Hi, Currently am currently working on my startup idea, with in 2-3 months am about to release my product in the market, I want to make sure whether am going in the right direction or not? I want to audit my startup idea regarding technically, business model, revenue model, marketing strategy etc.....
The key to understanding if you are going in the right direction from a product standpoint is to get it in front of users - so if you haven't let some of your potential end users spend time with the product, or at least put the concept in front of them to solicit feedback - that would be priority one if I'm in your shoes.
As for auditing the other aspects you've referenced - Clarity has experts that can provide feedback on these across the board. In fact, you're likely to find experts in each area that also have experience with a concept or product similar to yours - which allows for a higher degree of specificity and context. I'd suggest searching keywords related to the topic area as well as your industry / product category. This is an extremely common use case for conducting Clarity calls.
Good luck with your pending launch! Happy to help you identify experts as well as a plan for engaging them in a way that will help you achieve your objectives.
I agree with the other responses to this question. I'd like to suggest that you look seriously at developing a lean business canvas. Through this, you'd start to see a variety of hypothesis that you need to validate through the discovery interviews. I'm currently going through a Venture School program that is guiding us through this exact exercise. Two books that are highly recommended are Business Model Generation Book and StartUp Owner's Manual. I would also recommend searching for the Strategyzer videos on YouTube. All of these are filled with excellent information about testing your assumptions related to a startup. It will also outline how to pivot and iterate to further develop your ideas, leading to a higher likelihood of success. Good luck! Happy to discuss further if you have other questions.
You're in the right place. Start booking calls with experts in your industry -- or areas of your business plan that you feel are weak.
Congratulations and good luck with your venture!
-Shaun
The best means I know of is to use a Critical Factors Assessment available from the non-profit Canadian Innovation Center in Waterloo http://innovationcentre.ca/ under Tools. It was designed for exactly the purpose you seek.
By the way simply posing the issue augers well for you success
I hope you have validated your startup idea with your target market (and not just friends and family). If you have spent the time validating, you should have a pretty good idea that this is a great startup idea. What type of validation have you done on your startup idea? Did you know that 9 out of 10 product ideas fail and the number one reason is the wrong product was built? Validation is the key to success. I hope that if you are a few months away that you have done a lot of validation and pivoted as needed to make sure you are building a solution that truly fixed a pain point so you know you are building the "right product".
What type of pre-launch marketing activities have you been doing? Hopefully you have been growing your market along the way so you already have folks waiting for the launch. If not it's better late than never.
When looking at the financial model I like to identify at the risky assumptions in the model and assign a pessimistic value, most likely value and an optimistic value. This will give you an idea of the revenue range and the impact each risky assumption has on the outcome.
Assess/review the technical and economic feasibility of the idea.
Assess/review the sustainability of the startup you are going to create to exploit the idea.
Assess/review the "business plan".
Assess/review the opportunities.
Assess/review the risks.
Assess/review what the competitors are doing.
You can assess/review all such aspects yourself or, even better, you can ask a third party to assess/review them for you... it can certainly help catching the opportunities and handling the risks while following your business plan...
Typically, industry estimates are taken as starting point and narrowed down into targets that are fit for your company. In essence the top down method helps you to define a forecast based on the market share you would like to capture within a reasonable timeframe. SOM is therefore equal to your sales target as it represents the value of the market share you aim to capture.
The bottom up approach is less dependent on external factors but leverages internal company specific data such as sales data or your company’s internal capacity. This means a projection is made based on the main value drivers of your business. The company could define the costs per click using LinkedIn’s advertising tool, estimate the number of website visitors it will attract as a result, the conversion from website visitor to a lead, and the conversion from lead to customer. Based on these metrics the company will have a good idea of potential sales, of course constrained by the budget available for online advertising.
The pitfall of the bottom up method though is that it might fail to show the optimism needed to convince others of the potential of your company. If you are a start-up founder and you are looking to raise funding, the bottom up approach might not do the trick. Investors usually expect start-ups to grow fast and gain significant market share rapidly. It is difficult to create a forecast with a steep growth curve if every sale must be rationalized and if its point of departure is the maximal capacity of your company. Moreover, the whole reason why external financing is needed, is often to expand capacity and grow faster than a company would do organically. Therefore, when you build your start-up’s forecast it could be advisable to combine both the bottom up and top down methods, especially when you plan to achieve a strong growth curve by means of external funding.
No matter what approach you use to build your start-up’s financial model, it is crucial you are able of substantiating your numbers with assumptions. As a start-up, historic data is often not available, so you need to be able to present the ‘proof’ behind your numbers. This will also help you when you start discussing with investors, as they are typically interested in knowing the reasoning behind your numbers. Every sector, company, business owner and investor are different, but a good financial model usually contains at least the three outputs. Every sector, company, business owner and investor are different. From that perspective it is thus fair to say every financial model has its own characteristics.
Since any financial professional is able of interpreting financial statements having a forecast of them in place is typically a requirement in practically any fundraising process. The profit and loss statement are basically an overview of all the income and costs your company has generated over a specific period and shows you whether you are profitable or not. The balance sheet is an overview of everything a company owns and owes at a specific point in time. Liabilities show the obligations of a company and how it has financed itself using debt, whereas assets show how these funds are used within the company. The difference between the value of assets and liabilities consists of equity, which is the paid-in capital by investors that finance the assets not covered by debt. Shareholders' equity represents the net value of a company.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
