. During these experiences, you can obtain insight into specific problems and how to solve them. When this happens, ask yourself:

 

• Is this a problem or a passion that many others have?
• Is this problem serious enough to warrant solving?
• How often does the problem occur?
• Who are the customers with this problem?

 

Check out this video from Udacity, a for-profit educational organization that offers online courses about how to choose a business idea.

2. Ideation and Solution Validation

Once you have a problem in mind, you need to find a solution. It’s time for ideation.

According to Manuel Tanger, Head of Open Innovation at Beta-i, ideation is all about having numerous ideas. It’s refining solutions, filtering out the “not-so-great” from the reasonable, and then testing them. “Once you have reasonable ideas, you need to take them to the real world, ask people what they think of your ideas, and refine them.”

Finding that perfect problem-solution fit demands an understanding of the market and the customer alike. You need to do extensive research on the problem to understand the market size and opportunities. This will help you to develop a competitive advantage and create a startup that will succeed. 

3. Find your Dream Team

If you have begun the startup process by yourself, it’s time to find a team. 

Identify your most powerful skills before starting your talent hunting. A great startup team needs the following roles:

• CEO: Leads the team with vision, respect, and responsibility. 
• CBO: Supports the growth and creates value by innovating sound business plans
• CMO: Introduces your solution to the world
• CTO: Manages tech requirements
• CDO: Manages and coordinates your startup’s design initiatives

You want people who will embrace and boost the project. Don’t search for skill alone. In order to create a startup, the entire team will need to know how to adapt and work on different roles when necessary.  A good team fit is also extremely important. Look for people with whom you enjoy working, especially in the early stages. 

4. Customer Persona & Customer Validation

To reach your customers, you’ll need to know who they are. Defining a target audience is not enough. You will need to create a Customer Persona.

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data. This means knowing relevant information such as educational background, personal demographics, and job role. You’ll need all of these when creating your persona. To make it simple, you can use this tool from Hubspot.

Don’t forget that this is just the first step! You will also need to validate customer identity for your startup idea.

The best way to validate your customers is to interview them. Justin Wilcox, Founder of Customer Development Labs, explains that you need to create a context to get real information when interviewing your potential customers. 

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