Startup Manifesto
Overview
- Find a Niche market thats facing a recurring problem
- Research the Problems & Pain points that market faces
- Talk with the stakeholders (Potential buyers of your product) within that niche market that are affected
- Validate your Idea — Find your first customers
- Create a Minimum ‘Sellable’ product
- Cultivate a BETA testing group (Minimum Viable ‘Audience’)
- Get a Lean Canvas model tool at the End of the Article to help map out your Startup project
Start with a Niche market thats facing a recurring problem
Focusing on a particular Niche allows you to narrow down on a problem & lets your ideal potential buyers to find you, thus establishing market validation.
Dive deep into the Problem you are planning on solving
How do you dive deep into the Problem? — Emphasise with the people who are facing it — Step into their shoes and learn about the problem in great detail.
When you place yourself in the perspective with the people who are facing the issues you are trying to solve, the better you will be able to understand & cultivate the solutions that will help tackle them.
Validating your Idea — Making your solution bulletproof
Acquiring your first customers & users, and creating ways to retain them is the best way to start validating your idea. You can do this by creating Minimum ‘Sellable’ product; you may have heard about Minimum viable product, but it is common where many founders & entrepreneurs lock themselves away like a Monk, spending countless hours building a product without seeing if there is a market need for what they are building — and when they launch, there is only Crickets…. Don’t do this!
Gone are the days of Building a product first, then the audience will come, we are now in an era where you build the audience first, then the product
Creating a Minimum ‘Sellable’ product is the best way to see if there is a market for your product.
Building a product without a market, is like flying a plane but not knowing which airport to land on.
How do you create a Minimum ‘Sellable’ product
Start a Pre-sale that features your product that is currently being developed as the solution to your target markets problem before it even exists — This is the best Go-to Market strategy that should be implemented before you start investing time or capital (money) building the product.
(You can use No Code tools if you are non-technical or don’t code right here)
Start a Community centred around your solution to their problems
Create a lead magnet, this could be a landing page or signup form where you can present your solution and educate those that visit it. The people that signup could potentially form your BETA testing group — You could either let them join for free or make them pay now, whilst you keep them informed on the development of the product, making them feel a part of your Startup’s journey.
It is also important not to sell dreams or create high expectation to the people you are onboarding and remain transparent as much as a possible so that you can establish trust & credibility, and always keep them informed and offer a 100% refund guarantee to reasure them that they can drop out at anytime
Kwanda, which is a is a platform designed to both help and encourage individuals giving back to, and building within black communities — they are very transparent with their ledger and how they allocate the funds their community members contribute to and keep them informed on their journey and latest activities helping projects & initiatives giving back to Africa.
Once you have your first set of paying customers — you have just validated your idea from people who have bought into your vision before it even manifested, and now you have a Minimum Viable Audience. Now you can to focus on executing the solution with product development, consistent marketing and team building if you are not good at a function in your startup, you can outsource it to someone who is familiar in that specific area and offer them equity once they have proven to be invested just as much as you are as a founder.
It is also important to realise that in the beginning of this article I started with the problem, and not an idea.
Ideas are just assumptions you make that you think will work, but you will only know if it is feasible when you test them in the brutal crucible that is known as the market — this will either make or break your ideas
Starting with an existing problem and trying to solve it, is much more better than being led by an idea that is not something your end user wants or needs.
When your Startup’s solution is relatable, noticeable and doable
You will receive better results, and build traction fast.
Lean Canvas Model
Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions using 9 basic building blocks.
Unlike a business plan that takes too long to write, and most likely, no one reads unless necessary (for funding opportunities or Bank loans), a Lean Canvas is designed to help you create a quick snapshot summary of your idea, share it with someone for feedback, and refine it iteratively over time so you can get started, instead of investing a huge amount of time writing up a business plan when you can spend that time solving problems for your customers.
Get your FREE Lean Canvas Model tool here — Click here
The first page is to help you understand which each box section entails and how to fill it out, the second page is where you will be able to fill out the sections
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