More or less correct that in raising seed, that most companies that successfully raise, fall into two camps: either a conceptual raise (with little to no evidence) or a traction-raise. The conceptual raise is almost always easier but puts most emphasis on the founder(s) which means that without ...
Whoa, start by reading the Lean book again; you're questions suggest you are making a classical mistake made by too many entrepreneurs who live and breath Lean Startup. An MVP is not the least you can show someone to evaluate whether or not building it is a good idea; an MVP is, by it's very def...
It's easy to get hung up on the word "strategy." There's no magic in it: a GTM strategy is just a documented set of decisions and a plan. It's words on paper, and the purpose of it is nothing more than alignment. To hit your sales, revenue, and margin targets, you've gotta get and keep everyone...
Because you mentioned MVP, Im assuming that your current business is a service company, not a technology/product company. If that's the case, then you would definitely need to build out an MVP of the product and ideally show customers using the product as is. The major issue of a service compan...
If you and this person, *know* they won't be the CTO, then absolutely not. If there's an understanding that the engineer you are working with is going to "cap out" soon beyond the MVP, why would you ruin your cap table? This *should* help you get a reasonable amount of equity. http://foundrs.c...
Depends on your objective. If you really just want to know whether the idea is viable, you'll get the most bang for your buck by keeping things email-capture-only or putting up a "smoke test" where you have a Buy Now button that redirects to a "it's not available yet; but leave your email if you...
You seem to have a broad market focus. Narrow down your initial most suceptible group & early adopters. Once you have a target market, you can develop a series of objectives measures in days and social platforms for your 1 or 2 initial target markets. Once you have a series of objectives(goals) y...
-- Prototype -- I would add that you can create prototypes more simply by just using static images and adding interactive elements to them. I recently discovered MarvelApp (https://marvelapp.com) and you can create mobile + web prototypes for free with them. I would recommend hiring a designer to...
Likely you won't like my thoughts about this. When I give talks about business bootstrapping, I suggest people only work ideas which meet my "Sunset Rule". Sunset Rule - You should be able to go from idea to first sale, before sunset, or best consider other ideas. This also relates to your MVP...
Hi: Sounds like you have a compelling idea, but I’m wondering about the validation work you’ve done? Have you talked to people in the market segment you’re targeting and confirmed that there’s a gap that needs filling? Confirmed that current alternatives aren’t doing the job to their satisfactio...