Who needs to be on the founding team of a Tech Startup

1. Why domain expertise is not enough for launching
truly disruptive products
Who needs to be on the founding team of a Tech Startup
2018

2. MY HISTORY WITH LVIV AND STARTUP
● Interested in Startup since 2009
● Founded my first high-tech startup in 2011, then
moved to Lviv
● In startup mode in Australia for a few years
● Then back to Lviv in late 2015
● Joined YouTeam which turned into another startup
○ A two-sided digital marketplace for hiring talented,
full time employed software developers
● Then founded LeverPoint Advisory
○ Consults 4 & 6 startups concurrently

3. FOUNDING TEAMS AND PRODUCT OWNERSHIP
● This presentation is about the Founding Team at
Strategy Formation Level.
● For this presentation Co-Founder = Product Owner
● Cannot generalise about all skills required for
startup
● This is because the skill sets required vary greatly:
○ From startup to startup
○ Depending on what stage of the lifecycle of the
start up

4. CATEGORISING FOUNDERS
One way of categorising founders:
● Non-Domain Expert
● Domain Expert taking product directly to market
● Domain Expert who:
○ Uses their product within their SME,
AND THEN
○ Take their product to market

5. CATEGORISING FOUNDERS
Another way of categorising founder:
● Amateur
● Semi-Professional
● Professional
Professional at what?
● Taking New Products, Services,
Processes OR a combination
thereof to market

6. LEVELLING UP AS A PRODUCT OWNER
My Journey as a Product Owner, how to think about
the problem we are solving.
Amateur Founders see it as a:
- Technical Problem, then later
- Design Problem
Semi-Professional Founders see it as a:
- Primarily related to testing our assumptions
with prototypes

7. LEVELLING UP AS A PRODUCT OWNER
Professional Founders imagine:
● Market Entry point
● Path-to-Market
● Go-To-Market Strategy
● Think about the assumptions associated
with Go-To-Market Strategy
● Carving a niche, by executing on the right
marketing strategy
MARKETING SHOULD LEAD >> PRODUCT SHOULD FOLLOW

8. DOMAIN EXPERTISE IS REQUIRED
● Domain expertise is necessary to have on
the team.
● If you are not a founder with domain
expertise
○ Find a co-founder who is a domain
expert
● Otherwise you will make some low grade
errors

9. BUT IS DOMAIN EXPERTISE ENOUGH?
● No, it isn’t, but why?
If the founders are inexperienced with Tech
Commercialisation they will likely:
● Apply the wrong conceptual frameworks
● Selecting the wrong path-to-market
● Prioritise the wrong activities
● Make a lot of avoidable errors in taking their
product to market

10. RELYING ON OUR INTUITION
● As founders we often need to use our intuition to
make complex decisions
But can you trust your intuition?
● Not if it is uninformed / inexperienced
● BUT Informed intuition is often extremely useful
HENCE the concept of Tech Accelerators

11. ADDRESSING THIS LACK OF EXPERIENCE
Dream Team >>
● Domain Expert of the Target Segment
● Chief Technology Officer
● Tech Commercialisation Expert
Otherwise it becomes a very expensive learn curve.
● The problem Tech Commercialisation people are very
rare.
● They are professionals who have:
○ Taken multiple products to market in the past and
○ Have internalised this knowledge & experience.

12. SPOTTING INEXPERIENCE
● Choosing poor market opportunities.
● Choosing problematic paths to market.
● Unclear about initial target market?
● Who their competitors or competitive set is?
● What they are aiming to achieve with their next
release?
● What activities are required to achieve their goals?
● What strategies are required to run a Product
Company?

13. SPOTTING INEXPERIENCE
● The Marketing Channels they need to leverage
to drive Product Adoption
● The need to transition from a:
○ Product Management Focus, to a
○ Whole Product Management Focus, to a
○ Product Marketing Management Focus
● The Whole Product needed to gain a foothold
in the mainstream market

14. STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
Blending the three types of knowledge/expertise together:
● Domain Expert and
● Go-To-Market Strategist
● Chief Technology Officer
Then we need the right operational staff in place
Solopreneurs beware :) there is a huge amount to know for
one person. Could need 10+ years of experience, on
significant size projects.

15. FAILURE AT LAUNCH
Startups can happen any time but most often at
product launch
Because the team doesn’t have a
commercialisation strategy
LeverPoint’s mission is to try to stop this
happening quite so much.

16. We have a systematic approach to
commercialising high-tech startup.
We help by introducing frameworks to
projects:
● lacking structure and
● Help them formulate credible
Go-To-Market strategies.
Based on experience with over a dozen
high-tech startups.
OUR UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION

17. Get in touch regarding Go-To-Market Strategy
Particularly if you are a software or product company, who can relate
to the failure at launch phenomena.
Tristan Senycia
tristan@leverpoint.co.uk
Go-to-Market Excellence Required for Product Success
Helping Product Owners with Market Entry & Product Adoption, while
avoiding costly errors
THANK YOU