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1. 

   asha chaudhry July 27, 2015, 7:50 am

   welcome aboard manas!

   just love the fact that you signed up and boom – posted some interesting q’s here!

   we also have an ASK RODINHOODER initiative – so i reckon you could also share this link on ASK RUDRAJEET 

   https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/ask-rudrajeet-anything-about-starting-up

   pls add your twitter handle at the end of your post – it helps me promote the post!

2. 

   Pranay Sanghavi August 1, 2015, 7:22 am

   Hi,

   My $0.02 below:

   1) Tool – what’s the easiest and inexpensive way to do customer validation on website?

   The Value Proposition Canvas makes explicit how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want. Or you may try tools like
   

   • QuickMVP.com
     
   • https://www.foundersuite.com/
   • Javelin.com [queue up]

   
   2) When is the right time to get an in-house tech team post customer validation?

   “By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.” -Book of Five Rings. A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival.

   • A founding web/mobile team without a coder past the initial stages of Customer Discovery is not a startup
   • Everyone on the founding team ought to invest the time in a coding bootcamp
   • Your odds of building a successful startup will increase

   3) When is it safe to go for mobile only site and should it be just a inexpensive mobile enabled website

   Confusing/vague question. Here is a vague answer anyway: startups are not building minimal viable products to build a prototype. They are building minimal viable products to learn the most they can. What do the results of customer validation tell you? How do your customers prefer to access/use your product/services? App-only, app + a responsive site? only mobile-only? [I’d rather rule out the only-mobile-website generally speaking, but ask your customers]

   4) What are the KPIs we should look out for, to understand customer need? Is it just registration?

   Once your MVP is out, the goal of designing these experiments and minimal viable products is not to get data. The data is not the endpoint. Anyone can collect data. Focus groups collect data. This is not a focus group. The goal is to get insight. The entire point of getting out of the building is to inform the founder’s vision. To that effect, the KPI’s differ from industry to industry. But in most cases, [post downloads, signups, registration], the level of engagement, retention, usage, churn rate, etc would matter. Some KPIs:

   • You’ve found a sales channel that matches how the customer wants to buy and the costs of using that channel are understood
   • Sales (and/or customer acquisition in a multi-sided market) becomes achievable by a sales force (or network effect or virality) without heroic efforts from the founders
   • Customer acquisition and activation are understood and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Life Time Value (LTV) can be estimated for the next 18 months

   5) What is the minimum duration for which we should timebox? Or is it just gut with some data?
   

   Slightly unclear question, but attempting to answer anyway: Startups in Search mode have little process and lots of “do what it takes.” Company size is typically less than 40 people and may have been funded with a seed round and/or Series A.

   Most startups die here. But at about north of 40 people a company needs to change into one that can scale by growing customers/users/payers at a rate that allows the company to:

   • achieve positive cash flow (make more money than it spends) and/or
   • generate users at a rate that can be monetized…

   6) Like instacart.com Founder CEO who did not have a co-founder until after 1 year. would you suggest that we keep looking and networking until we are comfortable?

   Yes, can’t stress enough the importance of a co-founder / founding team — keep looking and don’t settle for anything that is beneath you. I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps.

   [Some responses have been adapted from other sources on web, links have been given where appropriate]

   Good luck!

3. 

   Manas Pattnaik August 1, 2015, 7:34 am

   Thanks Pranay. your insights are very useful.

4. 

   Sridhar Rajendran August 1, 2015, 3:01 pm

   That was one helluva response Pranay. I sure did learn a lot through your reply. I wish we could give Rodinstar awards to such detailed comments as well 🙂

5. 

   Sridhar Rajendran August 1, 2015, 3:12 pm

   Hi Manas,

   These are my thoughts to your questions. Hope they are useful.

   1) Tool – what’s the easiest and inexpensive way to do customer validation on website?

   When testing a new idea having just a landing page and seeing how many people end up there through search engine would be a good idea to gauge customer interest. Add a signup page and see how many people give their email ids to be notified when the product is live. Also if it is just a prototype you are testing, then you could just have a barebones UI and not invest too much time in designing the backend. Sure you might have to do a lot of grunt work to manually update the stuff but if customer wants something different from what you are offering, then time invested in building a full-fledged site would be a waste.

   
   2) When is the right time to get an in-house tech team post customer validation?

   Go lean as much as possible. In the initial stage, outsource the development if you can. After traction, you will anyway have to scale the system and will require a rework.

   3) When is it safe to go for mobile only site and should it be just a inexpensive mobile enabled website

   Depends on how your customers want to access your services.

   
   4) What are the KPIs we should look out for, to understand customer need? Is it just registration?

   Customer retention would be a good measure of satisfaction.

   
   5) What is the minimum duration for which we should timebox? Or is it just gut with some data? 

   2 portions of data + 1 portion of gut 🙂

   
   6) Like instacart.com Founder CEO who did not have a co-founder until after 1 year. would you suggest that we keep looking and networking until we are comfortable?

   Finding a startup co-founder is like getting married. Don’t pop the ring until you are sure you want to look at that face for the next few years!

6. 

   Manas Pattnaik August 1, 2015, 3:30 pm

   Hello Sridhar, these are some pointed answers. sure love the cutting to the chase aspect of all this. great forum by great minds.

   As Peter Thiel says – zero to one is foundation. from one onwards it’s a different story.

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