Building a startup is a monumental feat, requiring a perfect blend of vision, strategy, and execution. Not to mention a comprehensive understanding of a laundry list of factors.
Legal, sales, financing, marketing, building a team, technical knowledge, product expertise, and the list goes on.
It can quickly become overwhelming to know what to focus on – and critically when to switch your focus for the good of your business.
It’s something my team and I know a thing or two about.
Our founding team have all launched their own startups in the past, and have been where you’re standing right now multiple times.
More than that, since launching Altar, they’ve partnered with other entrepreneurs and business leaders, helping to bring over 70 startups to life using a tailored, proven process to create high-quality, user-centric software products that innovatively solve complex problems.
Some of those companies raised money from Tiger Global and Disney – and went on to conquer their markets.
Since I joined the team to lead the marketing efforts four years ago, and because we work mostly with entrepreneurs, my main goal has been to share valuable resources for startup founders looking to improve their chances of success and avoid common hurdles.
Over the years, we released a plethora of resources on everything to do with building a startup.
Now, I’m taking all of that collective wisdom and boil it down into one, comprehensive guide.
From product and tech-related articles to lessons on how to find a CTO, we’ve touched pretty much every angle of the Startup Journey. And it’s all in this guide.
I’ve also included stories from some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, many of whom I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with and learn about their startup journeys.
This content is designed to be your navigational aid, whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur or a seasoned one looking to conquer a new challenge.
It covers everything from the ideation phase and setting yourself up for success all the way to building your MVP, finding early adopters and pulling off a successful launch.
It also explores those often-overlooked areas, like the power of doing things that don’t scale or the nuanced difference between mentors and advisors.
The Ideation Phase
Every startup journey begins with the ideation phase. It’s the first step in building a product or service and is a critical part if you are to set yourself up for success. There are several things you need to achieve before you move on to actually trying to turn your idea into a reality.
Starting with how you find that idea in the first place.
Finding the Next Big Startup Idea vs. Solving Problems
It can be tempting as you start your entrepreneurial journey to look for the “next big startup idea” – that groundbreaking idea that will disrupt an industry and propel you to unicorn stardom.
The problem with this mindset is that it overlooks one fundamental thing that all successful startups have in common – they solve a problem for a certain niche of people.
For this reason, rather than striving to find the next unicorn idea, it’s better to instead focus on identifying a tangible problem in the market.
This approach hones in on the concrete challenges faced by your target customers. Looking for the genuine pain points they face and creating practical solutions for them.
This shift in mindset is valuable for startups for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it lays the foundation for a rock-solid, sustainable business model. Instead of chasing hypothetical demand, you’re addressing real problems that people are already experiencing.
For you, this means your product or service will have a genuine market need right off the bat. This results in a reduced risk of rejection and keeping your startup relevant in the long run.
Talk about a recipe for sustainability!
Moreover, the problem-solution approach will naturally foster innovation.
To address, complex, real-world problems requires a high degree of creativity, ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking. In a startup environment, this nurtures the all-important innovation culture that contributes to continuous improvement and growth.
Once you’ve found your startup idea – or better yet your problem that needs solving – it’s time to move on to the next step of the ideation phase which focuses on founder-market fit.
Are You The Right Founder to Build This?
Founder-market fit is a common phrase that’s bandied around in the startup world, but I want to take a moment to go into it in a bit more detail.
At its core, founder-market fit is the alignment between your experience, knowledge, skills & passion and the market you’re aiming to enter.
It’s not just about asking “Is this a good idea/is this the right problem to tackle?” It’s also about asking “Am I the right person to tackle this problem and build this solution”.
With that in mind, how do you determine if you’re the right person for the job?
Experience & Expertise
Some of the most successful startups I’ve seen have been built by someone who’s spent years working in the industry they’re targeting.
It’s why you’re never too old to build a startup. In fact, statistically, older entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed than their younger counterparts.
Take Jacquelle Horton as an example here. She’s a founder we worked with recently to help her bring the vision for her startup, Fave, to life.
Fave is a fan-centric social media platform where people can forge deeper connections with both the musicians they love and fellow fans.
She spent over a decade innovating within the music industry before founding Fave. She spent seven years working at Google – five of which she spent at YouTube as a product manager, driving product development for creators and artists.
Her experience and expertise put her in the perfect position to disrupt the way fans interact and follow the artists they love.
In just two years, she’s raised over $2.3M with investments from the likes of Sony Music, Warner Music and Techstars.
Her startup has been named among Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” and Music Tectonics “Startup of the Year”.
Her experience and expertise allowed her to intuitively grasp what people needed. She found a gap in the market and filled it with an innovative solution that quickly attracted some of the biggest artists in the world to her platform like Taylor Swift and BTS as well as tens of thousands of fans.
All of this to say, before diving down the rabbit hole of building a startup, ask yourself: “Why me?”
Passion & Perseverance
We can’t talk about Founder Fit without talking about two of the key tenets of the entrepreneurial mindset, passion and perseverance.
If you’re not passionate, committed and ready to persevere there’s no way you’ll make it through the inevitable hurdles that come with the startup journey.
Whenever I talk about this topic, I call back to a conversation I had with serial entrepreneur and Fortune 500 executive Garret Gafke.
He’s spent almost three decades building, leading and advising startups and corporations in Silicon Valley and has worked with the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
One of his startups, Identity Mind, was launched back in 2007 and pioneered the idea of digital identity.
Critically, this was at a time when the majority of people didn’t think about digital identity as an issue.
