10 Steps to a Successful Startup

Focusing on your top 3 or 4 markets (6 max), define their key characteristics. Geographic: Countries, nations, cities, etc. Demographic: Age, gender, sex, education, family, and income. Psychographic: Lifestyle, social class, and personality. Behavioral: User status, usage rate, benefits, occasions, and loyalty attitude.

Who would be the early adopter and why? Early adopter: An early adopter is an individual or business that will use a new product or solution. This user usually is excited about the product or solution and helps companies grow by providing feedback.

In this step, identify and define those people you don't want to target.

Open the board and think about your buyer and your anti-buyer. What do they have in common? What do they do different? How do they think differently? How do they feel the pain? How would you use this information to better target your buyer? How would you use this infomation to find them? What channels will you use?

What additional information do you need about each segment? What are you assuming, and what should be tested? Answer the following questions. Ask yourself how you know the answer, and estimate how accurate your answer actually is. How often do they suffer? How long, What amount of time/money is wasted by the problem? How do they talk about the problem (pain)? When? Why can't they solve it themselves? How have they tried to solve the problem and failed? What if they could solve it? What would life be like? Show them the possibilities of a life without suffering. Show them the reverse of all the things we identified above. What is your solution? What is the physical nature of it? What is included?

Start by finding information online, which is the easiest way to gather data quickly. Write down a number of places where you customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data. Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. Comments on these sites are excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel. Place special emphasis on posts where customers define their fears, needs, habits, and personal dreams. Add all the information to the board.

After everybody is done in the previous step, review and discuss all findings. Takedown individual customer ‘attributes’ onto sticky notes. Add one attribute per sticky note. This will be your Persona board. You may choose to group notes on the board into similar sections such as: 1 Background 2 Demographic 3 Goals 4 Motivations 5 Frustrations/Fears 6 Skills You may choose to change those sections. You will know when you have enough information when you feel like you know this person. You should be able to imagine their beliefs, passions, aspirations, fears, hobbies, etc. Continue finding information until you feel like the personality of your persona is fully-formed and feels as real as a close friend. Write down a name for this Persona or use the most common name that comes up in your customer files. This will help your team to have empathy for the customer as if it were a real person. You may also choose to have more in-depth interviews to flesh out your Persona, and to choose a stock photo for your Persona.

In this step, brainstorm elements for the life narrative of your persona and add it to the board. If you have interviewed customers for this Persona, it is ideal to use a life story that is a composite of those of your real customers. Note: Add additional Persona templates to the board if you have more than one different customer segments. Alternatively, start a new session using the "Persona" tool or use the "Persona with card decks" tools for multiple personas.

By now the board should be complete. You and your team should know how your customer looks, what they say, what they think, how they feel. If the picture is not yet clear, go back and add more details to complete the board. In this step, discuss the completed board with all participants and highlight important points.

Create a visual representation of the product's useful life to see how it adapts to the customer's value chain and what barriers may arise for its acquisition. Do not limit yourself to showing how the product is used because you will not have sufficient information to understand what obstacles may occur when you try to sell the product (or solution) or when you want to extend the life of the product.

TAM refers to the total addressable market for your solution. By defining your total addressable market, you will know the maximum amount of revenue you can generate. This metric could help you estimate a specific market’s potential. Tasks: Define your TAM. Add a short description. Calculate the maximum amount of revenue you could generate. ([# of potential users in a market] X [annual contract/product value] )

Choosing a business model helps you be strategic but also creates limitations. Here you are keeping in mind your target segment. This is usually the percentage of the TAM that is a good fit for your solution. Tasks: Define your SAM. Add a short description. Calculate your SAM ( [Target segment of TAM] X [Annual contract/product value])

What market percentage would you be able to reach? Tip: Only a monopoly can capture 100% of their serviceable addressable market. Tasks: Define your SAM. Add a short description. Calculate your SOM ( [Last year's market share] X [This year's SAM])

Before the session starts, add all your ideas, tasks, or user stories inside the board. What should I use? Use sticky notes and add your name.

You can start classifying each task as you add them to the board or you can wait until the meeting to start evaluating all the tasks and requirements together. Must:** Is this a "must"? What would happen if you don't do it? Is this essential? Would the project fail if one of these tasks or requirements are missing or incomplete? "Must" tasks or requirements are essential to success and are non-negotiable. Should:** How important is this task or requirement? "Should" tasks or requirements are considered critical, or high-priority tasks and for that reason should be completed whenever possible. Sometimes these need to be added or work on during the next sprint but the team can't forget about these requirements. Could:** Do we absolutely need this? How desirable is this requirement to our users or customers? Can I leave them out? What would happen? You will consider a "Could" requirement or task whenever is a highly desirable feature and will add value to your product but you know you can leave them out whenever there are time or resource constraints. Would:** Anything you will say " Would like to have..." but is just a nice to have and are consider non-critical tasks and only when there are time and resources will be considered. A good question to ask yourself and the team is: " What would happen if we don't do anything about this task or requirement?" Would the project fail? If "yes" you should add the task inside the "Must" section. If the answer is "no" keep asking questions. Is this a critical task for our project? Would this reduce our chances to get clients or would our product be harder to use? Is this important? For who? Why? If the team considers the task or requirement as a critical one this must be added inside the "could" section. Do we absolutely need this? Can we leave this task or feature out? If the answer is "yes" you will evaluate if the task or requirement is a "could" or a "would" task by asking the following question: Is this something that would be nice to have or we absolutely need this because our user considers this feature or product desirable and very attractive?

Sometimes the must and could section ends up with most of the sticky-notes. Somehow someone in the meeting always thinks everything is important. The reality is that teams get overwhelmed with too many "critical" and "very important" tasks as they don't know what they should be doing next. Take the time to discuss, as team what are the most important "must-do" tasks by choosing the first three.

The Value Proposition Canvas is the perfect tool for understanding how customers and users make decisions. This tool will help you create offers and sales pages that they will find appealing. You will be able to easily persuade them by directly connecting with their pain points.

These are simply the jobs your customer needs to perform each day. Think about the functional, social, and emotional tasks customers are trying to perform, problems they are trying to solve, and needs they wish to satisfy. Ask yourself - What social, emotional, cognitive, and functional jobs does your customer do on a daily basis? Why?

Think about the negative experiences, feelings, and risks that the customer experiences while they are trying to get the job done. What is annoying (troubling) your customers? What negative emotions do they experience?

What benefits would the customer expect? What would they need? What would delight customers? What things may increase the likelihood of adopting a value proposition? What would make your customer happy?

Having explored our customer's motivations, pains, and gains - we can start describing our Product and Service Features. Start with the product and service section. Product and Service Features:** The products and services which create gain and relieve pain, and creates value for the customer. Here is where you’re literally selling – like when mattress companies talk about their materials and extended warranties.

So what? Why do these features mean anything? Why are those features important? Pain Relievers: Remove current frustration and an exact description of how the product or service alleviates customer pains. Gain Creators: Offer them something new (added value). For example: "Comfortable, socially conscious, I get additional resources for free, etc"

Describe your solution and provide information about your proposal.

Add your sketches, colors, materials, price comparison, etc

Send your prototype or a link to your online app/webiste to your end user and film how they use your solution. Share the link to that video here.

Look at you user using your prototype and evaluate how the use it. Where are they struggling? Are they reaching the goal? What do they think? What's their reaction? How much would they pay for it?

During the interview or phone call, keep this board open or take notes. Add one insight per sticky notes. Evaluate how people feel and their emotions. Do they sound excited? Are they confused?

Spend the next few days finding potential clients and add their information inside the board.

Use the note section to add the following information: Interest level : High, neutral, low Email script. Answer or feedback. Surprising findings.

What makes people fall in love with your product or idea? What will the most and best protect you in the future? What will you work on over and over again to develop and improve it more and more? What would you prioritize? This priority will guide the project and will remain the heart of your solution. It can be changed if it is discovered that there is something that customers value more and that entrepreneurs do better.

How is the customer going to purchase the product? To sell your solution - you have to understand who makes the final decision to buy it and who influences the decision. You have to consider your user champion and the primary payer, but do not ignore the people who have power or influence over your buyer or/and user. Use the board to determine if your customer has everything they need to make the right decision and move forward to the next stage. It would help if you mapped out that journey before anything else. Evaluate if your potential customers have unanswered questions, the things that stop them from buying, and other possible barriers. By continuously evaluating and optimizing this process, you’ll be building long-term, solid relationships with your customers and providing a clear path to success.

Barriers:** Evaluate if your potential customers have unanswered questions, the things that stop them from buying, and other possible barriers. Action:** How can you and your team realistically mitigate that problem or answer their unanswered questions? By continuously evaluating and optimizing this process, you’ll be building long-term, solid relationships with your customers and providing a clear path to success.

Use the sticky notes and the drawing pen to betters describe the process. Make sure you contact or evaluate your customers/users to define their experience, emotions, frustrations, etc. If you're contacting your customers/users follow these tips: Capture their reflections of the research on sticky notes. Include only one issue, insight, or idea per sticky note. Capture what is positive about the experience using blue sticky notes. Describe challenging aspects using orange sticky notes. Highlight opportunities to make the experience better using yellow sticky notes. Use their language style. Adjust the underlying Experience Diagram/customer journey as needed. If each person on the team is contacting a big group of customers we recommend creating different sessions or using a different color per customer.

Quickly reach consensus about the key moments in the experience - this should be the team’s focus. Pass out three voting tabs to each person (use dots, flags, etc.). Tell the group to consider which statements feel the most impactful for the team to explore. Ask: “If we were to work on three aspects of this experience, what do you personally think would have the most impact?”

How will you move the buyer along his or her journey with your solution or product in mind?

Describe the business in basic terms. What do you do?

Add concluding remarks here on who your customer is. Feel free to ask yourself: Who is your customer? (age, sex, industry, geography, ethnicity, social status etc) How big is the market? Do you have different segments? Who is your most important customer? Why are they your ideal customers?

Add concluding remarks here on the customer relationship. Feel free to ask yourself: What's your relationship with your customers? What do they expect?

Add concluding remarks here on value proposition. Feel free to ask yourself: What core value do you deliver? Which needs are you satisfying? Why do they need you and when?

Add concluding remarks here on key activities. Feel free to ask yourself: What activities does your value proposition require? What activities are important to your customers, your partners, and your distribution channels?

Add concluding remarks here from on key partners. Feel free to ask yourself: Who are your key partners, suppliers, and collaborators? Why are they key? What are the drivers and motivations to work with you? How can you improve their motivation or your services to improve your relationship with your partners?

Add concluding remarks here on distribution channels. Feel free to ask yourself: How do you reach your customers? How do they want to be reached? Which channels are more effective? What's the cost? How easy is it to use these channels?

Add concluding remarks here on cost structure.

Add concluding remarks here on the revenue stream. Feel free to answer the following: What and how is your customer paying you? What kind of pricing structure do you have? (fixed, based on segments, promotional, subscription, etc) Other considerations: Add a note here on margins for your business to provide context for pricing and cost structures. What's your margin? Is it a fixed margin? Are you keeping in mind shipping and returns? What can compromise your margins?

Do you have different revenue streams? How much does every revenue stream contribute to the overall revenue?

Discuss and identify here which item is the most expensive and add any details relating to variability. Feel free to ask yourself: Which key resources or activities are the most expensive? Can you reduce that cost? If not, why not?

Discuss potential affects on the businesses revenue with respect to revenue streams identified in the business model board.

Have the team identify any barriers they expect to encounter or have encountered already relating to cost structure. What barriers have you encountered or do you think you will encounter if your don't optimize your cost structure?

Add notes on what you believe the customer is willing to pay. What are your customers willing to pay? What's the ideal price? What's your price?

Team members should add their thoughts on strategy for the business as per discussions in this tool. Feel free to discuss the strategies submitted as a team and choose a favorite by highlighting that note. Feel free to answer the following: Based on your knowledge now, what would be the best strategy for your business/idea? How are you planning to increase your revenue or increase margins?

Summarize most important takeaway during this process and provide any final notes. Make sure you highlight final notes!

Select what you believe is your positioning strategy. Advantages of having a clear brand position strategy: By having a coherent brand strategy, you are also creating a coherent perception of the brand for your audience. Develop the right connections and triggers across all your marketing and brand strategy so that your customers or users can easily remember you organization at the right time.

What is the minimum price you are willing to sell your solution for and why?

Evaluate what the competition is doing. Select organizations with similar strategies and analyze their pricing structure.

Select 5 prices between your minimum and maximum range and use google consumer surveys to test those five prices. Write here your 5 exact prices and the results. You can also share a link to your excel file.

While evaluating all the information above, define your optimal price and provide a minimum price you are willing to sell your solution for - so whenever your team needs to create a promotion or offer a discount, your minimum is established.

Now you a clear understanding of your pricing strategy, so your objective in this step is to describe your pricing strategy - keeping in mind all the concepts you have learned above and considering the following matrix:

It would help if you also considered reading more about pricing strategy. We recommend the following websites: How to maximize your profits on your product sales: https://bstrategyhub.com/9-pricing-strategies-maximize-your-profit-with-a-good-pricing-strategy/ How pricing strategy shapes your business model: https://www.intercom.com/blog/pricing-strategy-business-model/

How much revenue will your average user/ buyer generate during their lifetime? Let's go over an example: If you had a sandwich shop and your customers are usually university students, they spend between $9 and $20, but the average is $10 per visit. You also know that the average student buys a sandwich 2 times a week. The average customer value per week will be $20. ($80 a month) Now you need to know the average lifespan (how long will someone remain your customer) In this case, we know that university students will be around for 4 years. Over this period of time, new restaurants, coffee shops, and other alternatives will open in the area and you will lose some of the customers. Maybe for you, a realistic retention rate will be 50% You will also need to consider the profit margin per customer. Let's say your margin is 25%, so $2.5 A simple way to calculate your LTV will be: ($80 x 12 months) x 4 years. The problem with this is that you are not keeping in mind your retention rate or your margins. So let's get it right by opening the board and visually calculating your LTV.

Share the results here.

What is your current acquisition cost per customer? Is your LTV at least 3 times higher? If not, how are you planning to reduce the acquisition cost? Share your ideas here.

Which are the key underlying factors reducing your customer lifetime value? What could you do increase it? Share your ideas here.

The difference between an average customer and a good customer could be important and could also be a new window of opportunities. First, evaluate the difference between the LTV of an average customer and the LTV of a good customer. The difference could be $2000 or more. What's yours? Secondly, spend 10 to 15 minutes thinking about the additional things you could do to increase the number of good customers or transform the average customer into a good customer. This could be a customer success activity, a new feature, an additional service, or even a promotion to increase customer satisfaction. Write your strategy below.

How would you establish a cheap long-term strategy to get customers. Includes publicizing, educating the customer, organizing, and processing the sale.

Add a list of assumptions. Think about the things you don't have all the information and you are currently assuming. Tip: Share this step with your team. Maybe someone in your team can provide more information.

Create a question to reframe the challenge or barrier you are going to solve. Start by saying, " how might we ...." and finalize the question. For example: How might we improve our online customer service for millennial users? How might we get schools and universities to use our product?

Generate a hypothesis by answering this question: "How might we ..."

Place product features and ideas you want to discuss onto the sticky board, and into the correct column. We have two: Must-have: Excluding one of these qualities or features will be negative because the customer/user expects it or because it's very attractive to the customer.** Must-avoid: Excluding one of these qualities or features will be positive.**

You have to bring the minimum viable product to potential customers to see if they will use and pay for the product (or solution). Provide information such as: How many people were exposed to the product or solution? How many people started to use the product? How many people contacted you asking about the price, and paid for the product?

Collect data to see if they are using it and to what extent they participate as users. Determine if they, or someone linked to them, will pay for the product and recommend it through word of mouth. Then collect over time, analyze them, and look with particular interest for trends and underlying factors that explain them. You have to be honest and realistic. This information should be based on accurate data, it is not assumptions.

Define each milestone and each category. Categories could me organize like this: Example 1: Webstore Help desk Infrastructure Example 2: Marketing Sales Product Only one person in the team needs to prepare the board.

Goal and features are the "what" — the "how" is what your development team will determine. Identify the specific features that best support your strategy and vision.

Include your name, gender, email and phone number.

Briefly describe your venture.

What is your long-term vision of your company or product? How is your solution going to change the world?