things that I learned from my startup experiencePART 3 – The Start

Suhas Dutta

“Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over. “

Conan O’Brian at Harvard

So far…• We went through the basic dos and don’ts in the

ideation stage of your startup.

• Lets get into the starting / planning stage.

Idea

Starting Executing

Results

Funding Marketing Selling

People Emotions Learning

Planning is good…• Good to put things down

on paper so that you can refer to your notes often and let epiphanies happen.

• But don’t overdo your planning right away.

• People will keep asking you to create your business plans. Those are important things to have, but right now is not the time. Do not waste time creating those elaborate documents and 100 slide decks.

Planning is good…• But it is useful to have a

5-7 slider deck ready to show to people with somewhat more than back of the envelope calculations.

• Same for cash flow projections. Have you tried out the product or service in the market? Have you priced it right yet? If not, the cash flow projections have no meaning.

Planning to evolve…

• So what would you plan for?

• If it is a product, plan for the evolution

– Think about the feature set for the next one or two years.

– It is good to have a blue sky vision from the beginning.

– But beware of not adding too many features into your product or service right in the beginning. Get the most important ones in first.

Planning to succeed…

• If you are creating a service, then– Think about how the service gets delivered

– Start working your numbers for cost of creating /manufacturing the product or delivering the service.

– And again what other features could you possibly add

Planning to measure…• This is also great time

to plan for performance measurement of the product or service.

• If your product or service gets touched by the customers on the web, start at least with Google Analytics. But this isn’t and can’t be all.

Define what is success, in your context. Measure yourself against this target. TIPS

MA

RT

Planning to listen…• Listen to your customer,

constantly.

• If you are a retailer (for instance) you must try to understand /figure customer behavior vis-à-vis the basic assortment and visual merchandising. You must figure what SKU sells in what kind of demographic at what time and through what channels.

• Start building these analytics right up-front and learn not to have your eyes glaze over when you see the numbers and tables. Learn to be able to recognize patterns.

• I have deliberately not talked about the founding team, your co-founder etc yet, but will cover those in the deck about people.

• Go on to Part 4 where we shall go through some elements that I learnt about execution.

• Have questions or feedback? write to me.

• If you need a bit of help in terms of mentoring, reviewing material, vetting a plan or the like…I would be happy to help a fellow entrepreneur start her/his journey. It will cost you just a cup of coffee.

• If you have already started and could do with some strategic advice, helping create your business plans or your investment pitch, marketing strategy, fulfill your company’s training needs, need advice on the pitch etc, please feel free to reach me.

• My coordinates are:

– reach@delhigate.com

– linkedin.com/in/suhasdutta/

+91 9980711477 | +91 9980525553reach@delhigate.com

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