Navigating the Startup Lifecycle from Idea to Growth

1. Navigating the Start-up Lifecycle
Sudhir Swamy
June 2016

2. Contents
• The start-up lifecycle
• Key milestones and time-lines
• Reality checks
• Funding needs and sources
• Examples and cases
• What next?
All information/data used in this presentation is based on secondary research and
sourced from publicly available resources

3. Startup Stats
1. Worldwide there are about 300 million entrepreneurs.
2. 50 million businesses are launched every year, that’s about 137,000 per day.
3. Firm birth and death rates are nearly equal, so about 120,000 probably shut down
each day,
4. In the US, $1,532 in venture capital is invested every second – that’s $48.3bn per
year.
5. Hootsuite, 9GAG, Airbnb and Eventbrite are among top 5 startups.
6. US, India, Indonesia, UK and Brazil are top five startup countries.
7. At over 4200 startups, India ranks third globally in the number of startups (2015).
8. The total funding in India-based startups is nearly $5 billion (2015).
9. India is the world’s youngest start-up nation with 72% founders less than 35 years.
10. 90% of startups fail.
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4. The start-up lifecycle – 4 stages
Where are you in this exciting journey?
Idea
Discovery &
Validation
Customer
Acquisition
Company
building
A potential solution
to a problem
Test assumptions
about the problem
and find out if
customers are
interested in the
proposition
Build demand for the
proposition and
improve process
efficiency
Drive growth
aggressively and
execute business
model
“The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.”
Walt Disney, Co-Founder, Disney

5. Key milestones and timelines
It is important to have goals at every stage
“Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.”
Nelson Mandela, South African Leader

6. Reality checks
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The better the question; the better the answer
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder and former CEO

7. Funding needs and sources
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“Are you raising money? We raise money everyday from our customers.”
Sahil Lavingia, Gumroad

8. Examples and cases
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9. How Angry Birds started…
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10. How airbnb became a $10 bn company…
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11. Successful Indian bootstrapped start-ups
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• HQ: Delhi
• Started by Alok and
Atul Agarwal in 2010
• Online-only menswear
fashion brand
• Revenues > Rs. 100 Cr.
• HQ: Mumbai
• Founded by Shailesh
Jain & Anup Nair in
2011
• Online Artificial
jewellery
• HQ: Pune
• Founded by Paras
Chopra and Sparsh
Gupta in 2009
• SaaS platform
called for Website
A/B testing
• 3,700 customers
Some examples…..

12. Discovery and validation
• Idea validation is an iterative process, and it should be a core
part of any startup process.
• It should be done before one invests a lot in building the
product.
• Validation should be based on hard statistics.
• One should not embark on development until one has these
statistics
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13. Discovery and validation …2
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Landing page Quantitative
inputs
Qualitative
feedback
Go/No Go on
Solution launch
Griggi.com – B2B Wi-fi sharing solution

14. Discovery and validation …3
CheckMaid.com - Online on-demand cleaning service
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“We actually validated [the idea] without having any cleaners to do the cleanings. We
threw up a site, a booking form, a phone number, and ran some [pay-per-click] ads
through Google and Bing, and saw what the conversion rate would be had we actually
had cleaners

15. Discovery and validation …4
• "After formulating the idea for this online marketplace, the idea needed
validation by real users.
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• I built a working prototype and shared it with the same groups with updates along
the way. This took months of work. Before I knew it, I had validated my idea and
development on a real product was to commence."
OpenBay - helps users discover local car-repair services
• I had to speak to vehicle
owners and automotive
service providers, both of
whom consistently offered
valuable feedback about
their challenges, their needs
and what they’d want to see

16. Customer acquisition
Cost of acquiring new customers is key to success of any start-up and is
dependent on several factors, some of which are listed below:
• The cost of the product and the level of decision making required to make
the purchase
• Whether decisions are to be made by one person or require more than
one person to decide
• The availability of the product on other online stores as well as brick and
mortar
• The competitiveness within the product category
• The medium being used to reach the end consumer
• Conversion rates in acquiring customers and retaining them
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17. Customer acquisition …2
Fiverr.com, a marketplace for services - Make it Easy
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• At the same time, we made sure that buying would not take more than 30 seconds so
that buyers would not have any friction on their way to getting what they were after.
We made buying a service as simple as buying a product on an ecommerce site like
Amazon or eBay."
• “Marketplaces usually start to build
liquidity from supply. Fiverr focused its on
making the creation of supply as simple,
fast and friction free as possible.
• Our target was to enable users to join
Fiverr and add a listing in less than five
minutes. We also made it free

18. Customer acquisition …3
• "I had to think of things from
the customers’ perspective.
One expectation from a service
like ours was for customers to
have a wide range of drivers to
pick from. However, drivers
were not willing to sign up (it
costs money) until the business
model was proven.
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Priority Pickup, a marketplace for private chauffeur rentals -
Offer a Free Trial
• To keep the drivers interested and also to give me time to demonstrate the
potential of the business concept, I offered them a three-month free trial. It was a
win-win situation where I had drivers committed with me for three months while
customers had a wide range of drivers to choose from."

19. Customer acquisition …4
• "We first focused on getting
the lawyers to join because
they are the supply side of
the marketplace, which is
usually how marketplace
businesses start.
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Lawkick, a marketplace for lawyers - Ask directly
• Once we had about 50 lawyers, we focused on growing the client side. As
for the strategies -- on the lawyer side we haven’t done any advertising at
all. It has all been through direct outreach, referrals, word of mouth and
inbound marketing."

20. Company building – Infosys growth model
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21. Company building – Infosys growth model
• Predictability: A good forecasting system for sales based on data
gathered from the trenches ensures predictability
• Sustainability: Achieved by energetic and motivated sales people
who pound the pavement and make sales happen; by production
people ensuring that quality products are delivered to the customer
on time; and by billing and collecting on time
• Profitability: Focus on high profitability in order to ensure the best
returns for its shareholders. Indeed, the long-term success of a
corporation depends on having a model that scales up profitably.
• De-risking: Have a good de-risking approach that recognizes,
measures and mitigates risk along every dimension. The Degree of
Affordable Risk (DAR) is a composite measure of the risk threshold
of a corporation.
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.

22. What next?
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23. Next steps for your start-up
• Confirm your vision and lifecycle stage
• Review your business model and assumptions
• Set targets and milestones
• Develop formal growth plans and pitch documents
• Monitor and review execution
• Review your operations, organization and business processes for
scalability and reliability
• On-board advisors, as needed
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24. Start-up tools and resources
• Business canvas:
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas/bmc
• Lean startup principles: http://theleanstartup.com/principles
• Curated start-up resources: https://startupresources.io/
• Business plans: http://articles.bplans.com/a-simpler-plan-for-start-
ups/
• Venture Funding: http://nvca.org/, http://www.ivca.in/
• Associations: TiE - http://tie.org/
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25. How can I help?
• Start-up mentoring,
coaching and consulting
• Market research
• Business model
development
• Business planning
• Pitch document
review/preparation
• Learning and development
• Operations efficiency
• M&A and fund raising
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudhirswamy/
Email: sudhir.swamy@gmail.com
Skype ID: sudhirswamy
Sudhir Swamy

26. Questions?
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27. Thank You
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