Startups What are the things to take care of while starting a b2c startup |
- What are the things to take care of while starting a b2c startup
- Reigniting the fire after pivoting
- How do you collect and track of customer feedback?
- How should a technical worker prepare for an elevator pitch to investors? (part of job description, not yet hired)
- How to estimate CAC and LTV for a startup without any historical data?
| What are the things to take care of while starting a b2c startup Posted: 24 Nov 2018 06:54 AM PST Right from market discovery, idea validation , finding the correct co founders, getting the right design, development, marketing, legal, operations , product launch, customer acquisition, retention, making your presence, building a brand, differentiating from competition in a crowded space, building a team, finding investors, working on a tight budget etc are all major things which may or may not be involved in starting a b2c start up, can you guys share your experience in any of these and the positive and constructive learnings from it.. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Reigniting the fire after pivoting Posted: 24 Nov 2018 12:48 PM PST TL;DR Founder of startup launched a B2C freemium FinTech app (end of last year) realizing after launch that delivering enterprise SaaS has the highest probability of generating consistent revenue. After utilizing the Running, Lean strategy, the customer interviews I coordinated validates the move from B2C to B2B2C, unfortunately, the founder's personal life took them away from their startup, and they are now trying to rebuild the momentum to deliver their MVP for the new year. Currently self-financing operations. As a founder, how do you hype yourself up after dealing with non-related adversity? ***************** Before the pivot and launching my first app, I was developing 12 to 15 hour days consistently. The excitement of building something from scratch that I believe would help millions was all I needed to get to the finish line. The platform focused on underserved individuals that need help building a financial plan. I have a technical co-founder who joined when we connected on Facebook; he has relevant experience as a software engineer working for one of the largest insurance companies in the world. My background is in wealth management and corporate finance. I have a consulting practice that I decided to take a sabbatical and teach myself full-stack development through online courses. The creation of our B2C app was a wonderful learning experience that I believe provides me with new skill sets if my startup is a non-starter. The tasks a dedicated startup founder has to complete on a daily basis is not for the faint at heart. Fast forward to beta launch; we received a lot of good press within our local startup community. We received some interest from local angel investors, but we turned down all offers as they were somewhat insulting. Fortunately, the FinTech community is very supportive here, most founders (Series A companies) I met commended me for a solid product but warned me of the uphill obstacles of penetrating the B2C FinTech market (especially in Canada). All but one founder suggested that I drop the B2C business model and create an enterprise SaaS platform. Also, a few mentioned switching from mobile app to browser. It took me several weeks to accept their advice, but I eventually decided to test their strategy. An individual I refer to as a mentor of mine gave me a copy of Ash Maurya's Running Lean book. I couldn't put the book down, and at the very end, I realized how much time I wasted implementing suggestions from a previous boot camp that is now out of business. I conducted over 50 interviews during the summer, and I concluded that the movement to B2B2C was more lucrative and more comfortable to digest. Making the shift from B2C to B2B2C enterprise SaaS was not going to be a burden as we are able to leverage our B2C API to build our new MVP. During this time, I decided to part ways from the local startup community mostly because my prospective enterprise customers never attend any of those events. As well, I noticed that none of the helpful startup founders who have created companies that reached VC financing attend the majority of the networking events I once attended religiously. My discoveries through the Running Lean process left a bad taste in my mouth that led me to believe most personalities in the local startup scene were full of hot air. Within recent months my father's health worsened, he was in the hospital for most of September. He had an irregular heartbeat that the doctors are currently monitoring through various appointments to the cardiologist. After my father was cleared from the hospital, my brother's ongoing child custody battle was about to kick off in court. The situation of my brother's separation has caused a ripple effect between family members. My brother's soon-to-be-ex-wife is a few grapes short of a fruit salad. She has been verbally abusive to my entire family, and she neglects her children whenever it is convenient for her. Fortunately, my brother was able to be acquitted of alleged assault earlier this year. Development recently has been slower than I had hoped. My time was needed elsewhere, but my co-founder was able to move forward without me; however, the product design requires substantial input from me. To build up my momentum, I tried to connect with other founders I have become friends with over the past few years. My interactions didn't help me, as I learned that a few founders shut down their startup and pursued full-time employment to support their family. Some are currently seeking their initial raise telling me that investors are moving too slow. One in particular that I believe will have a tough time reaching their target or receive anything at all. I have concluded throughout my startup journey I had a series of panic attacks early on and I have since improved my mental health (personal setbacks have happened throughout the timeline). Although I am in a better place, I feel that I need to revitalize my momentum. I genuinely believe we are bringing a product to market that is perfectly timed and we have prospective customers eagerly waiting to use our new product. As founders, what do you do when you feel you are struggling to move forward? I am a huge fan of this subreddit, and I appreciate any feedback, resources, podcasts, books that this community can recommend. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Just writing this post made me feel better. Additional notes: [link] [comments]  |
| How do you collect and track of customer feedback? Posted: 24 Nov 2018 06:51 PM PST |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2018 05:17 PM PST I'm a software developer with some experience in C# and came across a job listing from a startup, for a job called "Kinect applications architect". I thought, that sounds interesting, I would be open to working on a Kinect project and it would leverage my C# skills. I spoke to one of the startup founders about the job, and they forwarded me a more detailed description. The job description, surprisingly, doesn't have many bullet points that are of technical nature for an application architect, and in fact it's just one bullet point that is relevant to describing it. Very superficially I might add, something like "develop the proof-of-concept for the application", just like that. The other bullet points were related to preparing, rehearsing and giving an elevator pitch to an incubator group that is looking to fund certain technical projects. The founder told me that part of the job is to meet the goal of securing funds from the incubator, and I am expected to give a speech, first as an individual speaking on video, and then appear as part of the whole group. I have never done anything like this for a job before, even though I have worked at startups before. I'm definitely not a sales guy. I don't really do much client facing work but I figure it might be similar to preparing for a job interview. My takeaway so far is that the startup has nobody that is really technical as they don't even have much of a product made to be presented, and that's where they want me in. They don't have a physical office yet, just mentioning that everyone works from their home office. Still the whole pacing of the situation is leaving me with questions about the startup. I supposedly applied for a tech position. They didn't say, let's schedule a time for an interview. They said, "here are the dates that sound good with our schedule to go to the [incubator] facility, and we also trying to coordinate with a friend that'll let me borrow their camera, so they might help film as well." They also mentioned that they can do a three-way call to review the scripts with colleagues (I'll be emailed the script). Remember, I am still not an employee, no talk about shares or compensation has happened yet. They just started contact with me a week ago, and already putting me on a short list to do some elevator pitch for a company I haven't even started working for yet. So is this what a few startups do with new hires? Is this a case where they are just getting very close to the window closing on a incubator fund and thought "let's just bring the new guy in quickly and try to make our presentation work"? Seems last minute to me. However, on the other hand it's refreshing that they'd have me front and center as being a face of the company instead of keeping you on the sidelines and just let sales and marketing do the work. Any ideas on to keep from screwing this up, especially since I'll be meeting with my possible co-workers for the first time when we are doing the pitch? [link] [comments]  |
| How to estimate CAC and LTV for a startup without any historical data? Posted: 24 Nov 2018 11:58 AM PST Hey guys, I run a startup that offers a marketplace for business companies (B2B). We are still in the prototype phase so although we've been in close contact with customers for interviews and feedback, we haven't gone live yet. Which means, we don't have any metrics on avg revenue, conversion rates etc. Some investors demanded a CAC and LTV study, so they can get a better understanding of the business model and the feasibility of our goals. For that, I'm assuming we will need to do some educated guesses, based on marketing costs and avg conversion rates of the e-commerce industry. How would you do that? Any bits of advice? Thanks a lot [link] [comments]  |
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