Real Prospects, the Simplest Functionality They Will Pay For, and Team Members Who Can Help

Q:  I have worked as a manager in corporate IT for many years, saved my money, and now have an idea for a new product. I need a plan to go from essentially nothing but the idea to building an organization that can support a service-first or  concierge MVP and the metrics in place to enable migration to a full product and profitable business.  Getting off zero seems to be my problem.

A: There is a temptation given you have a good idea and money to last for a while to go into execution mode: writing code and hiring staff. but there is probably very little risk that you cannot get the code developed and if you have some experience in hiring to bring reasonably talented people on board. The risk is in building–or offering in the case of a service-first MVP–something that people will pay for.

At a subconscious level this may be why you are having trouble getting off zero. It’s also possible that after many years in corporate IT you may be more energized by a career than a startup: in either event you should pay attention to your lack of energy.

I would suggest that you do not force yourself too far into execution mode until you were confident that you had identified a problem that people would pay you to solve and that you knew how to find people or firms with the problem.

One way to start, which you can do without quitting your day job, is to make a list of a dozen to three dozen people you can talk to about the problem you plan to solve and contact them.

See if they have the problem, what their view on what a solution might look like, and what the value of the solution would be to them.

Mastering the mechanics of starting a company don’t represent a risk reducing milestone; here are three critical near term risks to focus on instead:

  1. Finding real prospects who acknowledge they have the problem, want to talk about it, and believe that it’s a critical business issue for them.
  2. Finding early team members who are energized by the problem and not a paycheck and can contribute relevant skills and/or domain knowledge.
  3. Understanding the minimum functionality or result you need to deliver to get paid.

You can work on all three of these without quitting your day job. Keep saving your money, you’ll need it once you start bootstrapping. And managing the conflicting priorities of a day job and a bootstrapped startup will be good practice for managing the conflicting requests from early customers and early prospects.

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