The Startup Loop In The B2B Space
After a couple years hustling and shipping 2 MVPs from scratch, my back is a little tired. It is because I haven’t crossed the 10 paying customers mark I initially set out to achieve. There were some naive mistakes but most others are just deliberate because I didn’t pay enough attention to the business basics. Now, with a massive chip on my shoulder, I feel a new sense of clarity on what went wrong. I still don’t have all the answers but I am looking to document the lessons I learned (as of today!) and keep powering through. Condensing my recent startup wisdom and knowledge from great resources/peers, I have developed the below 8 golden rules that I want to live with for the next few months.
“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
0. Never start with a solution.
It’s way harder to convince the world that they have a problem you are solving with your product. It should be the other way around. Unless you have an undeniable first-hand experience with the problem and believe it can attract an audience like you, don’t start building anything. The rest of the rules are pretty straight forward if you can overcome your urge with rule 0.
- Find a fundamental must-have problem
2. Figure out who the incumbents are and how are they solving it
2a. Verify if there any existing products in this space
3. Understand thoroughly what the inconvenience/pain point that the customers are going through
4. Brainstorm & come up with a solution(idea) for them
5. Verify if the solution is technically feasible (with your tech founder)
6. Check if people like the approach & the solution you proposed
7. Do people want the solution badly enough that they will pre-order or pay upfront?
7a. Check if they are sugar-coating their interest and/or trolling you
8. Start building the solution (Wireframes -> Invision Prototype -> Usable MVP -> 10 paying customers -> Scale to a better version)
What do you think? Drop a comment with your thoughts/edits to this loop. And feel free to share this post with someone who needs to see this today.
