STARTUP QUESTIONS Quello che la tua startup non può ignorare
Stefano Bernardi
2009-2011: • Startup Investor: Iubenda • Tech Marketing: GoWar, Coderloop • Advisor, Angel Investor: Iubenda, Coderloop • Conferences: TC Disrupt, LeWeb, FOWA • Lecturer: Universities, Events, Startup Schools • Employee: Stealth Startup
90’s & 00’s: • Entrepreneur: GoWar, Equeety, Hosteeo • Developer: Vluta, SaveMyInbox, Equeety • User Groups: Italian Startup Scene, UpStart Roma, HackItaly • Engineer: Ruby / Rails BSc Computer Engineering
GEEK, CODER,
ENTREPRENEUR
Angel/VC Investor, Blogger, Marketing
ISS
STARTUP QUESTIONS 99 questions to ask yourself
before starting a web company.
WHY
• Why are you really building this company? • Are you ready to be an entrepreneur? • Do you have what it takes? • What problem are you solving? • How are you going to solve it?
PRODUCT
• What is your product going to look like? • Who is going to build it? • How much time will it take to build it? • When can you launch a private beta? • Is it a feature or a company? • What are the minimum features for your
MVP? • What is the killer application?
TECH
• What technologies are you going to use? • Why? • Will you be able to find developers that
know these technologies? • Are they easy to learn? • Are they scalable? • Are they fast?
LOCATION
• Where are your customers? • Where are your competitors? • Where are your partners? • Why are you not there too? • Does it make sense to stay where you
are?
TEAM
• Is every team member 100% committed? • What if you run out of money? • What if they are offered a job at Google? • What is each person going to do all day? • How are you going to divide equity? • Who is going to take a salary? How much? • What is the size of the option pool? • Who is going to do customer care? • Are you the right team do do this?
FUTURE
• What are the vision and mission of your company?
• How many people do you see your company employing in 1, 3 and 5 years?
• What exit are you looking for? • Is your company going to be relevant in 3
years?
CUSTOMERS
• Who are your customers? • Would YOU be a potential customer? • Where are they hanging out? • How can you get their attention? • Are they willing to pay? • How are they solving this problem today? • Are you going to either make them more
money or save them some time?
METRICS • How many users do you want to have? • What are the most important metrics for
your company? • Is the lifetime customer value of a customer
bigger than the total customer acquisition cost of a customer?
ARPU * CLT > CAC + (Salaries+Infrastructure+etc / Users)
A: Acquisition - where / what channels do users come from? A: Activation - what % have a "happy" initial experience? R: Retention - do they come back & re-visit over time? R: Referral - do they like it enough to tell their friends? R: Revenue - can you monetize any of this behavior?
MARKET • What’s your market?
Tip: If you have a travel website, your market is not the $2.5 trillions global travel market.
• How big is your market? TAM? • What are its growth expectations? • Is it going to still exist in 5 years? • How is it divided at the moment? • How much do you want to take of it? • How are you going to do it?
Number of Poten@al Customers * Price of Product = ?
COMPETITION
• Who is your biggest competitor? • Why should someone invest in you
and not them? • Why are you going to beat them? • What do you know about the market
that other competitors don’t? • What if Google does it? • What can you do less and better of
your competitors?
FUNDRAISING
• How much money do you want to raise? • How many rounds do you want to raise? • Debt or equity? • When do you want to raise it? • Who's going to raise it? • What’s the current economic condition
and how does it affect your fundraising?
BUSINESS MODEL
• What is your business model? • Is it scalable? • Is it legal? • Where does most of the money come from? • How can you make more money? • How many users/customers do you need to
get to break even?
(IF) SALES
• Who is going to sell your product? • Who is he going to sell it to? • What is the price of your product? Why? • With whom should he speak in such
companies? • Which investor could help you out with
this? • What commissions are you going to give
to sales agents?
(IF) SAAS/FREEMIUM
• Will customers trust you with their data? Should they?
• Can customers export their data? • Do you plan on having a free plan? • How can you ensure you maximize
conversion from free to paid? • Can people start using the software without
interacting with a human? • Can you deploy without downtime? • Do you have APIs?
(IF) MARKETPLACE
• Can you easily market to both sellers and buyers? Tip: you are building two companies
• Have you solved the chicken-egg problem? • What percentage are you going to take? • Can someone bring it outside the system
and game you? • Is it legal? • Can people do it on ebay?
Tip: if they can, they will.
(IF) ECOMMERCE • Who's gonna handle logistics? • Will you need a lot of money to build
your inventory? • Do you have cash flows problems? • Who's gonna build/provide the products? • What is your margin? • How do you handle returns? • Do you have exclusives? • If not: do you have the lowest price?
(IF) ADVERTISING
• How many users do you need to have before getting revenues?
• Why would someone advertise on your site and not on Facebook?
• How much is it going to cost to advertise on your site?
• What kind of users are you offering to advertisers?
• Where else can they find them?
AND THE REAL QUESTION
What are you doing here? Go home and code.