Read time:
- The five steps: approximately 30secs-ish.
- The detail: approximately 6mins-58secs-ish.
I have helped co-found several start-ups. Over the years I have refined the method I use to build a start-up. What follows is a 30 second guide on how I go about creating a new digital start-up:
1. Identify a need / opportunity. What’s your ‘Problem Statement’?
2. Give it a compelling name. Then buy the URL.
3. Get designing. Package the idea beautifully.
4. Get coding. Create a MVP.
5. Promote the hell out of it.
Simple.
If any of these steps seem impossible to you, please read the remainder of this post. I believe that anyone can make a demonstrable proto-type of their digital business idea. And that building it needn’t cost a fortune.
What follows is more detail about each of the five steps together with indicative costs:
1. Identify a need / opportunity.
At a very basic level, business fundamentally relies on a value exchange between two or more parties.
More than ever before, the world now has:
- More computer processing power
- More connectivity between people and between things
- More freely available open-source-code
Which is why I believe there has never been more opportunity to ‘add-value’ than there is right now. Welcome to the Digital Economy.
To bring this to life with an example: We now have the technological capability to be prompted when our house-plants are too dry and need watering. This may seem trivial to you - my point is, if we can do this, what else can we imagine?
The challenge is to identify opportunities to add-value and work out how to translate them into a commercial business. Key questions to help with this:
- What problem is your business trying to solve?
- What is it that your business is improving?
The repeat behaviour common to successful entrepreneurs is the power with which they are able to define and articulate their ‘Problem Statement’ - the reason why their business exists. I also call this: “What’s your ‘it’s not right that’?” - click here for a link to post specifically about this.
Your start-up can’t start until you have identified and can articulate what value you are going to add to whom. Customer insight is the key to unlocking this potential.
Ideally you need to pick something about which you are overwhelmingly motivated and feel passionate to pursue.
To create a successful start-up it is not essential to invent something completely unique or original. (In-fact investors often regard a lack of identifiable competition as evidence that your intended market does not yet exist).
But, to succeed, your business will need a meaningful point of difference. What are you going to do better? (For example, there are a number of people already working on the houseplant watering idea above - so why should customers choose yours? Entrepreneurs risk failure if they do not look for, and sufficiently acknowledge, the competition.)
Indicative Cost: Creativity and inventiveness at this level of business development should cost nothing. Don’t spend fortunes on expensive research and validation at this stage. Instead, rely on:
- Your instinct. What annoys you? What’s inconvenient? What’s not dished-up as you want it?
- The power of your own observation.
- The strength and value of advice from trusted friends and willing experts - especially those with a proven track-record of success. Listen carefully to them. Don’t be defensive if they don’t tell you what you want to hear. Don’t be in denial.
2. Give it a compelling name.
Having chosen what the business does, the next step that I usually take is to invent a name for it. This may sound premature, but for me, it works.
The success of a business idea often depends on the ability of the founder to articulate the proposition in a succinct, powerful and compelling way.
In many ways the name that you choose for your business or brand is the ultimate distillation of its proposition.
Which is why finding and choosing the right name for your business is often vital to packaging your proposition in an impactful way. The more immediate this impact, the better.
Ideally, it is best to choose a name that is distinctive - something that you can own.
Buy the URL. Ideally the ‘.com’.
There are loads of online companies that sell URLs / domain names. Use one of these to search if the domain name you like is available. Buy the domain if it’s available. (I’ll write a separate post on what to do if the URL you most want is unavailable - but for now - give-up wanting a name that you can’t have and choose another one - keep searching).
Tip: Canvas the opinions of your friends. If people ask you to repeat the name (ie. if you have to say the name twice), it’s probably the wrong name.
Indicative Cost: Domains are really easy to buy. You should not have to pay more than £8.99 for a “.com” address. I no-longer bother buying all the surrounding / associated domain extensions and variations - that is a bridge to be crossed further down the line.
3. Get designing. Package the idea beautifully.
Bring your idea to life. A picture paints a thousand words. Two steps that I strongly recommend:
- Work with a designer to create a brand identity / logo.
- More importantly, work with a designer to visualise key elements of the user experience. This is about bringing to life the customer journey; visualising the key points of functionality; the pivotal points in the user experience. Not all of it, but the key points.
For example, of your idea is a mobile app’, then get a designer to convert your rough sketches into something presentable for the most significant moments in the user journey.
In most cases, coders will need some form of design-layout in order to convert your ideas into something that actually operates on the internet / or on a device (eg. a smart phone). Even if you are lucky enough to find a coder who is also a gifted designer – being able to show the coder what you are looking to build will significantly help reduce the time and cost of writing the code to make it work.
Many businesses struggle to find good designers and engage creative people. You can choose to work with just one designer, or you can crowdsource creativity.
I helped to co-found a crowdsourcing website - it is called www.ConceptCupboard.com - it enables businesses to:
- Crowdsource creativity, design and marketing.
- Get ideas and concepts from not one designer but a range of designers / creatives.
- Connect directly with creative students thereby accessing the very latest talent, ideas and creativity fresh from college and university.
- Buy creativity cost effectively.
- Give young people an invaluable opportunity to 'earn & learn’ and build proper commercial portfolios that demonstrate their talent.
Indicative Cost: I used ConceptCupboard to get the TallManBusiness logo designed. Basically briefs on ConceptCupboard are a bit like a design competition, whereby the winning designer gets the prize. I offered £350 to design the logo for TallManBusiness. I received designs from 21 different creative students. The winning designer received my £350.
If you want to brief-in some page layouts for a new website I’d recommend being really prescriptive on exactly what you want (ie. not creatively restrictive, but be explicitly clear about the scope of work). You should choose a selection of key pages from your new website - ideally you should draw some rough sketches of them yourself. I’d set a fixed budget for the project - depending how much work, perhaps a prize somewhere in the region of £1,000 to map out the look of key product pages/fucntionality. Go to ConceptCupboard’s website for full details of how it works.
4. Get coding. Create a MVP.
Find a good coder / coders. Make a modest investment to start building a MVP (minimum viable product).
The scope of this will depend on how ambitious your idea is; how technically demanding it is; and therefore, how much coding it requires. All these factors will all go to determining the size and extend of the build required.
Good coders / computer-scientists will be able to give you advice on this. It is vitally important to start the process of engaging coders in order to get this technical input.
If it is not viable to build the whole concept that you have invented, work with the coder to define what is possible that would bring to life the initial designs that your chosen designer has visualised. If your idea is too difficult to build fully, perhaps a coder can help build an initial simulation.
Even if all you can practically build is a demo and not an actively working prototype, this is still a massive step forward and one that will help significantly develop conversations with potential investors / accelerators who may be willing to invest in the development of your dream.
Indicative Cost: I help run Wayra, the business accelerator that belongs to Telefonica. At Wayra we tend to invest in teams rather than solo entrepreneurs. As investors, we’re not alone in this preference. You may already know great coders who you are keen to work with. Getting connected to the right technical coding talent is something that I see many aspiring entrepreneurs struggle with. Which is why my friends and I built www.CodingCupboard.com. It’s a similar idea as ConceptCupboard - a marketplace that connects businesses with great student talent - only this time it’s all about coding; coders; geeks; and computer-scientists. It’s simple to use:
- Write a brief.
- Name your price (define the budget).
- Receive proposals from brilliant coders.
I’ve just completed a project on CodingCupboard to fix the Twitter feed on this blog and significantly enhance the 'share’ buttons. I received six proposals from six different coders. I chose one who completed the work brilliantly for c. £150.
5. Promote the hell out of it.
You may well have noticed that two of the five steps [that I recommend] actively promote businesses in which I have a vested interest. I thought about declaring this at the start of this blog post. Perhaps I ought to apologise. However, I am immensely proud of both ConceptCupboard and CodingCupboard - and the much needed services that they both provide. The insight is clear - I regularly see start-ups and entrepreneurs struggling to source good creative and good code. I want to alleviate these obstacles and see more businesses fly. I perceive a skills gap and I want to bridge it.
And I want good students to be more 'work-ready’. It is incumbent on people in business today to build the talent-pool of tomorrow - on which their future business will inevitably depend.
Once you have some form of alpha / beta / demo / 'show-piece’ that brings together your idea into something tangible that you can present to people – then go and sell the hell out of it.
Pitch your invention to anyone who will listen: other entrepreneurs; potential investors; media / PR opportunities; and probably most importantly, to potential customers.
Please Tweet me if you are at:
#Step1 - “I have an idea” - or magically you are at either: #Step2; #Step3; #Step4; #Step5 - in which case, don’t forget to mention your business’s name.
The gif is my big feet pounding up the stairs of my local train station. Thanks to my two daughters for helping me to create it. (It took forever to produce).