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 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 Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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 Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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! Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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? Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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 Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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 Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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 Startup Workshop All rights reserved © Naeem Zafar

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

Ultra Boostrapping Feb 2010 Ep

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Ultra Boostrapping Feb 2010 Ep

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