A Service for Everything
What an incredible time to embark on a new IT venture.
So your startup idea has passed all your initial market competitive checks, that being no major similar platform or service can be found. What now?
On first observation I noticed a large selection of business services available to startups for the implementation of whatever platform they have envisaged. From name checking services, domain name registration, website and app development firms (including cross platform construction), efficient quoting services, global payment inflow and outflow businesses, CRMs, analytics, venture capital, and with so many others, startup companies are spoilt for choice.
Where do you start? How do we begin to breakdown what technology and services are required? And how do we construct the building blocks of a platform that will attract potential investors?
This is the stage when all passionate startup founders will get lost in their research. You will loss track of time, get confused with the services and technology required, find platforms or services that begin to encroach on your unicorn idea, and before you know it the number of bookmarks in your browser will get out of control. Sound familiar?
I have a simple solution I started using when I was undertaking research at university. Open up a Word document, save it as your working title and copy and paste all services you come-across. Make a note on what each do and their pros and cons.
As your research progresses you will learn the keywords of the industry you are working within. With the correct keywords you will start uncovering your closest competitors, best suited services providers, and the potential names for your startup will begin to be shortlisted.
During one of my searches I came across a service called BuiltWith. This site allows users to paste in a URL and even the free version will detail the different third-party services a website is using. Alternatively if you are using Google Chrome and are comfortable viewing source code go into Developer Tools to identify the sources of scripts and plugin services.
Using these two methods I have been able to identify and shortlist the IT services used by different platforms which I think will be appropriate for developing my idea.The types of services I sourced to fit my application include cloud hosting, enterprise email systems, appropriate payment gateways, instant messaging services, location mapping, analytics, ID verification, delivery tracking, and advertising platforms.
My next post will explore using all this information to start the construction of what venture capital firms call Pitch Decks or Investment Memorandums — this is the document used to sell the ‘sizzle’ for the purpose of raising funds.
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