KIC TRT Bootcamp Day1

in Business on Startup


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Telling Your Story in 11 Slides
  3. Markets
  4. Value Propositions
  5. Customer Development Data
  6. Awkwad Cofounder Discussions

Introduction

Venture Ready Scores

  1. Team: Why you, balanced team (talents, diversity), domain experts, serially successful founders, great company experience
  2. Idea: Are you solving a problem? New or existing problem, big category (vs tool), early/late continuum, technically achievable, pain pill or vitamin
  3. Product: Do you have a product, how mature, customer first, solid design, clear road map to scale
  4. Market/Customer: big market (TAM/SOM), cash available, new or nascent market?
  5. Competition: How many incumbents, funding status, are you incrementally better or 10x better?
  6. Traction: Customer validation, revenue, improving unit economics?
  7. Timing: Why now? Are you late, early, too early?
  8. Revenue Model/Finance: How will you monetize your idea? Do you have a basic budget on spending, big or small economics?
  9. IP/Moat: Is your idea defensible? Can you build a moat over time?
  10. Clear Ask: What do you need help with? Advice, funding, introduction, help finding staff?

Fast NO

  • Market
  • Team
  • Product
  • Traction

Slow YES

  • Idea
  • Competition
  • Business Model/Finance
  • Timing
  • Intellectual Property/Moat
  • Clear Ask

Addressing the weaknesses

  • Where were you weak?
  • How would you answer differently?
  • What can you change now - before final pitches?
  • Don’t ignore the elephant in the room - investors won’t!

Business Model Breakdown

  1. Creating Value: Product, Team & Market
  2. Capturing Value: Reasonable to exceptional returns - traction & idea
  3. Delivering Value: Price, economics, S & M

Telling Your Story in 11 Slides

  1. Title, Value Proposition, Contact Info
  2. Presentation Overview
  3. Problem
  4. Solution
  5. Market Size
  6. Competitive Analyss
  7. Traction/Timing - why you, why now?
  8. Product Road Map/Demo How you make money/Key Metrics
  9. Go-To-Market/Why Bahrain
  10. Secret sauce/Moat/IP
  11. Team
  12. Clear Ask/What do you need from the VSs?

Markets

What is the market and who is the customer?

TAM (Total Addressable Market)

SAM (Service Addressable Market)

  • Or Serviceable Available Market
  • The part of the market that can actually be reached
    • sales and marketing driven
    • with the feature you have now
    • with the product roadmap you have
    • competition
  • Not everyone that might use it, if they found it, if it was in their language and currency

SOM (Service Obtainable Market)

  • The subset of the market you can capture
  • A proxy for short term upside
  • Not aspirational

LAM (Launch Addressable Market)

What can buy your product at MVP?

  • Given your TAM, SAM, and SOM - WHO is the customer?
  • With Limited Features?
  • Who can you sell today?
    • B2B
    • B2C
    • Buyer profile *What features will you need to launch to expand your market and price?

GTM (Go-To-Market)

  • Have a plan for how you get your first customers?
  • Your LAM maps to your Go-To-Market
    • customer
    • value prop
    • pricing
    • marketing spend and sales effort

Market Conditions

  • Nascent/New market: Uber, AirBnB
  • Large markets: >$100M or $1B
    • Large market provides “at bat” opportunities
    • small markets suck
  • Headwinds or tailwinds?
    • Covid

Who is your customer?

  • Product vs. Services
    • Product is something you can deliver or ship - can you make $$ while you sleep
    • Services require people to deliver on the value and promise - consulting or a restaurant
  • Who pays the bill?
    • A business
    • The consumer
  • The product user and who pays can be different as in Facebook or Google that make money on advertising

Why/How do they buy?

  • Make money vs. save money?
  • Searching for product?
  • Needs to be sold

Value Propositions

Positioning

  • Positioning is holding a place in your customers’ mind - not as everything. What’s memorable?
  • Who is the initial customer?
  • Think about limiting service and customer first - before you expand
    • You are not precluded from selling other services or products
  • What claim or promise will you make?
  • Don’t buy the lead
    • Think of this like journalism
    • What’s the headline?
    • What’s the lead?
    • What’s the story?

      Testing

  • Each pitch is a rapid A/B testing
  • Look for 1:Many opportunities to test your value proposition
    • Trade shows
    • peers
  • Test tag lines

    Taglines

  • The one sentence summary
  • Pull from the madlibs pitch
  • Benefits to customer - not features
  • Simple
  • Evolve with the company

Branding

  • You don’t have a big budget - so you can’t afford brand advertising
  • Start with brand neutral and build
  • Memorable
  • Phonetically easy to spell
  • Avoid double letters, etc.

Customer Development Data

  • Parallel process with Product Development
  • “Get out of the building”
  • Develop for a few, not many
  • Prioritize features based on needs, not wants
  • Validate with revenue/commitment

What is customer development?

  • Four steps of an epiphany – Steve Blank

A. Iteration

  1. Customer Discovery: Turn hypothesis into facts
  2. Customer Validation: Identify scalable and repeatable sales model

B. Execution

  1. Customer Creation
  2. Company Building

Customer Development Goals

  • Acute focus on problem - not product
  • Find out if customers care?
  • What do they want?
  • Determines the difference your product at launch and at scale
  • Feature priorities & Product roadmap

Customer Dev Mechanics

  • Google forms
  • structured questions
    • Progression
    • What do you really want to know?
    • Will they pay for it? How much?
    • Why will it fail?

  • Neutral, not guided questions

  • Build a list of interested parties
    • mail chimp list setup
    • ask for permission to email
    • monthly updates: format - “what we did, what we are going to do and where we can use your help”
  • Regular frequency: be predictable

What not to do

  • You are not the customer
  • Don’t tolerate a small sample set - this could delay your success by years
  • Avoid “selection bias”: “isn’t our product amazing”
  • No rhetorical questions
  • No blind surveys
  • Can’t outsource

Awkward Co-Founder Discussions

  • Setup a process to get the expectations out in the open
  • Pre-incorporation
    • Meeting 1 of 2
      • Why do you want to do this
      • Capital in vs. out
      • Timing of life
      • Passion
    • Go to Startup Equity Calculator
    • Meeting 2 of 2
      • Print out a copy - bring it to the meeting
      • How far off are you? What responsibilities?
    • At incorporation
      • Reverse vesting schedule
      • What happens when someone leaves?
    • Option pool 20%
    • Why 50/50 is the only wrong decision
  • Post Incorporation
  • Milestones/Deliverables
  • Slicing Pie
    • Market rates: Don’t over inflate
    • Track time and contribution
    • Regular meeting: weekly standups
  • Make HR changes fast - they won’t get easier






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