Startup 101:
How to begin your
Startup Journey

• Should I Become an Entrepreneur?
  • Is this the lifestyle I choose?  
  • 3 key traits of a successful entrepreneur
  • Why athletes make good entrepreneurs
  • Turning your passion into a business

• How to Approach Customer Discovery?
  • The Mom Test
    • 3 rules to customer interviews from The Mom Test
    • Good questions versus bad questions
    • Focus on what customers do, not what they say‍
    • Be careful having lots of “good meetings”
  •  Customer Discovery
    • Sustainable customer discovery
    • 3 questions to ask yourself when customer discovery has stalled 
    • 3 important customer discovery areas
    • Customers are right about problems not solutions
    • Wisdom of the crowd
    • How to handle conflicting feedback on your idea
  • Must-have Problems
    • Must-have vs. nice-to-have: the key question for startup success
    • Why building too much too soon can backfire
    • Essential criteria for vetting your startup idea
    • Must haves when build a SAAS company
• How Do I Validate Ideas Through Market Research?
  • Total Addressable Market (TAM)some text
    • What is TAM?
    • How to conduct quick market research
    • How to spot and leverage growth opportunities
  •  Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)some text
    • Product market fit, how do you know you have it 
    • Where to start when deciding what area of the market to target
    • Understanding and engaging your customer
  • Business Model
    • Different business models
    • How your business model can drive growth
    • Using financial modeling to vet ideas
    • Four different types of revenue models
• When Do I Decide to Move Forward with an Idea?
  • Authentic Demand
    • Finding authentic demand
    • Be wary of building more product features
    • Why authentic demand matters more than building your MVP
  • Design Partners
    • Build your new product with development partners

You may have an amazing idea, but if there isn’t a true market for the solution, your business will fail to get off the ground. You’ll need to understand where the market has been and where it’s going. Why is it growing and what external factors make it a hot space?

• How Do I Build a Prototype to Test the Idea?
  • Misconceptions about building an MVP
  • Essential tips for launching and validating your MVP
  • Choosing the right tech stack
• How Do I Get My First Paying Customers?
  • How to land your first paying customers
  • Strategies for setting and adjusting your prices
  • Proving your solution is 10x better: why and how
• How Do I Do Things That Don’t Scale and Iterate?
  • Using consulting to fund your startup and iterate effectively
  • Defining the ideal customer profile
  • How an ideal first customer drives iteration and growth
  • How to scale a sales team

• How Do I Do Things That Don’t Scale and Iterate?
  • Communicating ROI in your go-to-market strategy
  • Why unaffiliated paying customers are key to early stage success
  • Aligning the 4Ps for startup success
  • Aligning your go-to-market strategy: the key to scaling success
  • Key stages to drive and convert leads
• What Team Support is Required to Serve Customers?
  • Making your first customer success hire
  • Customer success tips from Kathryn O'Day
  • Qualities to look for when building a strong team
  • Planning your future org chart
  • Hiring for diverse personalities and skill sets
  • What to look for when hiring: values, abilities, skills
• What Financial and Operational Metrics Should I Care About?
  • How to use a content calendar template, complete with metrics and goals
  • 3 challenges with tracking metrics and how to get it right
  • Turning NPS insights into actions
  • Implementing OKRs: aligning goals and measuring success in startups 
• How Do I Evolve My Business Model?
  • Navigating startup pivots
  • When it’s time to pivot and fully commit to a new direction
  • When to persist or pivot
  • How to raise prices without losing customers
  • How to optimize and evolve your business metrics

Now that you know the problem, the market, and the customer, identify the solution you will you offer them, how it will be differentiated from others in the market, and who will join you in its development? How will your business make money and scale the unit economics? What do you need to believe for the business to succeed? What risks do you have to come to terms with?

• Should I Raise External Capital?
  • Three areas to focus on when fundraising for your startup
  • Starting with services: a smart pre-product fundraising strategy
  • How To fund your business without raising money
  • Solutions to early stage funding gap for startups
  • Why spending time with customers beats early fundraising
• How Much Money Should I Raise and for What Purpose?
  • When to raise a lot, and when to not
  • Different valuation approaches for different stages
  • Valuations: what to think about when valuing your company
  • Insights for choosing the right investment partner
• How Do I Find Investors?
  • Responding to emails with Investors
  • How to write (and not write) a cold reach-out to an investor
  • When to talk to an investor
• How Do I Pitch Investors?
  • Key questions to Guide your financial model
  • Keys to financial modeling
  • Questions a VC might ask
  • Showing traction in your startup pitch deck at every stage
  • How to show traction pre-revenue
  • Practicing for an investor pitch
  • Spotting pitch deck red flags and overcoming them with confidence

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