Building the Initial Team: More Than Just Skill Sets
The initial 100 days, and the very first, perhaps most critical part of it, is building your core team. Of course, it’s not just about finding people who have the required skills on paper really. It’s about finding individuals who genuinely vibe with your startup’s mission, the crazy hours, and the, well, let’s call it exciting uncertainty. What you need from those people is blood, sweat and bums on seats. Metaphorically of course (well, mostly). While you could judge on their impressive resumes, you seek that spark – they love and will share your passion, you can see the burn in their eyes when you talk about your vision. Plus, these early hires will often come to have a huge effect on your company culture, so be compatible and have similar work ethic often overrides sheer technical prowess. How eager are you to search for people that will start a business with you? They are of course nationals, but are they seeking jobs or looking for employment? There is a big difference.
Defining Roles and Responsibilities, Clearly
Once you have your dream team (er, your starting lineup), it is of the absolute upmost importance that you set out, clearly, everyone’s role and everyone’s responsibility. However, this does not mean you have to intentionally create rigid, corporate style job descriptions, particularly when you are working in these early days. However, everyone does need to understand their core areas of focus and how they contribute to the bigger picture. This leaves us sharp in this area is ambiguous; and we can spend time on duplicated efforts, missed deadlines, and on we’re trying to waste our time telling us who’s on first, really. It’s like a dance, and you need to think of that as well. All those involved need to know their steps or somebody will end up getting stepped on. Here it is important to have regular, short check in meetings, clear project management tools (even a simple shared spreadsheet can work wonders!) and an open door policy for the questions. Don’t overcomplicate it, but do get it clarified early.
Crafting Your MVP: Minimum Viable, Maximum Impact
Another buzzword, but again very important for SAAS products and worth being aware of is the Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. The point here is not that we launch a perfect, polished product. Nope. The goal is to create a functional version that showcases your core value proposition – that key thing that makes your product unique and desirable – with the least amount of effort. What all it boils down to is getting something in front of real users as soon as possible to get some feedback, your assumptions validated and the most important thing, learn. The idea is to launch, and not attempt at every bell and whistles possible, as that is a recipe for delays and wasted resources, and if you are not careful, potential disaster. Think lean, think scrappy, and think feedback. Your MVP is a learning tool, not a masterpiece (at least, not yet). It’s more beneficial to launch an MVP early and gather all information and feedback, rather than wait 6 months and only then discover critical improvements.
Feedback Loops: Listen, Learn, Iterate, Repeat
Alright, you’ve got your MVP out there in the world, now what? Well, now the real fun begins – collecting and actually acting on user feedback. Many startups fall at this point. Or they ignore the feedback completely (big mistake) or become paralyzed from it. The thing is to set clear feedback loops. What this implies is filing feedback unsolicited through surveys, user interviews, in app feedback forms, social media monitoring or any other channel that suits your target audience. But it’s not enough to just collect the feedback; you need to analyze it, prioritize it, and then – this is crucial – iterate on your product based on what you’ve learned. This listening, learning, and iterating cycle forms the backbone of agile development and will be an essential principle both during the first 100 days and for the entire time during your startup. I have witnessed many times that the startup founders are so stubborn that they do not listen to the audience and it leads to the quick downfall of the startup.
Marketing & Outreach: Getting the Word Out (Smartly)
You may have the most amazing product in the world but if it does not have the customer findability it’s like a tree falling in an empty forest – no one hears it. Hence, those first 100 days are so important in building your initial marketing and outreach strategy. Heck, even realistically, you are probable aren’t going to have a massive marketing budget, are you? This means you need to be of clever nationality, resourceful, and laser focused on the target audience. In which online community do they do it? They would ask the next question: That is, what kind of content are they consuming? What ‘language’ do they speak (I am not referring to a literal language, but metaphorically speaking, what speaks to them)? Start at the most ground level, you try with different channels like social media, email marketing, content marketing to even good old word of mouth and track your results mercilessly. Identify what is working, discard what is not, and put double efforts on the things that are bringing in actual engagement and conversions. There’s a bit, in all fairness, of a science and a bit of an art to it. The secret formula is make no secret of it, just do it!
Building a Community: More Than Just Customers
Speaking of word-of-mouth, one of the most powerful (and cost-effective!) marketing strategies for early-stage startups is building a community around your product. This is about more than just acquiring customers; it’s about fostering a sense of belonging, creating a space where users can connect with each other and with you. Consider how you can create an experience to involve your early adopters … techniques that involve feeling appreciated while being a brand ambassador. It could mean making a Facebook group, a Slack channel, organizing online events — or in fact, as simple as answering quickly and individually to Facebook and other social media comments and messages. Your early users are gold, treat them like that because they are They will be your biggest champions and are able to spread the news of your app quite organically. In some ways, the customers are better marketing for you than you are.
Financial Runway and Resource Management: Penny-Pinching Like a Pro
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you will know that money is the elephant in the room. Or, more likely, the lack of money. The first 100 days are significant time for managing your financial runway, or your period of financing freedom. At all costs you need to be hyper aware of your burn rate (how much money you are spending each month) and your income projections (which let me be honest at this stage are most likely optimistic). It’s in this that the penny pinch neatly like a pro mentality will come in handy; cut out on unimportant, unnecessary expenses, bargain with vendors and find very many ways in which you can stretch your budget. If you do need external funding, consider bootstrapping (funding your startup yourself or with help from friends and family) as long as possible and be ready to give up one or two percent (the earliest usually is one percent, or more rarely, half a percent) to your investors. Every dollar saved is a dollar earned, and that is so crucial for startups.
Tracking Key Metrics: What Gets Measured, Gets Managed
It’s not just about saving money; it’s about tracking everything. Early on you have to be obsessed with data. Which of your key performance indicators (KPIs) are focused on the customer? Obviously, things like website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLTV), churn rate and the like. Essentially, you need to figure out what the critical metrics are to your business and track them with the level religious that you were raised on. This data will provide you with valuable knowledge as to what is working, not working and where to adjust your strategy. Similar to that being able to set your startup’s dashboard, to keep yourself on course and to prevent careening into icebergs (metaphorical ones, if not worse). You should at least monitor the most obvious data, it is better to have something to work on, than to have nothing.
Legal and Administrative Housekeeping: Don’t Skip the Boring Stuff
Okay, I know, this isn’t the most glamorous part of starting a business, but it’s essential. You have 100 days to secure your ducks (legal and administrative) in order. That means like setting up your business properly, or register for any necessary licenses and permits, setup your accounting system and so on, and that you stay compliant with any relevant regulations. However, you should not be tempted to put these things on hold, because I am to tell you that it is much easier and cheaper (if not even impossible) to take care of this right from the start instead of attempting to make it when you are in the middle or at the end. Hire a good lawyer and accountant who have experience working with startups – you won’t have experience in this topic and it is essential to hire someone.
Building a Scalable Infrastructure: Planning for the Future (Even If It’s Scary)
Finally, even though you’re just starting out, it’s important to think about scalability from day one. This does not entail building a huge and complicated infrastructure right now. But it does mean choosing tools and processes that can grow with your business. For example, you may select a customer relationship management (CRM) system that will be able to accept large volumes of contacts or a website hosting provider that will be able to cope high traffic. Consider the bottlenecks that may arise as you grow up and try to mitigate them in advance. This is a bit like laying the establishing work for a house – you need it to be solid enough to realize the entire structure, in spite of the way that you are building up a short time one room. This is going to be research and possibly even talking to other startup founders about what they used and it’s a very worthwhile investment.
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