Jekyll2021-04-29T16:21:54+01:00https://geovation.github.io/feed.xmlGeovation Tech BlogThis blog is an unruly space where our talented engineers can express themselves.Geovationhttps://geovation.uk/Why you always have competitors, and how to assess them effectively2021-04-29T00:00:00+01:002021-04-29T00:00:00+01:00https://geovation.github.io/2021-04-29-how-to-assess-competition<figure class="image">
<img src="/assets/images/how-to-assess-competition/egrets-fighting.jpg" alt=" Two Great Egrets battle for territorial fishing rights" />
<figcaption><span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@chrissabor?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Chris Sabor</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="tldr">TL,DR;</h2>
<p>Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have no competition simply because there’s no-one out there who’s doing <em>exactly</em> the same thing as you. That cute cat video you just watched on YouTube? Even that is your competition in a world of short attention spans! The following simple steps can be used to give you a competitive edge:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use SEO keyword tools to find the most common search queries related to your product or service.</li>
<li>Use a search engine with these terms to see who might be your competition.</li>
<li>Look at their websites and examine their brand, messaging and product/service.</li>
<li>Examine what their offering is, who it is aimed at, how they market themselves, what offers they are making.</li>
<li>Learn where they are strong and where they are weak, and where you can fill a gap.</li>
<li>Use this knowledge to help build a brand customers will recognise and trust.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="you-aint-seen-nothin-like-this-before">You ain’t seen nothin’ like this before…</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>DAVID: So we became The Originals.</p>
<p>NIGEL: Right.</p>
<p>DAVID: And we had to change our name actually….</p>
<p>NIGEL: Well there was, there was another group in the East End called The Originals and we had to rename
ourselves.</p>
<p>DAVID: The New Originals.</p>
<p>– <cite> This is Spinal Tap, A Rockumentary by Martin DiBergi</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anyone who thinks their start-up idea has no competition is a fool. There, I’ve said it. If you’re reading that statement and thinking to yourself ‘how dare you, no-one is producing an asynchronous audio/video story-sharing app like mine’ my answer is threefold:</p>
<ol>
<li>I’d be prepared to bet a great deal of money that you haven’t actually looked to see if you have any competition (and I mean really, properly, looked in a methodical and organised manner).</li>
<li>Something doesn’t have to do exactly what you do to be the competition. I’ve described in previous posts how to find <a href="https://geovation.github.io/speak-to-customers-for-validation" target="_blank">early adopters</a> and one of their characteristics is that they are already paying to remove the pain they feel from their problem. Whatever they’re paying for is your competition, whether it actually solves the problem or not.</li>
<li>Since the invention of kitten videos, every start-up (and I mean every… single… one…) is competing for their customers’ time and attention: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Clubhouse, Slack, Candy Crush, etc., etc., are <em>all</em> your competition.</li>
</ol>
<p>The hardest competitor to beat will be the one your customers are using right now. In order to beat that competitor you will have to persuade existing customers to switch to your product or service, and people <em>hate</em> change. The rule of thumb is that your product/service will have to be at least 10x better than the incumbent for you to entice them away (admittedly, ‘10x’ better is very hard to quantify but suffice it to say that you will have to be <em>much</em> better!).</p>
<p>Your task is to understand not only who your competitors are in your business area of interest but also what else makes demands on the attention of you customer niche. Grabbing people’s attention is easy (just paint yourself purple and run down the street shouting “I’m a blueberry!” - that should do it), retaining people’s attention is really, really hard. Your aim is to turn attention into habit.</p>
<p>You need to decide what role you want to play in your target customer’s life, and the advantages and disadvantages that help you play that role.</p>
<p>Get into the habit of looking at competitors and asking yourself what you can take from their approach. Are they using a channel to access customers that gives them an advantage? Do they have special deals in place that you’re not offering? How are they going about solving the issues that you are trying to solve?</p>
<p>Ask not only ‘how does my customer benefit from this?’ - the <strong>user question</strong> - but also ‘how are we serving this need better than our competitors?’ - the <strong>product question</strong> - and ‘how can we show our customers that our product/service is the only logical choice for them?’ - the <strong>marketing question</strong>.</p>
<h2 id="take-a-long-hard-look-at-yourself">Take a long, hard look at yourself</h2>
<p>Begin with a <strong>SWOT</strong> analysis. You’ve probably heard of this before. You’ve probably <em>done</em> this before. Just in case you haven’t, <strong>SWOT</strong> stands for <strong>Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats</strong>. This kind of analysis is typically done for the business as a whole, but in this context you should try to focus on competitive opportunities and threats.</p>
<p>SWOT analysis is attractive because of it’s simplicity, but it can lead to vague discussions. Its openness, which is its strength, can also become a weakness if the analysis is not directed which is why we concentrate on competition when completing the analysis.</p>
<p>SWOT asks four simple questions, two of which - what are your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses? - address internal issues. The remaining two - what opportunities does your organisation have and what threats does it face? - address your position within your environment. These last two are especially important when it comes to assessing competition. Two of these areas (strengths and opportunities) look at helpful areas whereas the remaining two (weaknesses and threats) look at harmful areas.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/how-to-assess-competition/swot.png?raw=true" alt="SWOT analysis" class="center-image" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 1: SWOT analysis table</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Conducting a SWOT analysis is straightforward: take a piece of paper or a whiteboard and divide it in two horizontally and vertically to create four quadrants. Label them as shown in <strong>Figure 1</strong> above and take each section in turn, writing post-it notes and adding them to the relevant quadrant.</p>
<p>Don’t stop here. The beauty of this approach is that you can apply it to yourself <em>and to your competition</em>. In order to apply it to your competition you have to find out who they are.</p>
<h2 id="do-your-research">Do your research</h2>
<p>I’ve written in some detail in the past about <a href="https://geovation.github.io/its-a-wrap" target="_blank">how to use internet searches to analyse markets</a>.</p>
<p>There are several tools that you can use to help you identify competitors. Start with <a href="https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/" target="_blank">Google Ads keyword planner tool</a> as a means of identifying the search keywords most closely associated with your product/service. This is a free tool that, among other things, gives you an idea of the average number of monthly searches for any keyword combination. It also provides a range of cost-per-click bid prices that may help you get your site to the top of the first page of search results for specific keywords & keyword combinations (but beware, depending upon your industry the tool can <a href="https://www.smartinsights.com/paid-search-marketing-ppc/paid-search-strategy/cost-google-advertising-uk/" target="_blank">grossly underestimate</a> the <em>actual</em> cost of advertising).</p>
<p>Once you’ve found the keyword(s) you’re interested in, you can turn to sites like <a href="https://moz.com" target="_blank">Moz.com</a> to find out which businesses rank highly for those keywords - in other words, your competition. This is a paid-for service, but they have a number of SEO tools including their <a href="https://moz.com/explorer" target="_blank">keyword explorer</a> which you can use for free for up to 10 searches per month (you will have to create an account but you don’t have to commit to anything).</p>
<p>I recommend honing in on your keywords using Google, then going to Moz for extra information. For example, you can export a spreadsheet containing the URLs of the top 10 sites returned by Moz that are related to your keywords. Compare this with what is returned for a simple Google search using the same keywords. Note that Moz uses a variety of data sources and will not be able to return information about sites with low traffic, but then again you probably don’t need to worry about them anyway! You should now have a list of potential competitors to explore.</p>
<h2 id="dont-just-copy-steal">Don’t just copy, steal</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The above aphorism has been attributed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso" target="_blank">Pablo Picasso</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Stravinsky" target="_blank">Igor Stravinsky</a> (amongst others). It encapsulates the idea that artists may recontextualise, remix, substitute, or otherwise mashup existing work to create something new.</p>
<p>Now that you’ve identified your competition it’s time to learn from them. I encourage you to embrace your internal artist. Use the principles embedded in this aphorism to enhance your own business by asking the following questions of each potential competitor you have identified:</p>
<ul>
<li>How do they position themselves in the market? What is the essence of their offering?</li>
<li>Who is their target audience? How much does this overlap with the niche you have identified for your own offering?</li>
<li>What makes them different? What unique value are they offering to their audience?</li>
<li>What are they doing well or badly? What do their audience like and dislike about them?</li>
</ul>
<p>Companies fall over themselves to tell you what they are doing well, but understandably prefer to hide what is not going so well. To get a feel for what customers don’t like, try typing “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">company name</code> bad review” into Google.</p>
<p>Once you’ve asked these questions of your competition, ask yourself if you see any patterns emerging in the way they do things. Are there any obvious opportunities for offering a superior product or service? Are there any best practices that you may need to adopt? Above all, what action(s) can you take from what you have learned?</p>
<p>Don’t just test your own product or service, take your competitor products and services for a spin to see what you can learn. This will give you the opportunity to see them from a user’s point of view. What are their strengths and weaknesses (which can feed into the <strong>SWOT</strong> analysis described above)? How do their target users experience the core tasks and features? What opportunities do you see for enhancing your own advantages? By the way, the best way to test your own product or service is to <a href="https://www.smartkarrot.com/resources/blog/dogfooding-eat-your-own-dog-food/" target="_blank">eat your own dogfood</a>.</p>
<h2 id="the-medium-is-the-message">The medium is the message</h2>
<p>The heading of this section is a phrase coined by the Canadian communication theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan" target="_blank">Marshall McLuhan</a>. The way he meant it is that the effect of something (e.g. technology) is more important than the thing itself. I’m using it here to refer to your brand. In this context, you can take his statement much more literally.</p>
<p>You’ve taken a detailed look at your competitors. It’s time to turn the spotlight on yourself. Your brand signifies all the good things that you can do for your customers, if only in their own minds. It is your identity and reputation. Is it doing the work you need to set the right expectations for your product or service. Does it help customers understand that you are better than the competition?</p>
<p>For many products or services the brand is the product/service itself. It is the experience the user has. The visual design is merely the brand identity, not the brand in and of itself. Here are some questions you need to ask of your brand:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Attributes</strong> - What characteristics do you want people to associate with your product or service? Is your brand getting that message across successfully? What characteristics to you want to avoid?</li>
<li><strong>Value</strong> - What does your product or service do for customers that your competitors to not? Does your brand make this clear?</li>
<li><strong>Perspective</strong> - What associations do your customers have with your product or service? What associations do you want them to have?</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="the-take-away">The take-away</h2>
<p>You don’t <em>need</em> to conduct an examination of the competitive landscape. Plenty of companies get by without doing one. Just be aware that knowledge is a competitive advantage. If you look at them in detail but they don’t look at you then you have that advantage.</p>
<p>Remember, though, that this landscape is changing all the time. New competitor products and services enter and leave the market all the time. The market itself is constantly changing, as are your customers. Any analysis of the competition will only be a snapshot, but it may be extremely useful as a means of assessing your own value, and of making that value clear to your customer niche.</p>
<p>What’s not to like about that?</p>
<h2 id="a-fond-farewell">A fond farewell</h2>
<p>This may be my last blog post for Geovation. I’ve decided to move on and set up <a href="http://dogfishconsultants.com/" target="_blank">my own consultancy</a> offering the same Virtual CTO and Business Advisor services I’ve provided for Geovation, but by myself.</p>
<p>I intend to apply exactly the same methods, techniques and processes I’ve been blogging about here and teaching to Hub members to myself and my own company. After all, they’re not specific to technology start-ups, and I’m going to be a start-up myself. If you’re interested in the journey you can read about it <a href="https://paulnebel.io" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>I will be working on behalf of Geovation at least until July of 2021, offering free workshops to all hub members which you can book <a href="https://calendly.com/paul-nebel/geovation-workshop" target="_blank">here</a>. I’d be delighted if you connected with me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulnebel/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.</p>
<p>I wish my former Geovation colleagues all the best for the future, and hopefully I’ll see you in the Hub sometime soon.</p>PaulPhoto by Chris Sabor on UnsplashWhy validating business customers is a challenge, and how to effectively master it2021-02-01T00:00:00+00:002021-02-01T00:00:00+00:00https://geovation.github.io/validating-business-customers<figure class="image">
<img src="/assets/images/validating-business-customers/interview.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption><span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@wocintechchat?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Christina @ wocintechchat.com</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/job-interview?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="tldr">TL,DR;</h2>
<p>Creating products and services for business customers is far more complicated than selling to the general public. Apart from anything else, organisations are often complex and arcane structures that even their own members don’t fully understand, let alone an outsider.</p>
<p>Add to that the fact that you will probably have to interact with a range of interested parties, some of whom want you to succeed and some of whom don’t, and you start to get an idea of just how important it is to understand them as well as you can.</p>
<p>However that may be, organisations are composed of individuals. If you can find the right individuals to talk to then you can make the task of validating your idea much easier. It will take a lot more effort but the rewards are potentially high.</p>
<h2 id="with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility">With great power comes great responsibility</h2>
<p>In my <a href="https://geovation.github.io/speak-to-customers-for-validation" target="_blank">previous post</a> I discussed the reasons for validating your business idea by speaking to potential customers. I also described an approach to take to identify and recruit those potential customers for interview. This approach is most useful when adopting a Business-to-Customer (B2C) model for your startup. What happens, however, if you are creating a Business-to-Business (B2B) model? How does that change your approach to customer validation?</p>
<p>The <a href="https://geovation.github.io/speak-to-customers-for-validation" target="_blank">justifications</a> for validating your business idea with corporate customers are exactly the same as those for private customers. What differs is how you recruit those corporate customers and how you conduct your interviews. There are several reasons for this:</p>
<ul>
<li>There is a far greater distinction between customers (i.e. the individual paying for your product) and users (i.e. the individual utilising your product) in a corporate setting.</li>
<li>It is much more likely that you will have to do all the work identifying and contacting your corporate customers yourself, rather than simply publishing your call-to-action and having them come to you as <a href="https://geovation.github.io/speak-to-customers-for-validation" target="_blank">described in my previous post</a>.</li>
<li>There are likely to be several stakeholders who are neither customers nor users but who are interested parties with influence over the purchasing decision, making completing a sale much harder.</li>
<li>Even if you can interest potential customers and address their needs your product/service may not align with the needs of the organisation they work for.</li>
<li>Businesses are, in general, extremely risk averse. Unless you are an established brand, a recognised expert in your industry or have a direct or indirect link to a specific corporate customer you will have to work much harder to establish your credibility before a corporate customer will even speak to you.</li>
<li>You are likely to be up against established, existing competition with bigger teams and deeper pockets than you.</li>
</ul>
<p>When you are dealing with private customers, otherwise known as the general public, most of the time the person buying the product is the person who wil use it. When you are dealing with corporate customers, however, the person buying the product may be several levels of management above the person(s) using it. They may not even be in the same department.</p>
<p>For example, if the price of your product is in the £1000’s the purchasing decision will almost certainly have to be approved by a Head of Department or even a Finance Director. It is also very likely that they will not be a user of the product or service. In this case, it is critical that you consider how you address the needs of the purchaser, as well as those of the user.</p>
<p>You’re going to find it much easier to persuade a Finance Director to become a customer for your Automatic Widget Wrangler (patent pending) if it helps her/him to create their quarterly report on corporate widget wrangling for the board as well as helping Dave in IT to wrangle those pesky widgets.</p>
<p>However, you’ll only sell your widget wrangler if wrangling widgets is a painful enough process to justify paying for a solution, and if that solution works in a way that resonates with both the purchaser and the user. This is why you need to talk to them first.</p>
<h2 id="here-be-dragons">Here be dragons</h2>
<p>Organisations are complex things. One of the primary reasons for organisations existing at all is the assumption that a group of people working together can have more impact than an individual acting alone. Over time, organisations become opaque; physical documentation quickly gives way to (or at least lags far behind) aural culture.</p>
<p>Over time, internal groups can coalesce that interpret the organisation’s high-level goals differently to the rest of the organisation. Sometimes they set their own goals which can be at odds with the organisation as a whole. What is certainly true is that significant relationships will exist that don’t map to any official structure.</p>
<p>The upshot is that selling your product or service to an organisation can often be much tricker than selling to a private individual, if only because of the existence of many more vested interests.</p>
<p>There are likely to be several stakeholders involved at every level of your investigation, from search and evaluation to purchase and use. Each of these stakeholders will have a different profile with different associated jobs, pains and gains.</p>
<p>Any of them may deflect the purchasing decision one way or another. There’s only so much time available, so you need to identify the key stakeholders and create a <a href="https://geovation.github.io/what-value-proposition-for" target="_blank">Value Proposition Canvas</a> for each of them (ideally validated through interviews, as described here).</p>
<p>Here is a rough guide to the types of stakeholders you will encounter:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Influencers</strong> - People whose opinion is valued by the decision maker.</li>
<li><strong>Recommenders</strong> - People who know the problem exists, who are actively looking for potential solutions, and who are in a position to make formal recommendations for or against purchase</li>
<li><strong>Purchasers</strong> - People who hold the budget and who make the actual purchase. These are the people whose pockets you are reaching into for your revenue.</li>
<li><strong>Decision makers</strong> - People who make the final decision regarding purchase and who generally have control of the budget from which the purchase is made.</li>
<li><strong>End users</strong> - People who will ultimately end up using your product or service.</li>
<li><strong>Saboteurs</strong> - People who are, or perceive themselves to be, adversely affected by any potential purchase and who have the ability to obstruct or otherwise prevent a purchasing decision.</li>
</ul>
<p>Some of these roles will probably overlap. The purchaser may be the decision maker. The end user may be an influencer and/or recommender. The point is that you have to be aware of each of these types of stakeholder and make sure you are satisfying each of their needs in order for your sale to be as smooth as possible.</p>
<p>You are unlikely to be able to identify, access and interview all of these individuals directly which is why you need to target the key individuals to contact. You should, however, acknowledge that each of these individuals or groups are likely to exist and the better your offer satisfies them the more compelling it will be.</p>
<h2 id="do-your-research">Do your research</h2>
<p>Just as with a B2C business, it is of great advantage for a B2B business to identify their niche customers and build out from there. To find your potential early adopters you are looking for businesses that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Have the problem you believe you have identified.</li>
<li>Know they have the problem you believe you have identified.</li>
<li>Are already paying to solve the problem you believe you have identified.</li>
</ul>
<p>How do you find these businesses? If you’re lucky you may have domain knowledge from previous or current employment that points you towards potential customers. This is a good starting point, but there’s always more you can learn. If you don’t have specific domain knowledge it’s a good idea to start looking for someone who does to join your company, either as an employee, an advisor or as a board member.</p>
<p>Even if you do have domain knowledge, it doesn’t hurt to behave as though you don’t to find leads that you may otherwise not have thought of.</p>
<p>I suggest starting with online research. The simplest form of online research uses keywords to find businesses operating within your niche. Remember that it is much more difficult to start up by targeting horizontally (e.g. <em>all businesses</em> that have an invoicing problem) than targeting vertically (e.g. <em>all independent physiotherapists</em> that have an invoicing problem).</p>
<p>Look at competitor businesses (and you will <em>always</em> have competitors, no matter how unique your business idea may seem to you - more to come on that in a future post). Try to find out who their customers are.</p>
<p>Whether you are looking at customers or competitors you should try to learn as much about them as you can from all the information sources at your disposal. Here is a list of possible data sources accessible over the internet (there are, of course, others but here are a few to get you started):</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Annual Reports</strong> - These are generally to be found on the company website. You’re only likely to find them for larger companies but if you can get hold of them at all they can be a goldmine of useful information.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Crunchbase</strong></a> - A platform for finding business information including investments and funding. Great for identifying businesses in a particular domain</li>
<li><a href="https://pitchbook.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Pitchbook</strong></a> - Similar to Crunchbase, but challenging on the pocket! There’s probably a good reason for that, though.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/" target="_blank"><strong>CB Insights</strong></a> - Utilises a combination of big data tools and algorithms, as well as sentiment analysison publicly available signals, to gather and analyse data about private companies, investors and industries.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.similarweb.com/" target="_blank"><strong>SimilarWeb</strong></a> - This is a browser tool that provides insight into and analysis of web traffic. Use it on a customer or competitor website (note that it’s only really useful for more popular sites, i.e. those with monthly traffic in the order of 10,000 visits)</li>
<li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Ahrefs</strong></a> - A toolset for backlinks and SEO analysis. Backlinks are links from other websites, and is comparable to a citation.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.statista.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Statista</strong></a> - Market and consumer data analysis.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house" target="_blank"><strong>Companies House</strong></a> - The UK register of company information including accounts, annual returns, registered addresses and directors.</li>
</ul>
<p>Your aim with all of this research is to find out as much as you can about both your target market and your competition. So far you have been gathering information about organisations. What about those individuals within that organisation that you might want to contact?</p>
<p>The process is much the same as for the general public but the details may be a little different. If I were wanting to find a niche group for a B2C business model I might start looking on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/" target="_blank">Reddit</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/" target="_blank">Indie Hackers</a>, and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/news" target="_blank">Hacker News</a>, amongst others.</p>
<p>The locations for B2B customers are the same, just replace Facebook with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/login/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> (or, if not <em>replace</em> Facebook, move it further down the list and put LinkedIn at the top). Don’t underestimate the potential power of directly messaging or cold emailing people of interest on LinkedIn. Persistence is your friend here. Unless they specifically tell you not to bother them, keep asking. Look for former employees and open up a conversation with them. You’d be surprised what you can learn!</p>
<p>Above all, be clear what you are looking for.</p>
<h2 id="getting-down-to-the-nitty-gritty">Getting down to the nitty-gritty</h2>
<p>If you’re dealing with business people remember to act in a business-like manner. Your interviewees are likely to be busy so treat them with the courtesy and respect they deserve for making time for you.</p>
<p>Set an agenda and send it out before the meeting. Give some idea of the questions you will ask, particularly if they need consideration. Allow 30 minutes to an hour for the interview and bring someone with you to take notes so that you can make the most of that time. If you need/want to record the interview, make sure to ask for permission beforehand.</p>
<p>Be very clear in your mind about what you want to get from the interview. What question is this experiment answering? - I’m not talking here about the individual questions you ask but what is the reason for conducting the interview in the first place?</p>
<p>In addition to any domain-specific questions you may have you should be looking to answer the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>What is your role and how long have you been doing it?</li>
<li>What tasks are essential to your fulfilling that role?</li>
<li>What does an ‘average day’ look like for you?</li>
<li>Who do you have to interact (people and teams) with to get your job done, and what is the nature of these relationships?</li>
<li>What concerns do you have about potential solutions to your problem?</li>
<li>What do you consider to be the greatest challenges both externally and internally?</li>
<li>What does the world look like once your problem has been solved? How do you measure and report success?</li>
<li>Who else should I be talking to?</li>
</ul>
<p>If you can get the answers to these questions you are in a much better position to understand your customer, the environment in which they operate and the nature of the problem as they experience it. This, in turn, improves your ability to assess which of the possible solutions you come up with is likely to resonate with them and result in a sale.</p>
<p>You will know when you’ve done enough research when you are confident that you know the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Who the key stakeholders are.</li>
<li>Their roles, environments, attitudes and perspectives.</li>
<li>Their levels of influence and availability.</li>
<li>How they stand to benefit (or not) from your product or service and how they measure and report that benefit.</li>
<li>How their business will change as a result of your product or service.</li>
<li>The requirements and constraints you are working within.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="the-take-away">The take-away</h2>
<p>Reaching and acquiring corporate customers for validation is hard work, but it is essential work if you are to reduce uncertainty and risk. As an entrepreneur who wants to succeed your goal is to learn from your customers before you build anything.</p>
<p>Keep the following in mind when you speak to customers (whether private or corporate) and you will reap the benefits:</p>
<ul>
<li>Love the problem, not the solution</li>
<li>Talk to customers, they have all the answers you need</li>
<li>Be prepared</li>
<li>Go into each conversation with an open mindset</li>
<li>Be curious</li>
<li>Have no expectations (don’t <em>pull</em> for answers, let them come by themselves)</li>
</ul>PaulPhoto by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on UnsplashHow can we help you? Meet the Geovation Engineering Team2021-01-14T00:00:00+00:002021-01-14T00:00:00+00:00https://geovation.github.io/meet-the-engineering-team<figure class="image">
<img src="/assets/images/meet-the-engineering-team/bridge.jpg" alt="A very scary bridge across a chasm in the mist" />
<figcaption><span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@adityachinchure?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Aditya Chinchure</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="you-are-about-to-go-on-an-adventure">You are about to go on an adventure</h2>
<p>Imagine you are on an outdoor adventure in a wild and rugged mountain range. You’re on the plain approaching the mountains through fog, wind and rain. In order to climb the peak you are heading for you have to cross a wide, deep and scary chasm.</p>
<p>There’s no way around this obstacle, the only way to get to your goal is to find a way across it. The chasm is so wide and the fog so thick that you can barely see the other side.</p>
<p>In front of you is a scary-looking bridge that apparently spans the chasm. Next to the bridge is seasoned traveller who greets you in a friendly manner. She asks you how she can help. You tell her that you want to get to the other side of this chasm in order to climb the mountain on the other side. The traveller tells you that the bridge is the only way across.</p>
<p>“Are you sure this is the only way?” you ask. “There may be others”, she says, “but this is the way most people take”. “That bridge looks a little dangerous to me” you tell her. “Well”, she says, “it is quite a tricky bridge to cross. In fact, 9 out of 10 people that try to cross it fall off before they reach the other side. I can give you some advice on how to cross it safely but you’ll have to take the journey by yourself”.</p>
<p>You’re an adventurer and you really want to climb the mountain you see in the distance. The only way to get to it is over this bridge. Do you cross it, knowing that only 1 in 10 people get across safely?</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of the innovation start-up.</p>
<h2 id="we-can-help">We can help</h2>
<p>While I may have made it sound a little melodramatic, the fact remains that <a href="https://startupgenome.com/" target="_blank">9 out of 10</a> start-ups fail. Actually, the real figure is more like 11 out of 12, but let’s not split hairs.</p>
<p>Working in an early-stage startup can be both lonely and frustrating. It can feel, at times, as though you are wobbling on that bridge above the chasm. You may, for example, need to persuade an investor to put their faith in you before you can actually build your product or service. In order to do that, you may need a proof of concept or a Minimum Viable Product. For that, you need a developer on your team or the cash to hire one. The trouble is that to get the cash you need the investment. It’s Catch 22.</p>
<p>Here at Geovation, we can help with that. We want to maximize your chances to succeed and help where we can. We have a small but talented <strong>Engineering Team</strong> who have a broad spectrum of knowledge. We can offer you help and advice on how to build your first experiment. We help <em>all</em> Geovation members, not just those on the <a href="https://geovation.uk/accelerator/" target="_blank">Geovation Accelerator Programme</a>. If you’re a hub member, we’re here for you too.</p>
<p>Do you want a second opinion about your <em>architecture, tools, team building, product discovery, service design</em> or <em>lean business canvas?</em> The Engineering Team can help with that too. You can reach us via the public Slack channel <a href="https://geovationhub.slack.com/archives/C7FEC55UY" target="_blank">#ask_to_geovation_eng</a> and book a <em>surgery session</em>.</p>
<p>In addition to advice and surgeries we can provide direct hands-on support such as <em>UX design and review</em>, <em>experiment design</em> and <em>coding</em>. We’re a friendly bunch and we’re here to help you. Don’t feel worried about interrupting. We may not answer immediately but we’ll get back to you just as soon as we can. I’ll say it again:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Engineering Team is here to help you. Please just ask us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can meet the engineering team on demand: Just talk to us. We prefer it if you can coordinate with us on an individual basis as we all have different schedules, but the public Slack channel is a great place to start.</p>
<h2 id="who-are-we">Who are we?</h2>
<p>Here’s a little run-down of the team so you know who we are:</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_SebOvide.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Sebastian Ovide (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Seb (Geovation)</code> on Slack):</strong> Sebastian started coding when still a kid and has over 20 years of professional experience building software for corporations, SMEs and startups. Sebastian leads the Engineering Team, jumps into the trench to do hands on work when he can and provides coaching to members.</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_PaulNebel.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Paul Nebel (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@paulnebel</code> on Slack):</strong> Paul is a Virtual CTO. He is a specialist in the creation, design and build of innovative, technology-led businesses, products & services.</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_JameGardner.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>James Gardner (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@jamesgardner</code> on Slack):</strong> James is a Virtual CTO. He loves assembling or building the right components to help your business gain traction in the market and with investors.</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_JoyKuo.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Joy Shan-Chun Kuo (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@joykuo</code> on Slack):</strong> Joy is a software developer with curiosity for technologies and passion to build applications in an agile way. He is our mobile specialist.</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_RobertBrooks.png" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Robert Brooks (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Robert Brooks</code> on Slack):</strong> Robert is a designer with a background in mapping, having previously worked as a cartographer at a wayfinding consultancy. He focusses on usability and process design and delivers work in the fields of UX/UI and service design.</p>
<figure style="width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="align-left">
<img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/Headshot_AbdulOmarFaruq.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Abdul Omar Faruq (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Omar</code> on Slack):</strong> Omar is our graduate engineer learning to be a software developer, supporting the team across a wide range of projects.</p>PaulPhoto by Aditya Chinchure on UnsplashWhy and how to speak to potential customers to validate your idea2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:002021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00https://geovation.github.io/speak-to-customers-for-validation<figure class="image">
<img src="/assets/images/speak-to-customers-for-validation/direction.jpg" alt="Sign pointing north, south, east and west" />
<figcaption><span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@monty_a?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Monty Allen</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="tldr">TL,DR;</h2>
<p>Whether you like it or not, sooner or later you are going to have to talk to your prospective customers. No matter what your idea is, if you don’t validate it somehow you will simply be relying on blind luck for success. Given that 11 out of 12 start-ups fail, relying on luck doesn’t seem like such a smart choice.</p>
<p>Before you start speaking to customers make sure you have a plan and are crystal clear about what you are trying to achieve. Spend some time recruiting appropriate participants. Analyse the results with your team to share information and extract insight faster.</p>
<p>Research <em>proves</em> nothing, but only your customers have the answers you need.</p>
<h2 id="but-i-dont-want-to-clean-my-room">But I don’t want to clean my room!</h2>
<p>There may be reasons why you don’t want to talk to customers. Here are some that come up regularly:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>We don’t have time</strong> - Really? It’s far more likely that proceeding without validation is going to result in time wasted. Even a couple of weeks of talking to ‘real’ people is better than forging ahead shrouded in an impenetrable mist of uncertainty.</li>
<li><strong>We can’t afford it</strong> - Once again, really? You’re far more likely to waste what little money you have with an unvalidated product/service than you will spend getting that validation.</li>
<li><strong>We don’t have the skills/tools</strong> - Since you’re starting a business presumably you have a laptop you own or can borrow, and access to the internet? If not, you have far bigger problems than not having the skills/tools! If so, you’ve got pretty much everything you need except a plan, which this post will help you formulate. There are plenty of free tools you can use to actually conduct the research, like <a href="https://docs.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Docs</a>, <a href="https://hangouts.google.com/" target="_blank">Hangouts</a> or <a href="https://zoom.us/" target="_blank">Zoom</a>. Please note that I am not endorsing any of these tools, just pointing out that free tools exist. Use whichever is best for you.</li>
<li><strong>We don’t know which methodology is best</strong> - Indecision is crippling. As an entrepreneur you can’t afford to be blocked by it. There is no such thing as the ‘right’ methodology so stop looking for it. What you use depends upon what you want to find out. If you are interested in qualitative issues (e.g. what is the problem and why is it a problem?) use a qualitative method. If you’re more interested in quantitative issues (e.g. how big is the problem) then use a quantitative method.</li>
<li><strong>We can work it out in Beta</strong> - You can tell a lot of things in Beta about what you have already built. The question is, what do you do if Beta is telling you that you built the wrong thing? It may be very useful to know at the start how well what you are building fits with what customers need. It all depends what you want. Do you want to invest time and money now and try to set out in roughly the right direction? Or do you want to wait until you’ve built something only to find out that it’s not the right thing? Can you afford to do it all again?</li>
<li><strong>We don’t want to change direction now</strong> - Talking to potential customers may well change the direction and scope of your start-up. <em>That’s the point</em>. If you don’t want to know that you’re heading in the wrong direction because it’s inconvenient then you’re probably in the wrong job!</li>
<li><strong>It stops us from innovating</strong> - It could be argued that the practical difference between innovation and invention is relevance to the real world. What’s the point of an invention that no-one wants to use? Nothing can reasonably be called an innovation if it is of no use to anyone.</li>
<li><strong>We already know the answer</strong> - Maybe, maybe not. How recent was your research? There is a saying that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. Can you be sure that your familiarity with the problem hasn’t resulted in any blind spots? Who is ‘we’? How can it hurt to confirm what you think you know?</li>
</ul>
<p>It’s sometimes useful to ask yourself what the cost could be if, 6 months from now, you discover one or more of the following issues:</p>
<ul>
<li>You’re solving the wrong problem</li>
<li>You didn’t have the Unique Selling Point you thought you had</li>
<li>You failed to spot a competitive advantage before your competition</li>
<li>You missed a key aspect of your users’ environments</li>
<li>You didn’t properly understand what was important to your users</li>
<li>You built something that interested you but which doesn’t really matter to your potential customers</li>
<li>Your product/service can be mis-used in ways you didn’t forsee</li>
</ul>
<p>If the potential damage to your business from any of these issues is high, you probably need to do some validation now.</p>
<h2 id="a-plan-so-cunning-you-could-stick-a-tail-on-it-and-call-it-a-weasel">A plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel!</h2>
<p>Hopefully, you have decided by now that it is worth your while to speak to real people in order to validate your business idea. Be aware, however, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Research <em>proves</em> nothing</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Think of customer research as the foundation of <em>evidence-based design</em>. After all, if your design isn’t based on evidence, what is it based on?</p>
<p>As with every other aspect of your business, things will probably run much more smoothly if you have a plan (especially a cunning plan, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder" target="_blank">Blackadder</a> will confirm). The following steps are suggested for approaching customer research.</p>
<h3 id="be-clear-about-the-questions-you-are-asking">Be clear about the question(s) you are asking</h3>
<p>This refers to the business question that your research is intended to answer, rather than the interview questions you ask your customers (although it is also relevant to the questions you ask your customers). As with most things relating to start-ups, the clearer you can be in what you are aiming to achieve the more likely you are to achieve it. Without a clear focus, customer research is a waste of time and money.</p>
<p>Remember that you are undertaking research in order to make evidence-based decisions. A good research question is therefore <em>specific</em>, <em>testable</em> and <em>measurable</em>. Remember also that we’re talking about the <em>research</em> question here (i.e. the reason we are doing this) not the interview question(s). It must be possible to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Answer the research question using the methods/techniques you decide upon.</li>
<li>Answer the research question with at least some degree of confidence that allows you to base subsequent decisions on what you have learned.</li>
</ul>
<p>You want a result from this research, so try to avoid open-ended descriptions when forming your research questions. For example, verbs such as ‘describe’ or ‘identify’ are better than ‘understand’ or ‘explore’.</p>
<h3 id="be-realistic-about-what-you-can-achieve">Be realistic about what you can achieve</h3>
<p>In the same way that you should be clear about the question(s) you are researching, so you should be clear about how you will research them. Understand and specify the questions you will be asking, the methodology you will be using and the aspects of the business that will be affected by the result. Be clear about what you expect from your research in order to avoid disappointment later.</p>
<p>Be clear about exactly what you are researching. If you want to understand the true needs/priorities of your users/customers, the context they operate in, how they behave and why, then you are conducting <em>user research</em>. If you want to understand how users interact with an existing or potential system or process then you’re conduction <em>evaluative research</em>.</p>
<p>You will need to use different techniques for different types of research. For example, user research can be done simply by talking to people but evaluative research typically requires some physical equipment to monitor users while they perform a task.</p>
<h3 id="make-like-a-scout-and-be-prepared">Make like a Scout and ‘Be Prepared’</h3>
<p>As with so much in life, better preparation leads to better outcomes. Get your materials ready beforehand. Test them. Make sure you have a fallback in case something goes wrong (it almost certainly will go wrong at some point) so you feel confident.</p>
<p>Sketch out an initial test plan, describing how much money will be spent and who will be involved. Clearly define your problem statement. Decide who your subjects will be and how you will obtain them. Be prepared to change or adapt your plans in the light of what you discover as you go along. Maybe you’ve assigned an hour for a test but you find you can get all the useful information you need in just a few minutes.</p>
<p>Allow contingency for things beyond your control. It may take longer than you think to recruit test subjects, or scheduling tests may become problematic. It’ll be easier to manage if you think about it now, before you get started.</p>
<h3 id="allow-time-to-analyse-your-results">Allow time to analyse your results</h3>
<p>Sifting through the chaff to find the wheat in your responses is best done slowly and carefully. Try to avoid jumping to conclusions that may be more destructive than no research at all. You are looking for meaningful patterns which you can turn into observations. From these, you can make recommendations.</p>
<p>If you have a team, get everyone involved who can contribute and will benefit from the analysis session. Insights tend to come faster with more people involved (although beware of getting too many people involved - this tends to slow things down).</p>
<p><a href="https://geovation.github.io/what-value-proposition-for" target="_blank">I’ve described</a> some of the tools you can use to facilitate these sessions. Make sure you are clear what the research question was. You are looking for patterns that answer the original question you posed. In addition you are looking for feedback relating to the following:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Goals</strong> - What the participant is trying to achieve.</li>
<li><strong>Jobs/tasks</strong> - How they go about achieving it. The more detail you can provide, the more value you can extract.</li>
<li><strong>Priorities</strong> - What matters most to them in this context. These are useful when coming up with ideas for gains your solution can provide.</li>
<li><strong>Habits</strong> - What the participant does on a regular basis. One of the best ways to predict future behaviour is to examine past behaviour.</li>
<li><strong>Pains/barriers</strong> - What makes life difficult for the participant when completing this task.</li>
<li><strong>Tools</strong> - The objects (real and virtual) the participant interacts with to get the job done.</li>
<li><strong>Environment</strong> - The context the participant operates in. How it affects their perception and decisions.</li>
<li><strong>Relationships</strong> - The individuals the participant interacts with.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="write-it-down">Write it down</h3>
<p><a href="https://geovation.github.io/not-written-didnt-happen" target="_blank">I’ve said it before</a> and I’ll say it again, if it’s not written down it didn’t happen. Not everyone in your team will be able to participate in the research process, so think about how you are going to communicate what you have found. Make sure that when you come back to it in 6 months time you understand what you wrote and why you made the decisions you did.</p>
<h2 id="all-i-need-now-is-someone-to-ask">All I need now is someone to ask</h2>
<p>You’re all prepared to start conducting interviews. The only thing remaining is to find someone to speak to. By now you should be clear on the question you want to know the answer to. The next job is to find, interest, filter and acquire those participants.</p>
<p>Hopefully it won’t surprise you to hear that poor participants will give you poor results. In order to find appropriate participants you first need to decide what a good participant might look like. The people most likely to be your ideal customers share the following characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>They have the problem you are trying to solve.</li>
<li>They <em>know</em> that they have the problem you are trying to solve.</li>
<li>They are already paying to solve it. That is to say, they are buying books on the subject, paying to attend courses, workshops and conferences and/or purchasing sub-optimal products/services that solve part of the problem.</li>
</ul>
<p>Once you have decided what your ideal participant looks like you need to find them. I’ve <a href="https://geovation.github.io/will-world-love-your-new-idea" target="_blank">written a post</a> describing one way of doing that using a landing site. In addition to this, go anywhere that you might be able to post a message that could be seen by your target audience or one of their forwarding friends. Twitter. Facebook. Reddit. Hacker News. Make it worth their while talking to you by offering a £10 Amazon voucher, for instance.</p>
<p>I’m often asked whether surveys are a good way of conducting user validation interviews. In general, my answer to that is ‘no’ for reasons to be covered in a future post. Where surveys can be extremely useful is in screening potential participants.</p>
<p>Screening is the process of determining who it will be worth your while talking to and who it won’t. When writing an online survey to screen potential participants, think about your research question and the characteristics of your ideal customer. What behaviours are you looking for in participants?</p>
<p>If your interview and/or solution involves using a tool, what level of knowledge do your participants require of that tool? For example, to use a mobile app you need enough knowledge of how to use a mobile device that the practical aspects of running the test don’t get in the way. You want participants to focus on the app, not on using the mobile device.</p>
<p>How much do your participants need to know about the problem domain? If you’re designing for the general public, the level of domain-specific knowledge should be low. If you’re designing for a niche group domain-specific knowledge should probably be higher.</p>
<p>Your screening survey should enable you to identify people who meet these criteria. I’ll be writing in the future about how to design good surveys.</p>
<p>Given that you are (hopefully) offering some kind of reward for participation you should expect to get some potential time-wasters applying. In order to prevent potential participants ‘gaming’ your system just to get a free voucher you should probably be as vague as possible when advertising recruitment. Describe it as ‘design research’, or ‘an interview about our website’.</p>
<p>Now all you have to do is go and ask the questions!</p>
<h2 id="the-take-away">The take-away</h2>
<p>There is no secret to vaidating your idea with customers. As with so much else, the key is clarity and preparation. Be clear about the question your research is intended to answer. Be clear about who your ideal target audience is. Be prepared for your workshops and embrace the unknown.</p>
<p>Most of all, try to enjoy it.</p>PaulPhoto by Monty Allen on UnsplashWill the world love your new idea? Here’s a way to find out2020-12-01T00:00:00+00:002020-12-01T00:00:00+00:00https://geovation.github.io/will-world-love-your-new-idea<figure class="image">
<img src="/assets/images/will-world-love-your-new-idea/giving-gift.jpg" alt="Ivestment spelt with Scrabble tiles" />
<figcaption><span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@kadh?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Kira auf der Heide</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/present?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://geovation.github.io/its-a-wrap" target="_blank">Last month</a> I showed you how to validate a business idea using the internet. I hope I also showed you how unreliable that method can be if you don’t validate your assumptions.</p>
<p>Most of the workshops I conduct with start-ups form a path whose intended destination is a list of assumptions. These are the things that have to be true in order for the start-up to succeed. The reason for creating this list is that it gives us a structured way of validating the business idea. Each assumption must be tested, if possible. We start with the assumptions which would have the greatest negative impact if they turned out not to be true.</p>
<p>When I ask founders what assumptions they are making it is usual for the first response to be something like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Customers want to buy our product/service</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve <a href="https://geovation.github.io/why-comes-after-what" target="_blank">written before</a> about how statements like this are of little use when it comes to creating meaningful tests to prove the truth of assumptions. In general, I recommend asking <em>Why?</em> as many times as you need to break a high-level assumption like this into hypotheses that are <strong>discrete</strong>, <strong>measurable</strong> and <strong>testable</strong>. However, the journey from idea to successful business is not a straight line. When you are right at the start of your validation journey this assumption may be the only thing you need to test to justify spending more time, effort or money developing your idea.</p>
<p>This post describes a practical method for answering the most basic question any start-up faces.</p>
<h2 id="is-there-anybody-out-there">Is there anybody out there?</h2>
<p>Here’s the plan:</p>
<ul>
<li>If you want to build a business by creating something people will buy and use, you should build something customers will want.</li>
<li>In order to do that, you just need to know what customers want.</li>
<li>To find that out you just need to ask some potential customers what they want.</li>
<li>Once you know what they want you build it, and they will come to you.</li>
</ul>
<p>Simple, right? The problem is, it doesn’t work! As <a href="http://momtestbook.com/" target="_blank">The Mom Test</a> explains so well, The first rule of user research is <em>never ask anyone what they want</em>. The reason is that what people actually want is to be liked, which means they will tell you what they think you want to hear and not what they actually think. This is, of course, a genaralisation but it is accurate enough to make any answers you get from direct questions pretty useless to you.</p>
<p>One of the best ways of predict what people might do in the future is to get them to tell you stories of what they’ve done in the past. That means that you need a way to speak to them. A way to do this that helps you validate your business idea at the same time is to build a <strong>landing page</strong>.</p>
<h2 id="what-the-heck-is-a-landing-page">What the heck is a ‘landing page’?</h2>
<p>A landing page is about the simplest form of product web page you can create. It’s a place to send people in order to capture their email address so that you can start a conversation with them. In its most basic form, it consists of the following essential components:</p>
<ul>
<li>A logo.</li>
<li>A headline <em>call to action</em> (this is the marketing term for a device designed to prompt an immediate response). Adding audio or video will make your site more engaging and more likely to provoke a response.</li>
<li>A sub-heading, giving context to the headline.</li>
<li>An form field for capturing email addresses.</li>
</ul>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/will-world-love-your-new-idea/ground-floor-example.png" alt="Example of a ground-level landing page" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 1: An example of a basic ‘ground-level’ landing page</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>I’ll refer to this as a <strong>ground-level</strong> landing page. The next level of landing page (which I’ll call a <strong>first-floor</strong> page) adds further specific detail, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>A feature list</li>
</ul>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/will-world-love-your-new-idea/first-floor-example.png" alt="Example of a first-floor landing page" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 2: An example of an intermediate ‘first-floor’ landing page</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Finally, we have a <strong>penthouse</strong> landing page which starts to properly represent a real product by including:</p>
<ul>
<li>High-fidelity mockups</li>
</ul>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/will-world-love-your-new-idea/penthouse-example.png" alt="Example of a penthouse landing page" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 3: An example of an advanced ‘penthouse’ landing page</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>There are, of course, other things you can add but these are the essential ingredients.</p>
<p>The aim of the <strong>ground-level</strong> landing page is to start a conversation with your potential customers. If you can do that you have a chance to find out more about their habits, behaviours, relationships and environment that are relevant to your business.</p>
<p>You can potentially turn this knowledge into insight and start to define the features of your solution that take your landing page to the <strong>first-floor</strong>. If you can find some <em>evangelists</em> you have an indication that you may be on the right track and can create some product mockups to take you to the <strong>penthouse</strong>.</p>
<p>If you’re struggling to get engagement at any stage this is a good indicator that your idea is not solving a problem anyone cares about enough to pay for a solution, and you should probably think of a better idea.</p>
<h2 id="ok-i-get-it-now-what-do-i-do-with-it">OK, I get it. Now what do I do with it?</h2>
<p>Remember that the point of the landing page is to start a conversation which will validate your idea. Or invalidate it. Either way, you are removing uncertainty. You need to make this process as easy and seamless as possible to reduce the resistance people feel about handing over their email address (it used to be easy to get people to do this, but we are much more savvy about such things nowadays).</p>
<p>As a suggestion, auto-invite anyone who gives you their email into a Slack focus group channel. Most companies go through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle" target="_blank">Adoption Curve</a> throughout the lifetime of their product. The point of the landing page, however, is that you don’t yet have a product. What you are looking for when starting this conversation is the people who come before the <em>innovators</em> identified in the Adoption Curve. Let’s call them <em>evangelists</em>.</p>
<p>Of those who give you their email address, you can reasonably expect approximately 5% of them to be evangelists. These are people who are super-engaged with you because you are proposing a solution to a problem they not only have but are really keen to have taken away. They are highly likely to want to help you succeed because they want a solution and they can’t find one. If you haven’t identified any evangelists after a couple of months this is a good indicator that you don’t have a valid business idea.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-i-make-this-work">How to I make this work?</h2>
<p>No-one knows who you are. No-one knows your URL. It’s now your job to drive people to your landing page to have a chance at starting that conversation. This is going to take effort and possibly a little money on your part. Some of the ways to drive traffic to your landing page are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Utilising your personal network</li>
<li>Face-to-face conversations</li>
<li>Cold outreach</li>
<li>Social media messaging (e.g. Twitter)</li>
<li>Social media groups (e.g. Facebook)</li>
<li>Online communities</li>
<li>Paid advertising (e.g. Google AdWords)</li>
<li>Links from other websites</li>
</ul>
<p>Given how much effort this is going to take on your part, it is absolutely essential that you track and monitor the progress of your campaign. There are plenty of tools out there that you can use for this purpose (just Google <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">tools for monitoring marketing campaigns</code> to see some examples). However, even a simple spreadsheet is better than nothing.</p>
<p>Once you have started a conversation you can:</p>
<ul>
<li>Run customer interviews with your evangelists to create a feature list</li>
<li>Use Slack to distribute mockups of your proposed solution for comment</li>
<li>Validate your customers’ desire to pay</li>
</ul>
<p>These are all topics for detailed investigation future posts. The point at this stage is simply to get the conversation started.</p>
<h2 id="why-would-anyone-give-me-their-email-address">Why would anyone give me their email address?</h2>
<p>The #1 goal of your landing page is to convert visitors into prospects. It would be foolish, however, to expect to do this on their first visit. I described above the minimum components required for a <strong>ground-level</strong> landing page. This is a good starting point, but if you really want to convert visitors to prospects you need to give them a reason to return to your landing page.</p>
<p>You can do this by including relevant content on your landing page like blog posts, whitepapers, and case studies. The aim of this content is to:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Establish trust</strong> - your visitors must believe that if they give you their email address you will store it safely and securely and not use it to send them spam.</li>
<li><strong>Establish relevance</strong> - they need to know that any contact they have with you will be worthwhile.</li>
<li><strong>Establish reward</strong> - give these helpful people something in return for their effort like a discount on their first subscription.</li>
</ol>
<p>Remember that we’re trying to convert visitors to prospects, so every different page on your landing site should contain a call-to-action. Blog posts, whitepapers and case studies should be followed by an invitation to visitors to subscribe to updates. With whitepapers and case studies, create PDF versions that can be downloaded by visitors and when they download invite them to subscribe to updates (but don’t make the download dependent upon giving their email address - we want to create trust, after all).</p>
<p>Get yourself an account with an email list manager (e.g. <a href="https://mailchimp.com/" target="_blank">Mailchimp</a>) and, if possible, auto-add responders to the list (just like you auto-added them to Slack). After all, what’s the point of getting emails if you don’t use them? Do remember, however, that email is now subject to GDPR. <a href="https://www.litmus.com/blog/5-things-you-must-know-about-email-consent-under-gdpr/" target="_blank">Here</a> are some things you need to keep in mind when gathering and using the emails you collect.</p>
<p>There are two types of email contact you should try to limit yourselves to:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Relevant information</strong> - e.g. the publishing of a new blog post, interesting events, answers to questions from prospects, inverviews with customers if you have them.</li>
<li><strong>Product updates</strong> - This will more relevant once you’ve reached the <strong>penthouse</strong> stage.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="isnt-this-all-a-lot-of-work">Isn’t this all a lot of work?</h2>
<p>It will take effort on your part to create the landing page, but the effort doesn’t all have to be yours and the content doesn’t have to be right. There are plenty of websites out there which can help you design your own logo. Alternatively, you can pay someone to do it for you. You shouldn’t have to spend more than about £50 and you shouldn’t agonise over whether it is the right logo or not - you can change it later. Remember, you’re validating an idea here so you can expect everything to change before you get to the point of actually launching a business.</p>
<p>The same is true of your headline and sub-headline. Give these a lot of thought, as good copy is essential. If your website is lucky enough to get 1000 visitors/month (and this is a <em>high</em> level of traffic for a landing page) and you have a prospect conversion rate of 1% (a likely enough figure at this stage) you are converting 10 visitors into prospects every month. To get 1 extra prospect per month you need to do one of the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Generate an extra 100 visitors to your site per month</li>
<li>Increase your conversion rate by 0.1%</li>
</ul>
<p>Good marketers know that increasing the conversion rate is a better return on investment than simply increasing the number of visitors. This is where you need to experiment with different content, headlines, feature lists etc. to see what resonates more with your audience. Just as with logo design, you can hire experts to create content/manage social media/administer email contact.</p>
<p>You don’t have to do it all yourself, but if you don’t do it at all you’re much more likely to be part of the 11 out of 12 start-ups that fail than the 1 out of 12 that succeed!</p>PaulPhoto by Kira auf der Heide on UnsplashIt’s a wrap!2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:002020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00https://geovation.github.io/its-a-wrap<h1 id="evaluating-markets">Evaluating Markets</h1>
<p>Most of the posts I’ve written are based on opinion and somewhat abstract so I thought I’d give you something more practical. In my <a href="https://geovation.github.io/get-there-dont-start-here" target="_blank">last post</a> I wrote about the importance and advantages of finding your niche. Why are niches important? I’ll let <a href="http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html" target="_blank">Paul Graham</a> (co-founder of <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/" target="_blank">Y Combinator</a>) summarise:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the things I advised you to do is to check the potential size of the market. I’m going to give an example here of how to do this using just the internet.</p>
<p>I recently gave an all-day seminar at <a href="https://www.tramshedtech.co.uk/" target="_blank">Tramshed Tech</a> about ‘Idea Generation and Product Development’. One of the attending companies was interested in the possibilities of vehicle graphics and for no particular reason (other than that I know absolutely nothing about it) I decided to investigate the vehicle graphics market.</p>
<h2 id="step-1-web-traffic">Step 1: Web Traffic</h2>
<p>Let us suppose you have identified a potential market niche and want to investigate it further. Where do you start? First and foremost you need some idea of the potential size of the market in order to judge whether it is worth persuing. A relatively simple way of doing that is to look at the amount of web traffic generated by search terms related to it.</p>
<p>A good first step for this is the <a href="https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/" target="_blank">Google Ads keyword planner tool</a>. This is a free tool that, among other things, gives you an idea of the average number of monthly searches for any keyword in the country of your choice (in this case, all my searches were based in the UK). It also provides a range of <em>Cost Per Click</em> bid prices that may help you get your site to the top of the first page of search results for a particular term.</p>
<p>I started with the keywords <strong>vehicle graphics</strong> and noticed the term <strong>wrap</strong> in a lot of the results. Since ‘vehicle graphics’ is more generic than ‘vehicle wrap’ I decided to focus on the more niche keywords <strong>vehicle wrap</strong>. The results for ‘vehicle wrap’ were as follows:</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/its-a-wrap/google-keywords.png" alt="Google Ads keyword ideas tool" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 1: Google Ads - keyword ideas tool</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ol>
<li><strong>vehicle wrap</strong>:
<ul>
<li>1k - 10k searches/month.</li>
<li>High competition (that is to say, there are many competitors bidding for these keywords).</li>
<li>‘top of page’ bidding range £0.34/click - £1.42/click.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>car wrap</strong>:
<ul>
<li>10k - 100k searches/month.</li>
<li>Medium competition.</li>
<li>‘top of page’ bidding range £0.23/click - £0.75/click.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>vinyl wrap near me</strong>:
<ul>
<li>1k - 10k searches/month.</li>
<li>Low competition</li>
<li>‘top of page’ bidding range £0.44/click - £1.79/click.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>In an attempt to become more niche and move into an area of low competition I decided to run a quick search on <strong>vehicle wrapping near me</strong>. Unfortunately it didn’t yield any useful results, with companies located in Warrington, Chesterfield and Michigan(!) appearing in the first page - I live in London, so none of these were actually anywhere near me (especially not the results from America).</p>
<p>I refined my search to <strong>vehicle wrapping near me london uk</strong>. The first result was <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://vehiclewrapsuk.com/</code>. I used <a href="https://sitechecker.pro" target="_blank">this website</a> to try to find out what kind of web traffic the number one result receives. My search didn’t yield any results, however, as sitechecker states they need more than 10k visits/month to get useful metrics. This isn’t really a surprise since Google tells us that there are a maximum of 10k searches per month, but it was useful to check.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to rely solely on Google for my results, and I found several blog posts that supported this decision. <a href="https://www.smartinsights.com/paid-search-marketing-ppc/paid-search-strategy/cost-google-advertising-uk/" target="_blank">This site</a>, for example, had conducted research indicating that Google Ads keyword planner estimates are <em>200% lower on average than actual cost of a live advert!</em>. In the case of telecommunications, the planner estimated costs <em>826%</em> lower than live costs.</p>
<p>They also give some useful information about how to reduce keyword costs which I’ll leave you to investigate at your leisure.</p>
<p>The fact that Google seems to underestimate advertising bidding costs is not really that surprising: Firstly, it is in Google’s interests to make costs seem lower than they actually are; secondly, the site states that bid costs are based on <em>historical</em> bids, not <em>current</em> bids, and that actual bid prices may vary.</p>
<p>With this in mind, perhaps it’s worth getting some kind of second opinion. <a href="https://moz.com" target="_blank">This</a> site provides some useful, independent, metrics on keywords. Entering the search term <strong>vehicle wrap</strong> here yields what appear to be similar but lower traffic values but the site itself admits that it doesn’t track all searches in the same way that Google does. However, the results for Moz.com are as follows:</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center"><img src="https://geovation.github.io/assets/images/its-a-wrap/moz-keywords.png" alt="Moz.com keyword ideas tool" /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center"><strong>Figure 2: Moz.com - keyword ideas tool</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ol>
<li><em>vehicle wrap</em>:
<ul>
<li>51 - 100 searches/month (significaltly less than Google Ads figures)</li>
<li>Difficulty 27/100 (0 = easy, 100 = hard, defined as how difficult it is to rank higher than current competitors on first page of search results - similar to Google Ads ‘competition’ rating)</li>
<li>Priority 54/100 (0 = low, 100 = high, a higher value indicating a sweet spot of low difficulty and higher volume)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Looking at the keyword suggestions tool on Moz.com, <strong>vehicle wrap</strong> ranks 15th at 66 searches/month whereas <strong>car wrapping</strong> yields 1,182 searches/month and <strong>vehicle wrapping near me</strong> 101 searches/month.</p>
<p>Who is correct, Google or Moz.com?</p>
<h2 id="step-2-projected-revenue-vs-costs-converting-clicks-into-profit">Step 2: Projected revenue vs costs (converting clicks into profit)</h2>
<p>How much does a car wrap cost? <a href="https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/car-wrapping-uk/resources/faq/how-much-does-car-wrap-cost/" target="_blank">A manufacturer of vehicle wrap materials</a> says anything from £1800 - £5000. A cost of £3000 - £5000 takes you into executive range, so a very good car wrap will be approx. £2000. This is about double what I actually saw by looking at rate cards for real businesses, but lets go with this figure for now.</p>
<p>Let’s assume that a vehicle wrap technician is paid same as mechanic (perhaps they <em>are</em> a mechanic). <a href="https://blog.inautomotive.com/average-salary-for-uk-car-mechanics/" target="_blank">An industry website</a> shows average salary for a mechanic in London as £31,065, so let’s go with £30k as a starting figure.</p>
<p>Here is a handy rule-of-thumb for web conversion rates:</p>
<ul>
<li>If your product/service costs less than £50 you can reasonably expect between <strong>1%</strong> and <strong>5%</strong> conversion rate (that is, the proportion of visitors that convert into paying customers). The higher rate assumes you are ranked in the top 3 results for a particular search.</li>
<li>For products/services over £50 the conversion rate drops to <strong>0.5% - 2%</strong>.</li>
<li>It is reasonable to expect 1/3 of your web traffic to come from search, 1/3 from links from other sites and 1/3 direct (i.e. people already know your URL, maybe from local advertising in local newsprint, for example, but that will cost you too). The higher you rank on keyword search, the more traffic you can expect from search. If you can rank high enough to reach your target for search it’s a pretty good bet that the other two sources will fall in line.</li>
</ul>
<p>With that in mind, let’s look at some numbers.</p>
<p>We’ll consider a worst case scenario first: figures from Moz.com, search term <strong>vehicle wrap</strong>. Let’s suppose there are 50 searches/month, each of which is directed to your website at the lowest conversion rate of 0.5% (i.e 50 visitors x 0.5% conversion rate x 12 months = 3 customers per year). Let’s also assume that this figure is matched by referrals from other sites and direct search using your URL. This equates to 9 customers per year, so let’s call it 10 for convenience. At £2000 per wrap, that equates to a revenue of 10 x £2,000 = <strong>£20,000/year</strong> (remember, this is revenue - we haven’t accounted for costs yet). Not so great!</p>
<p>Now let’s consider a best case scenario: figures from Google Ads keyword tool. Say 10k visitors/month at 2% conversion rate, that’s 10k searches x 2% conversion rate x 12 x £2000 = <strong>£4.8m/year revenue</strong>. Go for it!</p>
<p>Hold your horses. In both cases we’ve assumed all searches result in a visit to our website, but the reality is that the searches are spread across many UK businesses, not just your own. So, how many businesses am I competing against? A search on <a href="https://yelp.com" target="_blank">Yelp.com</a> for <strong>vehicle wrap in London</strong> yields 8 pages of results, at 10 results / page. That gives roughly 100 competing businesses in London alone. Google’s results were for whole of UK. Even if we were splitting the revenue between only those businesses in London (and we aren’t) that gives a best-case annual revenue of £4.8m / 100 or £48k. However, we’re expecting to be in the top 3 results so let’s say we get 5% of the available customers rather than the 1% average. That gives us £4.8m x 5% = £240k. Let’s call it £250k revenue. We haven’t accounted for the 2/3 traffic coming from other sources, so this gives us <strong>£750k</strong> but this is a <em>very</em> optimistic figure. Let’s go with it for the sake of argument.</p>
<p>How much would it cost us to get into the top 3 search results? Well, we’re expecting 5% of the total traffic from Google at the most optimistic level, or 500 visits / month. At £1.79/click that’s an annual cost of £10,740/year at Googles rates (500 x 12 x £1.79), which according to <a href="https://www.smartinsights.com/paid-search-marketing-ppc/paid-search-strategy/cost-google-advertising-uk/" target="_blank">smartinsight</a> will be more like £20k/year in reality.</p>
<p>Remember that our optimistic calculation results in 360 car wraps/year (10k visits/month x 12 months x 2% conversion x 3 visitor sources x 5% share of market). There are approximately 254 working days / year, and an average car wrap takes approximately 4 days to complete (approx. 2 days to design, 2 days to wrap - based on visiting wrapper sites). 4 days x 360 wraps = 1440 person days to complete our inventory. At 254 person days per year this means we need 6 people on the team. At an average wage of £30k this will cost us £180k for the technicians alone. Add in the cost of materials (let’s say £100/vehicle or £36,000/year- I have no idea whether this is right but let’s go with it) we’re looking at total cost of sales of £180k wages + £20k advertising + £36k materials = £236k/year. Let’s call it a round £250k/year.</p>
<p>So, our revenue of £750k minus our costs of £250k leaves a gross profit of £500k. But wait, we haven’t accounted for all the other expenses we incur whether we make a sale or not (like rent, administration, other wages, interest on bank loans). Nor have we accounted for tax. Let’s suppose these additional costs add up to £100k per year, that still leaves us with a profit before tax of £400k. Assuming a tax rate of 30%, we end up with a <strong>profit of approximately £270k/year</strong>. Pretty sweet, right? Go out and start your vehicle wrap business right now.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you believe that figure?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If not, why not?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve described a perfectly valid process and laid out all the calculations for you, so what’s the problem?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m hoping the answer is that you <em>don’t</em> believe me, because I’ve made <strong>too many unsubstantiated assumptions</strong>. If that’s the case, I agree with you. The process I’ve gone through here is reasonably sound, but I’ve made guesses at every stage. With so many stages to the calculation, is it any wonder that the result is so questionable? Which assumptions do you think were the biggest? What would you do instead to get a more accurate figure? Even if you did things differently, do you believe your result enough to give up your job and start a vehicle wrap business?</p>
<p>We’ve made a good start, but how can we come up with a more believable figure? First, we need to list our assumptions and then we need to create hypotheses to test those assumptions. How do you do that? I’ll give you some ideas in the next blog post!</p>PaulEvaluating Markets Most of the posts I’ve written are based on opinion and somewhat abstract so I thought I’d give you something more practical. In my last post I wrote about the importance and advantages of finding your niche. Why are niches important? I’ll let Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator) summarise:If you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here2020-10-01T00:00:00+01:002020-10-01T00:00:00+01:00https://geovation.github.io/get-there-dont-start-here<p>It is my experience that many founders of innovation startups follow a path more or less similar to the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>They feel dissatisfied with their current situation and want to take control of their life</li>
<li>It occurs to them that one way of taking control is to start their own business</li>
<li>Technology seems like a low-cost way of creating a new business as all you need is a computer</li>
<li>They (or someone they know) have already encountered a frustration in their working or personal life which <em>could probably</em> be solved by technology</li>
<li>They already have a solution in mind that they really want to build</li>
<li>A cursory search on the internet fails to reveal an obvious existing solution</li>
<li>They make a leap of faith: “If I have this problem then someone else must have it too. If I make it, they will come”</li>
<li>Viola, an innovation startup is born</li>
</ul>
<p>Sounds familiar? Don’t get me wrong, this is a perfectly valid way to found an innovation startup. Indeed, I’ve done it myself. What is surprising to many (myself included!) is how quickly it can go wrong and how much time and money can be wasted in the process.</p>
<p>Why is it that <a href="https://startupgenome.com/" target="_blank">9 out of 10 innovation startups fail?</a>. It’s tempting to say that it’s ignorance - that if only these founders had spoken to an expert like me they would have succeeded. There is a grain of truth in that but it’s not enough to explain such a high failure rate.</p>
<p>Having worked with many innovation startups it seems to me that the real issue is the difficulty of reconciling the enthusiasm and drive it takes to be a successful founder with the focussed, incremental, iterative approach required to mitigate the uncertainty that defines your startup.</p>
<p>It’s hard to hold yourself back and tread carefully when you’re itching to be the next Jeff Bezos.</p>
<h1 id="show-me-the-money">Show me the money</h1>
<p>One approach that I see quite often from founders is something like the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The global market for Wangdoodles is $X billion. If my new Wangdoodle Wrangler can capture just $Y% of that market my revenue will be $Z million.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many investor pitch decks contain a slide to this effect as it seems like a convincing argument. Let’s look at an example. <a href="https://sensortower.com/blog/app-store-one-percent" target="_blank">U.S. App Store revenue</a> and download estimates from January 1 to March 31, 2016, indicated that an estimated $1.43 billion net revenue was generated. That seems like a huge number, so even if we captured just 0.001% of that our revenue would still be millions of dollars. Surely we can capture 1/1000th of a global market?</p>
<p>Unfortunately the answer is likely to be a resounding <strong>NO</strong>. Detailed analysis of the U.S. App Store data showed that around $1.34 billion of the estimated $1.43 billion in net revenue generated went to 623 publishers. Still in with a chance? The total number of publishers contributing to revenue in that period was 62,300.</p>
<p>This means that <strong>94%</strong> of all net revenue generated by the U.S. App Store in the first quarter of 2016 went to just <strong>1%</strong> of the publishers. The other 61,677 publishers had to share the remaining 6 percent of the revenue, which was approximately approximately $85.8 million. If it was divided equally, they’d have made <em>less than $1,400 each</em>.</p>
<h1 id="it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way">It doesn’t have to be this way</h1>
<p>That’s all very interesting, but what’s my point? Thinking that the market is huge and therefore I only need to grab a tiny bit of it to succeed is exactly the kind of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning" target="_blank">motivated reasoning</a> that prevents founders from taking the steps they should to remove uncertainty. Most often when a justification like this is made during a pitch it takes only a few questions to reveal that the presenter has done little or no analysis of the breakdown of the market and simply knows the headline figure.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you won’t be one of the 1 in 10 that succeeds or one of the 1% that make all the revenue. I am saying that to get there will take more than enthusiasm, determination and wishful thinking.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://geovation.github.io/you-are-a-question" target="_blank">last post</a> I introduced the idea that <em>innovation startups are the embodiment of a question</em>. My intention was to shift the way we think about creating an innovation startup from the optimistic (building for the sake of building) to the pragmatic (building for the sake of learning). We don’t want to dampen optimism (indeed, it’s essential for any founder to be optimistic) but to extend the founder’s enthusiasm to include pragmatism in order to be the 1 in 10 that succeeds.</p>
<p>If you look up the word <strong>innovation</strong> you’ll find many definitions but one characteristic they all share is the idea that innovation is about the <strong>new</strong>. Innovation is creative and original. Being new, creative and original implies change and it is difficult for anyone to accurately predict how people will react to change.</p>
<p>Notice that I said it was “difficult” to predict the reaction to change. Difficult, but not impossible. If the entity you are founding is the embodiment of a question doesn’t it make sense to get good at asking questions?</p>
<h1 id="lets-go-back-to-the-beginning">Let’s go back to the beginning</h1>
<p>In an effort to work out why so many startups fail, <a href="https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-mistakes" target="_blank">failory.com</a> analysed responses from 80+ failed startups to see if they could identify any patterns. By far the largest single reason was what were collectively described as Marketing Mistakes. 46 out of 83 startups mentioned a marketing mistake as the main reason for the failure of the project. Of these 46, a majority of 29 (34% overall) mentioned issues that boil down to a <em>lack of product-market fit</em>. If this isn’t starting from the wrong place, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>There is a stage of product discovery that the vast majority of founders never visit at all: right at the beginning, when you don’t actually know what you’re doing at all. I don’t mean that you’re simply ignorant, I mean that you don’t yet have the idea for your innovation startup. This is the situation I want to consider.</p>
<h1 id="the-market-comes-first">The market comes first</h1>
<p>You know that you want to create your own innovation startup but you don’t have an idea yet. What do you do?</p>
<p>The single most important factor in a product’s success is whether or not a group of people are willing to pay for it. Your task is to find that group of people. The vast majority of innovation startups succeed in the long term by finding a market that is willing to pay them money for <em>something</em>.</p>
<p>That <em>something</em> may not be your ultimate product that makes you a millionaire, it may be a tiny fraction of that product but it can be done now, quickly. What matters is that you can find a group of people who need whatever this <em>something</em> is more than they need the money you’re charging for it. Once you’ve found them give them your initial product at a price where you make a healthy profit and you’re off.</p>
<h1 id="find-your-niche">Find your niche</h1>
<p>Suppose you decide that the world needs a new note-taking app. You know how to design the database, you have a great idea for a beautiful interface, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of months to get the first version out and you’re in business, right?</p>
<p>A quick internet search will tell you that there are plenty of note-taking apps out there. When I did this the first page of results consisted entirely of variations on a theme of ‘The X best note-taking apps of 2020’ with X ranging between 8 and 11. There’s a lot of competition in this space, including some well-established big players. Whilst competition is not necessarily a bad thing (there are at least 11 variations considered worth of the title ‘best note-taking app’ after all) it is highly unlikely that as a small startup you are going to be able to compete with the budgets and teams who already have thousands of paying customers.</p>
<p>So building a general-purpose note-taking app probably isn’t the road to easy, instant success. You need to find your niche. Suppose, like me, you are an amateur musician. If you play an instrument that requires both hands it’s a pain to have to take your hands off your instrument in order to start a note-taking app when your notes consist of… musical notes! How about a note-taking app that is voice activated, with integrated video so you can record your sound and technique at the same time?</p>
<p>The potential size of your market is much smaller, but you’d probably be able to charge more for your product. You probably already know where to find your market since you are a musician yourself and you belong to social media groups and other organisations where you connect with your fellow musicians. You can make a niche market really happy and focus on a product that becomes so well designed that members of your niche market have no choice but to use it.</p>
<p>If you can find a small group of people and make them very happy you will make money. Also, your marketing will probably be more effective since the larger a potential market is the more effort you have to make locating people willing to buy your product.</p>
<p>You probably already have an idea based on your personal interest, work responsibilities or personal association. Starting with something you know is likely to be much easier than trying to enter a completely unknown market. Don’t assume, however, that just because you have a problem that everyone else in your chosen niche will have the same problem or will experience it in the same way.</p>
<p>Start with general curiosity about a topic. You’re looking for patterns, asking yourself ‘what is wrong with this?’. Don’t just concentrate on what you’ve already decided to do. Think about other issues in your niche area. Try to come up with 20 different business ideas and investigate their viability.</p>
<p>Check the potential size of the market. Does it have a magazine devoted to it? Magazine publishers are in the business of market segmentation. If you’re targeting a niche with its own magazine like Bass Players or Fly Fisermen (Fisherpeople?) then chances are you are onto something. See if you can find social media groups devoted to your niche. How many people subscribe? Track down Government or industry statistics on the number of people employed in your niche.</p>
<p>Conduct interviews (but make sure you read <a href="http://momtestbook.com/" target="_blank">The Mom Test</a> first!), watch people doing ‘the thing’ you’re interested in and conduct a literature review. The resulting insights will lead to ideas and help to define the problem you’re solving. Even if you’re working on an existing product or service the insights may lead to new features or lines of service. Engage with social media groups and see if you can recruit enthusiastic potential early adopters who will be happy to give you the information you need and who can become advocates for your business.</p>
<p>Ask questions and use the answers to decide which question <em>in particular</em> your startup is answering.</p>
<p>There’s more to do, but this is a <em>good</em> place to start.</p>
<h1 id="wrapping-up">Wrapping up</h1>
<p>All of the above information can be summarised as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Start with what you know</p>
<p>Start small</p>
<p>Ask questions</p>
<p>Create options</p>
<p>Find a paying audience</p>
<p>Above all, <strong>start at the beginning</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Next month I’ll look at the next steps.</p>PaulIt is my experience that many founders of innovation startups follow a path more or less similar to the following:My Experience at Geovation2020-09-30T00:00:00+01:002020-09-30T00:00:00+01:00https://geovation.github.io/my-geovation-experience<p>I started my role at Geovation as a Graduate Software Developer. Over the past year and two months, I have gone from having very little coding knowledge to being able to create interesting projects manipulating map data in real world situations. I also learnt how to make my code simpler, and more readable, increasing the efficiency of my projects.</p>
<p>My general role was to create projects using products from OS in order to test them, then review these projects by writing blogs, highlighting positives as well as improvements to their service. My first project was a fairly simple project to add park paths using Mapbox for OS’s Zoomstack product.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/os-zoomstack.png" alt="OS Zoomstack" /></p>
<p>I spent a large amount of my work testing features from the OS Datahub API, which was still in its trial version, and giving feedback before the official launch. The main challenge was to create effective hypothetical scenarios, in order to test the features accordingly. All these projects were added to the Geovation sandbox, which you can find <a href="https://geovation.github.io/sandbox/">here.</a></p>
<p>One of my favourite projects from the sandbox page was a coronavirus related project, showing the nearest secondary school to a hospital in the hypothetical case of hospitals getting full.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/hospitals.png" alt="Hospitals" /></p>
<p>In addition, I provided support for the Geovation team with insights by creating the Geovation Community Map, which the team can use to identify areas where Geovation can attract more startups, network connections and hub members. This will be a useful tool for the team to help the focus on certain areas in the future.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/geovation-community-map.png" alt="Comunity Map" /></p>
<p>Towards the end of my role, I had the opportunity to support Geovation member Gather, and create a map for them showing different features in Antananarivo, whilst toggling different properties and maps. I even customised my own map layer with Mapbox which shows the different contour heights!</p>
<p><img src="/assets/antananarivo-1.png" alt="Gather" /></p>
<p><img src="/assets/antananarivo-2.png" alt="Gather" /></p>
<p>Finally, I created a more recent coronavirus related project as cases were starting to increase from the start of September. One of the main issues I had for checking cases was that there was no website which showed a visual display of weekly local cases in London. The best was Sky or BBC News, which showed numbers, but it was pretty time consuming having to check the cases in all the local areas in London one at a time. So, I decided to use OS Products to create a map visualisation showing the number of weekly coronavirus cases in London, as well as the increase/decrease from the previous weeks. I also used Chart.js to add bar charts which makes it easier for the user to identify particular trends, and whether cases are increasing or decreasing over the weeks.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/london-coronavirus-cases.png" alt="Coronavirus" /></p>
<p>Beyond my role, I found my experience at Geovation very eye opening. I was lucky enough to encounter several start-ups and hard-working, creative minds, as well as the variety of things they were doing. When the hub was open, I always wanted to take the opportunity to speak to different people, get an insight into their start-ups and what they were about, and provide any help or support to them if I could. With the experience and knowledge of our engineering team, I was able to learn a lot, and although at times my role was challenging, it was something I thoroughly enjoyed.</p>
<p>I would like to thank Sebastian for his mentoring and support throughout my time, as well as the rest of the engineering team, and the wider Geovation team. You have all helped make my time here a pleasurable experience, and I will be looking forward to meeting you all again in the future!</p>JohannI started my role at Geovation as a Graduate Software Developer. Over the past year and two months, I have gone from having very little coding knowledge to being able to create interesting projects manipulating map data in real world situations. I also learnt how to make my code simpler, and more readable, increasing the efficiency of my projects.You are a question. What is the answer?2020-09-01T00:00:00+01:002020-09-01T00:00:00+01:00https://geovation.github.io/you-are-a-question<p>I’d like to propose a definition:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An <strong>innovation startup</strong> is a business that is testing assumptions that <em>haven’t been tested before</em> (i.e. sufficiently new teachnologies, product & services and/or markets).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At Geovation, we like to deconstruct innovation in the following way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the purposes of this post I’ll be referring to this as the <strong>Innovation Equation</strong>. That’s very neat, but what does it really mean?</p>
<p>We believe that there are 3 essential aspects to innovation which are separate but intimately related. The resultant <em>amount</em> of innovation is a product of the <em>size</em> of the problem being solved (both in terms of the amount of pain being relieved and the number of people affected), the amount of <em>benefit</em> provided by the solution to the problem and the <em>effectiveness</em> of the execution of that solution.</p>
<p>This is not a scientific definition (the terms <em>amount</em>, <em>size</em>, <em>benefit</em> and <em>effectiveness</em> are in italics because they are somewhat nebulous in their meaning) but is a useful heuristic for defining an approach to achieving successful innovation with a startup:</p>
<ol>
<li>First, define the <strong>problem</strong> to be addressed:
<ul>
<li>What exactly is the problem you’re trying to solve?</li>
<li>Who does it affect?</li>
<li>Why does it matter?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Once you have fully defined the problem you can consider what <strong>solution</strong> you intend to provide:
<ul>
<li>What benefits does it bring to the customer?</li>
<li>How are you testing its potential?</li>
<li>Why is it better than the alternatives?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Defining a solution is one thing, making it work is quite another. <strong>Execution</strong> is arguably the single most important factor in creating a start up, providing that the method of execution supports the problem and the solution:
<ul>
<li>How will your idea make money?</li>
<li>How scalable is your solution in the long term (never worry about scaling in the short term - you need customers before this becomes an issue!)?</li>
<li>What is your unfair advantage for success?</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h1 id="questions-questions-questions">Questions, questions, questions</h1>
<p>If you accept my definition of an innovation startup as stated at the beginning of this post then I hope that what I’m about to say comes as no surprise.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As an innovation startup your very <em>existance</em> is a question</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my work with innovation startups it is usually the case that people understand the principle defined in the equation above: define your problem, create a solution that solves it (or part of it) and build that solution. What is harder to communicate not only that this is not a linear process but also that it is a <em>learning</em> process designed to answer the question that your startup is asking.</p>
<p>The world of any startup is one of uncertainty. This is especially so for innovation startups, which is probably why <a href="https://startupgenome.com/" target="_blank">9 out of 10 of them fail</a>. The more uncertainty you can mitigate by asking appropriate questions, the better chance you have of coming up with the right answer.</p>
<p>You may have heard of the <a href="http://theleanstartup.com/" target="_blank">Lean Startup</a> principle of <strong>Build, Measure, Learn</strong> which is designed to support this learning approach. I personally believe that this principle could be better stated as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hypothesise > Experiment > Learn</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason I re-state the ‘lean cycle’ like this is that, in it’s original form, I believe it puts undue emphasis on the Build element of the cycle. To my mind, the emphasis should be on the question you want to know the answer to and the learning that comes from the answer, not the building itself.</p>
<p>This implies that you need to define the question each incremental experiment in the execution of your startup is going to answer before you build anything.</p>
<h1 id="how-do-i-know-what-to-questions-to-ask">How do I know what to questions to ask?</h1>
<p>One of the hardest things about innovating is working out what questions to ask. Unfortunately, this is not so amenable to a simple heuristic such as the innovation equation stated at the start of this post. There are some common hypotheses that most startups will want to test, measure and learn from but most of your questions will be individual to your problem/solution.</p>
<p>To help solve this issue it is useful to look at <strong>Problem > Solution > Execution</strong> in another way. When considering what questions you startup needs to answer I suggest thinking in terms of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Desirability > Feasibility > Viability</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This relates to the innovation equation in the following way:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Desirability</strong> refers to the problem. In essence, you will be asking “Do my customers want/need to have this problem solved?”. Some of the risks that need to be mitigated here are:
<ul>
<li>Is the market big enough?</li>
<li>Will customers pay for it and if so, how much is the solution worth to them?</li>
<li>Can we reach, acquire and retain target customers?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Feasibility</strong> refers to the solution. The focus here is “Can we do this?”:
<ul>
<li>The risk is that the business can’t manage, scale or get access to key resources (technology, IP, brand etc.), key activities or key partners.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Viability</strong> can simply be expresses as follows:
<ul>
<li>Can we generate more revenue than costs?</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>If you can change your thinking to recognise the question that your very existance implies and can be honest and rigorous in your responses you have a much better chance of being the 1 company out of 10 that survives and thrives.</p>
<p>Over the next few months I’ll be posting more detail on what sort of questions to ask (and, just as importantly, what questions not to bother asking) and how to ask them depending on the stage you are at and the nature of your startup.</p>
<p>Watch this space!</p>PaulI’d like to propose a definition:Be Prepared2020-08-01T00:00:00+01:002020-08-01T00:00:00+01:00https://geovation.github.io/be-prepared<p>As a non-technical founder of a technical startup it can be a confusing, worrying and downright difficult process to create all the accounts, documents, descriptions, images, logos and general stuff you need to create before you can bring your product to life. This post is designed to let you know what you’ll be most likely to need and why so that you can avoid delays and difficulties further down the line.</p>
<p><em>NOTE: This document is not comprehensive and in no way constitutes a recommendation for any particular supplier or technology mentioned.</em></p>
<p>All startups are different and it’s impossible to provide generic advice that applies to everyone. Like most things in life, what you will need depends on what you are doing. Having said that, chances are that you’ll need at least some of what is contained in this post. Use this as a guide to the kind of things you’ll need to do if you want your product or service to go live.</p>
<p>Buckle up, we have a long way to go and the road can get rocky!</p>
<h2 id="tldr">TLDR;</h2>
<p>This is a long post by necessity; there’s a lot to do to set up the technical environment for your startup. If you just want a quick summary there is a <a href="#checklist-1"><strong>Checklist</strong></a> at the end of each section that lists the main actions to be undertaken.</p>
<h1 id="code-repository--version-control">Code Repository & Version Control</h1>
<p>All technical products and services require code. This is the hundreds or thousands of lines of Javascript or Python or Node or whatever it is that your development team is using to create your business. Even so-called <em>No Code</em> products create code - the only difference is that the code is being written by the product you’re using and not by you.</p>
<h3 id="code-repository">Code Repository</h3>
<p>The most basic requirement of any and all technical products or services is a code repository. In essence, a code repository is a file system that stores the digital files containing the code that constitutes your product or service.</p>
<p>Unless you’re someone like Facebook or Google this will be a third-party, cloud-based service. Some big companies like to host their code repository ‘on premise’ meaning that the servers running their code repository are hosted on physical machines somewhere in a building they own, but you aren’t one of those yet so it’s not even worth considering.</p>
<p>Most code repositories are associated with a particular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control" target="_blank">Version Control</a> system. Version control systems are responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections of information. It is the mechanism by which your developers can create your product on their own laptops, independently of each other, and stitch the results together to make something that works (hopefully!).</p>
<h3 id="version-control">Version Control</h3>
<p>Although I’m sure there will be some developers out there who disagree with me I’m going to make an exception to the rule I defined at the start of this post and say that the <em>only</em> version control system worth considering is <a href="https://git-scm.com/" target="_blank">Git</a>. Don’t bother with anything else. Where you do have a reasonable choice, however, is which Git-compliant repository you choose. The de-facto repository for Git is <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a> but several others exist, the main competitor being <a href="https://bitbucket.org/product" target="_blank">BitBucket</a>.</p>
<p>Whichever repository you choose, make creating an account a priority because nothing much else can happen until you do. Typically you’ll need to create a team and invite your developers and other interested parties to it (who will, themselves, need logins to your repository of choice).</p>
<p>I’ve worked with several startups who have had the same issue, which is that they engaged a third-party software development company to create the initial version of their product. In these cases, the third-party set up the code repository and essentially used access to the repository and the code it contained as a bargaining tool to force price increases. If you are working with a third-party make sure you create the repository account yourself and add them as team members. Also, make sure that payment is dependent upon <em>working</em> code being added to that repository. That code belongs to you, it’s what you’ve paid for, so make sure no-one can hold you to ransom when you try to access it.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-1">Checklist 1</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Choose a Git-compliant cloud repository and create an account.</li>
<li>Create a team in your cloud repository and add your development team members to it (they will also require accounts with your cloud repository)</li>
<li><a href="#checklist-2">Next Checklist</a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Writing, storing and managing code is one thing, running it somewhere where other people can access it is quite another. For this you need hosting.</p>
<h1 id="servers-and-hosting">Servers and Hosting</h1>
<p>Any products that require a <em>backend</em> will need some sort of server. Backends are used to run things like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface" target="_blank">APIs</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_model" target="_blank">domain models</a> that would either be too complex or insecure to run in an app. Every website requires a server, even if it is just a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page" target="_blank">static</a> marketing site. Even so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing" target="_blank">serverless</a> code runs on a server, it just happens to be one you don’t have to manage (much) yourself!</p>
<p>A cloud provider who runs your server is typically called a <em>host</em>.</p>
<p>There are a great many providers of cloud servers, including <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services (AWS)</a>, <a href="https://cloud.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Cloud</a> and <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/" target="_blank">Microsoft Azure</a> to name but three of the big ones. At Geovation we have a soft spot for <a href="https://www.heroku.com/" target="_blank">Heorku</a>. There are, of course, many others. Most of them offer some kind of free tier for when you are getting started, but be aware that these free services are almost never suitable for production use due to their limited size and performance (they are free, after all) so make sure to check the costs you may incur when you go live.</p>
<p>Create an account with your server host and invite the team members responsible for deploying your product/service to this account. Typically this will be done using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_management" target="_blank">Identity and Access Management (IAM)</a> system implemented by your host as this will allow you fine-grained control over who is allowed to do what.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-2">Checklist 2</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Choose a cloud-based host for your servers (and possibly for ancilliary services - see below) and create an account.</li>
<li>Add your team members to this account using whatever IAM system is available, making sure to assign the correct permissions to each team member (do <strong>not</strong> just make everyone an administrator)</li>
<li><a href="#checklist-3">Next Checklist</a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>All hosts will associate a randomly generated URL with any servers you create. Typically, these random URLs will be long, apparently illogical and almost impossible to remember. In some cases, they may be subject to regular change without notice. To overcome this, you need a domain.</p>
<h2 id="domains-urls-and-ssl-certificates">Domains, URLs and SSL Certificates</h2>
<p>With the possible exception of self-contained apps, everyting you host will need a dedicated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name" target="_blank">domain name</a> and associated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL" target="_blank">URL(s)</a> in order to be reachable.</p>
<h3 id="domains--urls">Domains & URLs</h3>
<p>Choosing a suitable, available domain name is likely to feel like the hardest thing you’ve ever done! You can reasonably expect that every word of 10 letters or fewer has already been registered in some form or another. I’ve personally been looking for domain names in the past and have <em>made up</em> words which I’ve discovered have already been registered!</p>
<p>You may have to relinquish that <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">.com</code> domain in order to have the name you like because it has already been taken. Be aware that there are people who make businesses out of speculatively registering domains, sitting on them and charging premium prices to sell them. Given that there are billions of registered domains already the chances of getting the one you really want are slim to nothing, unless you have very deep pockets.</p>
<p>There are more domain name registrars than you can shake a stick at, just search for ‘domain name’ in Google and take your pick. Many of these registrars also offer hosting but in my experience it’s better to host with one of the top 3 providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) if you are writing your own code as they give you much more control over what can be done and have many more years experience at managing hosting, meaning that support is likely to be much better.</p>
<p>Most domain name providers offer at least one free email address with each domain together with the ability to purchase more email addresses. Typically, these unmanaged email addresses can be forwarded to another account. Alternatively, you can choose an email address that is hosted and managed by the domain name provider. Either way, you’ll almost certainly need these email addresses for other accounts. Make sure your provider gives you access to your <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server" target="_blank">Nameserver</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System" target="_blank">DNS</a> records for your domain, as you’ll also need this later.</p>
<h3 id="ssl-certificates">SSL Certificates</h3>
<p>If you want to be searchable on Google and trusted by your customers your URLs will have to be secure (i.e. start with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://</code>), which in turn means you’ll need an <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-is-an-ssl-certificate/" target="_blank">SSL Certificate</a>. Most domain name registrars provide the ability to purchase SSL Certificates although they rarely create these certificates themselves; they simply order them on your behalf from specialists like <a href="https://www.geotrust.com/" target="_blank">GeoTrust</a> or <a href="https://www.rapidssl.com/" target="_blank">RapidSSL</a>. Check how much you are being charged by the domain name provider as you can buy SSL Certificates directly from these specialists if it is more cost effective.</p>
<p>You can also get free SSL Certificates from <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" target="_blank">Let’s Encrypt</a> but be aware that these free certificates come with drawbacks. Fristly, they are only valid for 90 days (as opposed to 2 years for most paid certificates) so will need regular updating by you. Secondly, they come with a lower protection level than paid certificates so may still be categorised as vulnerable in many web browsers. Free SSL Certificates are very useful for development, however.</p>
<p>Just to make life a little more interesting, there are several <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/ssl/types-of-ssl-certificates/" target="_blank">different types of SSL Certificate</a> you can choose from, each of which offers different protection and different costs. Essentially you have to choose from a <strong>Single Domain</strong> certificate (which applies to one domain and one domain only), a <strong>Wildcard</strong> certificate (which applies to one domain and any subdomains) or a <strong>Multi-Domain</strong> certificate (which is a combination of the above). Choose wisely, as the costs can quickly add up to a significant amount.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-3">Checklist 3</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Choose a cloud-based domain registrar and create an account.</li>
<li>Find a domain that is available and that you are happy with and buy it immediately before someone else does.</li>
<li>If possible, purchase some additional email addresses to associate with this domain.</li>
<li>Decide which type of SSL Certificate you require and start the process of purchasing it (it can take several days to come through)</li>
<li><a href="#checklist-4">Next Checklist</a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It is highly unlikely that you’ll be able to operate with a server alone. Pretty much every tech product worthy of the name will need some additional ancilliaries.</p>
<h1 id="ancilliaries">Ancilliaries</h1>
<p>By themselves, servers do not generally provide enough functionality to create a comprehensive technical product or service. You are very likely to require several ancilliary services including, but not limited to, the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Databases</li>
<li>Document storage</li>
<li>Email services</li>
<li>User management</li>
<li>Social login</li>
</ul>
<p>Most cloud hosts will provide many of these services in addition to hosting your servers. As with servers, most cloud hosts will provide free versions of these services with the similar caveats.</p>
<h3 id="databases">Databases</h3>
<p>There are many different databases, and many different types of database, and this post is not the place to discuss them all. It is usual (but not required) to host your databases with the same provider as your servers unless you are using a particularly niche database. Check the different levels of paid database and look carefully at what you get from each level. You could easily find that your database becomes the most expensive part of your ecosystem as your business grows.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t forget about database backup and restore</strong>. You will probably need to roll back your database at some point in time and if the worst happens you need to know how to restore your database so practise now before it’s too late and you realise you can’t do it when you need to.</p>
<h3 id="document-storage">Document Storage</h3>
<p>It is highly likely that you’ll want to host documents (including images) in a specialised Document Storage system like <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/gsg/GetStartedWithS3.html" target="_blank">AWS S3</a>. These services are typically optimised to the hilt to ensure that your static assets are delivered as fast as possible and are always available. They also typically offer unlimited storage and global availability.</p>
<h3 id="email-serivces">Email Serivces</h3>
<p>Email services like <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/Welcome.html" target="_blank">AWS Simple Email Service (SES)</a> will offer you a free <em>sandbox</em> version which limits the number of recipients and the frequency of sending of email. Typically, you will have to add recipient email addresses manually before you can send emails to them from the sandbox. This is to prevent these free services being used to create spam. Before you go live you will have to move ‘out of the sandbox’ and <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/request-production-access.html" target="_blank">into production</a>.</p>
<p>When doing so you have to state the use to which you will be putting the email account. Make sure you tell the truth and make sure you stick to what you say otherwise you will very quickly find your email addresses blacklisted and your account suspended, meaning that you will be unable to send anything to anyone whether you need to or not. Being blacklisted by one email provider makes it quite likely that you will be rejected by other email providers. Email providers are terrified of being associated with spam and go to great lengths to prevent anything that looks remotely like spam coming from one of their accounts.</p>
<h3 id="user-management--social-login">User Management & Social Login</h3>
<p>Please, please, please <strong>do not write your own user management system</strong>. I see this time and again with technical startups and it is completely unnecessary as there are many good third-party user management systems available that will do this for you. Writing your own will suck up huge amounts of time and money. If possible, use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_login" target="_blank">Social Logins</a> so customers can utilise existing accounts to access your product/services without having to create yet another login.</p>
<p>If you are including Social Logins you will have to create Developer accounts for any and all third-party sites you use. To save time and hassle you should also create developer accounts with these services for your team members otherwise you’ll spend an awful lot of time forwarding authentication keys and passwords to your developers as they test your product/service.</p>
<p>Much like Email Services, most social login providers will start you off with a sandbox test environment that you will have to upgrade in some way to make production ready. Check the process for doing this for each provider and make sure you have the necesary artifacts available.</p>
<p>Be aware that, beginning with iOS 13, any iOS app that includes third-party authentication options must provide <a href="https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/" target="_blank">Apple authentication</a> as an option in order to comply with App Store Review guidelines.</p>
<p>Given that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation" target="_blank">GDPR</a> is mandatory for European websites it is essential that you save only the absolute minimum of customer data necessary for the legitimate working of your product or service. Note that GDPR applies regardless of the UK’s membership of the EU if you are providing products or services to EU members.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-4">Checklist 4</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Create any additional accounts (if necessary) for all ancilliary services you require.</li>
<li>As with hosting, use the IAM system for these additional providers to create accounts for your team members.</li>
<li>Buy, not build, a user management system.</li>
<li>Create developer accounts for yourself and your team members for all social logins you are using (including Apple Authentication if you are using social login on iOS).</li>
<li>Check the process for making ancilliary services like email and social login production ready and make sure you have all the necessary artifacts available</li>
<li><a href="#checklist-5">Next Checklist</a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<h1 id="apple--google-develper-accounts">Apple & Google Develper Accounts</h1>
<p>If you’re making an app you’ll need to enrol on the Apple & Google Developer programs in order to distribute your app. This is not strictly true for Google since it has a more open policy regarding app distribution but if you want your app to be discovered it’s best to put it on Google Play. For iOS apps, however, the Apple App Store is your only option (and <strong>Apple will charge you 30% of everything you earn through the app</strong> for the privilege!).</p>
<h3 id="apple-developer-program">Apple Developer Program</h3>
<p>You must enroll in the <a href="https://developer.apple.com/programs/enroll/" target="_blank">Apple Developer program</a> as an Organization (not as an Individual). For UK businesses, this will typically require you to provide a copy of your <a href="https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/memorandum-and-articles-of-association:" target="_blank">Memorandum and Articles of Association</a> in order to prove your legal status. To enroll in the Apple Developer program, you’ll need to set up an Apple ID and pay a $99/year fee. If you’re a nonprofit or government agency, Apple will waive your fee.</p>
<p>The process of enrolling can take several weeks, so the sooner you start the better it will be.</p>
<h3 id="google-developer-program">Google Developer Program</h3>
<p>Enrollment on the Google Developer program is much easier. To enroll in the Google Play Developer program, you’ll need a Google account and to pay a one time $25 fee.</p>
<h3 id="payment-provider">Payment Provider</h3>
<p>If you are planning to charge for your app, whether with a one-off fee or in-app purchases, you will need an online <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_payment_service_providers" target="_blank">Payment Service provider</a>. Choose your provider and create an account.</p>
<p>Do not leave this to the last minute because you can’t go live without it.</p>
<p>On Google Play, if you set the price of your app to <em>free</em> you <strong>cannot change it to paid in the future</strong> so make sure you know what you are going to charge before you publish your app to the store.</p>
<h3 id="notifications">Notifications</h3>
<p>Decide if and how you will <a href="https://medium.com/@Imaginovation/app-development-decisions-push-notifications-vs-in-app-messaging-5d7ac1e56233" target="_blank">communicate with your users in-app</a>. Notifications are incredibly important in maintaining users. It’s hard enough getting users to download your app in the first place, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/12/users-have-low-tolerance-for-buggy-apps-only-16-will-try-a-failing-app-more-than-twice/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29" target="_blank">let alone use the app more than once</a>. Notifications can be extremely useful in this situation but you have to decide on a strategy before it can be usefully implemented.</p>
<h3 id="testing">Testing</h3>
<p>In the vast majority of cases you will need a secure connection to test your app. As discussed above, you can either do this with a free SSL Certificate and a lot of manual management or you can use a tunneling service like <a href="https://ngrok.com/" target="_blank">Ngrok</a> to do it for you. I use Ngrok every time.</p>
<h3 id="privacy-policy-terms--conditions">Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions</h3>
<p>If you collect any personal information from the users of your app you will need a <a href="https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/mobile-apps-privacy-policy/" target="_blank">Privacy Policy</a> to comply with worldwide legislation. Even if you don’t directly collect personal information you may still need a privacy policy if you use third-party tools like Google Analytics to collect data on your behalf.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/terms-conditions-mobile-app/" target="_blank">Terms & Conditions of Use</a> are not a legal requirement but they are strongly advised. You are also strongly advised to have both your privacy policy and Terms & Conditions of Use reviewed by a legal specialist. This may seem expensive, but the potential cost of not doing so could be orders of magnitude higher.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-5">Checklist 5</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>If you intend to create an iOS app you need to create a company right now.</li>
<li>You also need a publicly visible website to go with your company for iOS registration (this can be a simple marketing site, but you’ll need something).</li>
<li>Register with the Apple and Google Developer programs as soon as possible (since it can take some time for your Apple registration to be processed).</li>
<li>Choose a payment provider and create an account.</li>
<li>Decide what, how and how much customers are going to pay for your product/service.</li>
<li>Decide whether you need a notification process and if so, how it will work.</li>
<li>Create a free SSL Certificate or an Ngrok account for testing your apps.</li>
<li>Create a Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions of use and get them reviewed by a legal specialist.</li>
<li><a href="#checklist-6">Next Checklist</a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<h1 id="one-final-very-important-point">One Final, VERY IMPORTANT Point</h1>
<p>Do not ever, and I really mean <em>NOT EVER</em>, save usernames, passwords, Client IDs, Client Secrets or any other credentials you create during this process to cloud services which are not encrypted both in transit and at rest.</p>
<h3 id="checklist-6---places-not-to-store-secure-credentials">Checklist 6 - Places NOT to store secure credentials</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Do not save secure credentials to <em>ANY</em> service which is not encrypted both in transit and at rest or in any way publicly accessible. This includes all of the following, <em>none of which are truly secure</em>:</p>
<ul>
<li>Slack</li>
<li>Google Docs</li>
<li>Your code repository</li>
<li>Dropbox</li>
<li>Gmail</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Be very careful about who, in the team, you share your credentials with. Remember: <a href="https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/90-percent-of-data-breaches-are-caused-by-human-error" target="_blank"><strong>90 percent of data breaches are caused by human error</strong></a>.</p>
<p>Don’t say I didn’t warn you!</p>
<h1 id="summary">Summary</h1>
<p>That’s an awful lot of information and a bucket-load of things to do. Exactly what needs to be done and which mechanisms/suppliers you will use will depend entirely on what you are trying to do but hopefully this guide has given you a template for starting your technical business in a way that lets your developers develop while you concentrate on building your business.</p>PaulAs a non-technical founder of a technical startup it can be a confusing, worrying and downright difficult process to create all the accounts, documents, descriptions, images, logos and general stuff you need to create before you can bring your product to life. This post is designed to let you know what you’ll be most likely to need and why so that you can avoid delays and difficulties further down the line.