Startup’s

Start-up’s

Helping Start-ups build traction from Concepts to Execution for delivering the best Customer experience with differentiated offerings

Start-Up Journey: Steps, Stages and Milestones + Relentless Focus make a perfect mix

Detailed Stages in the Start-up Journey

IDEATION Phase

Problem Solution Fit : Here a startup needs to find the right problem to solve and the right idea for a solution.

Understanding the customers and their pain points well, is only half the battle won. The Start-up founders also need to exhibit the confidence of how they are uniquely qualified to solve the problem with their unique solution (aka Competitive Advantage).

Idea validation is an interesting melody of evaluating multiple hypothesis and shortlisting the frontrunners basis internal and external research, sector specific conversations, market wisdom and above all, self-conviction of the Startup founders.

Arriving at the Right idea requires the Right discipline to think through, whether a lot of other people are going to want it.. – Steve Jobs

Business Model:

The business model canvas is a simple and convenient exercise that helps organizations acquire a helicopter view on their position in the market, define the direction for further development, create conversations between existing projects and analyze competition.

Watch out : Start a business believing some abstract “people” will like the idea.

VALIDATION Phase

Minimum Viable Product (MPV) is developing the basic functionality of the service. It allows collection of the maximum amount of validated learnings about customers with the least effort, or simply put, the solution that best tracks the customer behaviour in practice and reduction in risks to the minimum.

A successful MVP is characterized by a healthy product usage and benefit realization, with low customer churn rates and superior product delivery vs compete

Watch out: The process risks derailment if : i) Founders do the Product development without User inputs. ii) Attempt to solve a problem they do not care about. iii) Attempt to help out the Users they do not care about

Product Market Fit or Value Hypothesis is a key stage In deciding whether to CONTINUE as is or PIVOT basis past performance. Start-Ups are “always in beta mode” hence should “fail fast”, learn and pivot. It’s not unusual to pivot 1 to 2 times.

For achieving this, the MPV needs to be developed (iterated) until it finds the Product Market Fit (PMF) for a Good market and a relevant Product that satisfies the market. It articulates the key hypothesis (features and Business model) why customers buy the product.

A successful Product Market fit (PMF) is achieved when a start-up has a set of customers excited enough to pay for the product and a customer base large enough to create a viable business i.e., sticking customers and tailwinds from the market (Grow your business while [providing value to your customers).

Watch out : PMF is the foundation for the Growth journey and the biggest mistake, is to not find the RIGHT Product Market fit and instead buy growth with overinvestments

Growth Hypothesis is characterised by a product that is easy to understand and is further socialised in user circles reflecting Growth in users and revenue and strong indication of market traction / market share in a fast- growing target market

This stage is characterised by

• Growth : Customer success and Revenue expansion through sound onboarding and benefit realisation
• Repeatable : Successful New customer acquisition occurs in a predictable and consistent fashion
• Scalable : Leveraging multiple lead sources (Inbound marketing, Freemium etc) for customer recruitment
• Profitable : Life Time Value (LTV) (Gross Margin) generated from the customer is higher than the Customer cost of acquisition (CAC)

A successful Repeatable, Scalable model is achieved when the:

• process for paying customer acquisition is clearly Repeatable ( with the New sales hires achieving the same productivity, as the original sales team)
• process is Scalable with an increase in the sources of your leads
• Cost of customer acquisition (CAC) is significantly less than the amount you can monetize them over the customer’s lifetime (LTV)

Watch out : i) Low Repeat transactions from exiting users ii) Poor new customer recruitments iii) No MOAT (defensible advantage) for the business

GROWTH Phase

Once the startup has found a product market fit (PMF) and built a repeatable and scalable way with a viable business model (LTV> CAC), it’s time to scale up for business expansion

A successful Growth phase is characterized by Recognizing, Seizing the Moment and Controlling the Market. Changing gears for aggressive hiring and deploying resources for quick scale-up dominate the activity charts

This stage is characterized by aggressively pushing that accelerator pedal by investing in sales and marketing to scale the business as fast as possible and build sufficient advantages against competition. This stage witness the operating processes providing support for scale-up and efficiency, to aid in result delivery

Watch out: i) Inefficient and non-scalable Distribution model ii) Unable to deliver favourable Unit Economics iii) No MOAT (defensible advantage) for the business