Ways to transform my idea into a growing business

As I'm sure you've heard, most startups fail. the numbers vary from source to source - 70%, 80%, all the way to 99%. Stating the obvious: it's very hard to be among the successful ones.

A lot of factors weigh in on the outcome of your project but there are some good practices you can follow to reduce your risk of failing.

In the following paragraphs, I'm going to share the framework we use when we're helping entrepreneurs build their startups. It's a 3 step roadmap that should help you avoid some very painful mistakes.

By the end of it you should be able to decide:

• If you should build your startup or not; and if yes,

• Which features should be inside your MVP

1. What’s the problem I’m trying to solve?

1. What’s my Value Proposition?

1. Who’s my main target?

1. How does each target stakeholder deal with the problem nowadays?(Benchmark)

1. Why am I greater than the current solution? (say what differentiates you from the alternatives).

1. What’s my elevator pitch? Use this gapped text to answer this

1. It’s been created for ____ (your stakeholders) who ____ (state their problem). ____ (name of your product) is a_____ (a statement of its key benefit / solution). Unlike ____ (current solution) we ____ (say what differentiates you from the alternatives/your existing competition).

1. What are the main assumptions from your Elevator Pitch?

1. What are the relevant assumptions required for the product to be meaningful? You should decompose all the relevant statements from the Elevator Pitch.

1. Among these hypotheses, which ones are already tackled and validated?

1. Part of those can be validated with research (much more accessible than product testing)

1. Among these hypotheses, which ones still need validation - and which are the KPIs.

1. From the assumptions that are not proved and need to be tested, what are the metrics to define them.

1. Is it possible to do a sort of MVP that is faster than an application to conceive and implement? Read the following article about the matter: The Early Stage Dilemma: Functional or Non-functional MVP?

1. Assuming there’s not a faster way to validate the assumptions, go through your extensive list of features and for each of them apply the following reasoning:

1. Is it mandatory to prove any of the main assumptions?

1. If yes, keep it, if no, delay it for the next product phase

Let's call the process 123-MVP.

1st STEP — NAIL THE VALUE PROPOSITION

First of all your, you don’t want to work months or years on something that reveals useless, right?

You should start by asking “is this product relevant to my target?”. This is something you want to see answered asap. Here’s the structured way to get to the answer:

2nd STEP — SET THE MAIN HYPOTHESES TO VALIDATE

Let’s remember your goals: (i) Deciding if you should or not build your startup; and if yes, (ii) figure out which features should be inside and outside your product’s MVP. Start from the elevator pitch:

3rd STEP — DESIGN THE SHORTEST WAY TO VALIDATE THE HYPOTHESES

First, go through this consideration:

Remember: a big ratio of entrepreneurs lose their way in this path because they don’t focus on relevant features to test the market.

That’s it!

The visual map here: