Assuming that the idea/problem to be solved has been identified, which of these should be the first step for a new startup?
Market Research12%
Build a Team47%
Build a MVP24%
Make a Business Plan12%
Prepare a Pitch Deck1%
another action (mention in comments)
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CFO in Finance (non-banking)a year ago
As a startup founder, I'm surprised to see "build a team" having such high ratings. From personal experience, it's very hard to build a good team without data from market research or an MVP to show some usage traction. Good people will only want to join a company where the founder has done the homework and put some money in to bootstrap the idea in an MVP.Chief Data and Analytics Officer in Bankinga year ago
100% agreed.
Founder in Finance (non-banking)3 months ago
Validating the problem-solution fit with primary market research. Until then the idea or problem remains a hypothesis.I’d start by validating the problem with an open mind about what the solution could be. The most effective is forming a view as to the personas that experience such problem and conducting open-ended interviews to better understand them and how they experience the problem. This may include multiple stakeholders.
Once you have a firm grasp of the problem and the personas that experiencing, try to brainstorm many possible solutions and testing them against each other in another round of interviews using simple storyboards (situation-complication-resolution-impact).
After narrowing it down to one or two solutions, build a prototype for another run of validation with potential buyers and assess their interest (letters of intent are of controversial value; IMO I think they are valuable if they involved and reflect a detailed conversation about timelines, volumes, pricing and adoption plans with the prospects and are signed by a decision-maker).
From here I think it depends on what you are building. I’d proceed to build the MVP with as lean a team as possible as fast as possible and bring it back to your prospects always charging a price.
Then I’d focus on building out the team I need (full time committed), then investment deck + cash flow model to raise capital. ‘Business model’ can mean different things, but at such early stage the investment deck (which should have a high level product roadmap and key business milestones) + cash flow projection model should do it in a pre-seed VC context.