Ultra Boostrapping Feb 2010 Ep

Personal Background
Faculty at Univ of Calif Berkeley Haas business school
Founder Concordia Ventures – advisory to entrepreneurs
CEO of three companies (semiconductor & software)
Worked in engineering, research, marketing & sales
Experience at one large multinational & 6 startups
One IPO (Initial Public Offering)
Wrote six eBooks on entrepreneurship
Raised over $70M in multiple ways (VC, asset sale, debt, angel)
Extensive experience in working with people from all cultures
Traveled to 73 countries, lived in 3
Brown University ‘81, Univ of Minnesota; Gold Medalist Lahore
Charter member of TiE Silicon Valley
President of OPEN Silicon Valley
Advised or mentors over 400 entrepreneurs
All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar Startup Workshop

Global Access: for Free
You can find out what customers want in any country or geography
Discover what are customers talking about
How will they buy it
Learn to look like a global company
Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

New Rules: New Opportunities
Internet has changed everything
Platform phenomenon makes is much easier to dive into a startup
iPhone
Android
Facebook

New Rules
Have idea! {build something that You want to use}
Find a customer: Do research to identify what customers to target & why
Shape idea by market research (almost free)
Develop product (using free tools)
Learn competitive landscape
Define business model
Target customers & sell to them
Build community & become a though leader

Business Model To Drive Clarity Your Company Licensing fee User Customer $3 $2 $9 Google Ad

How to Do Competitive Analysis
Google your own idea– pretend to be a user or a customer of your own product
Methodically go through all ads and sponsored links
See what your customers are likely to see
Make sure that your offering looks better

Customer Discovery Process
You must understand & be clear on who is your customer
Age
Gender
Title
Income level
Buying habits
Decision making process
ALL this before you have a product!

B2B Research Methods
Linked in
Twitter
Facebook
Trade groups & associations

Finding People for Market Research
Search people that can be useful on social networks
Ask them if you can talk to them about a specific topic

Questions
Is there a real unmet need in this area (where your products address the problem)?
How does he/she want to see this problem solved?
Why have they not solved this until now – what issues are preventing the problem from being solved?
If a solution (or a product) existed, what would it look like?
Who will use this product (or service) – what are these users looking for? How badly do they want it?
What is the buying process (in other words, who needs to approve this purchase)?
What are usually the selection criteria?
What price point will make this decision a no-brainer? At what price point are we likely to find resistance?
What are the reasons somebody would decide not to buy?
Why hasn’t the customer bought this solution from someone else until now?
Who else may be interested in solving this problem?
Who in the organization is the most likely to champion solving this problem – can I get an introduction to them?

Doing Online Surveys
www.Zoomerang.com
www.SurveyMonkey.com
www.Limesurvey.com

Public Data
http://www.google.com/Top/Business/Associations/By_Industry/

Free Data
www.census.gov

Product Development
Find people on craigslist & linked in
www.Elance.com
www.odesk.com
Use free tools (Rails, Drupal, MySQL…)
Host for under $10 a month, free unlimited bandwidth ( www.Bluehost.com , www.1and1.com
Put everything in the cloud! www.lunarpages.com

Selling Product
Don’t wait to perfect the product
Find customers & let them tell you how they want to see it improved
Go after these early customers:
Devotees
Early adopters
People with their hair on fire!
Go after a smaller target & give them all the love you got! -- then expand later

Sell & Market
Become a voice on the internet – blog, tweet, be a thought leader
Follow people on the web, create a following
Post in discussion groups – be a thought leader
Google adwords to drive traffic to landing pages
Sell on Amazon or eBay or Yahoo stores

Learn About Affiliate Marketing
Sell products you don’t make
Let others sell your products
Make money both ways

Bonus Tools
Set up a US legal entity – online
Use productivity tools for free

What Kind of Company
www.LegalZoom.com
www.nolopress.com
Options:
Sole proprietorship (not a company)
Partnerships (general and limited)
S-Corp (Inc.)
C-Corp (Inc.)
Limited Liability Company (LLC)
Startup Workshop September, 2008 All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

Cost of New Rules Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar $100 $50 $100 $100 Tools for prod Dev Launch product in Cloud! Market & sales Ship & test & fix (agile) PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Drupal PHP, Ruby-on-rails, MySQL, Drupal, blue host Niche Thyself Blue host, click-to chat Lime Survey, Google Adwords, Twitter, Facebook Figure out who is buying, focus on that niche – be unique, deliver value

Summary there has never been easier to start companies anywhere in the world Do it Now! [email_address] Get a copy of my eBook free at www.Startup-Advisor.com All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar Startup Workshop

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Ultra Boostrapping Feb 2010 Ep

by Naeem Zafar on Mar 01, 2010

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Ultra Boostrapping Feb 2010 Ep — Presentation Transcript