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If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur and you have an idea for a software product that could turn into a great company, possibly making you financially independent and, better still, perhaps making a positive impact on the world then where do you start? Especially if you are non-technical and cannot create the product yourself!
Well, don’t panic! Although there’s lots to do, most of these you can do yourself without help and therefore for FREE! Even if you are technical, please don’t dive straight into writing software – you should be doing these same things!
- If you are currently employed;
- Check your employment contract for what you can and can’t do
- Don’t write anything specifically to your idea down if you won’t own this Whether or not you are employed:
- Learn everything you need to do to create a startup (take video training courses and speak to other founders for example)
- Research your market and potential customers and competitors
- Start thinking about the big decisions.
- If you are not employed (or can own the things that you create);
- Create your SWOT analysis: SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate a company’s internal and external factors that can impact its performance.
- Decide on your market-fit strategy and start progressing
- Decide on your partnership strategy and start progressing
- Decide on your funding strategy and start progressing
- Create your elevator pitch and overview document
- Setup your business
- Get legal advice
- Create a plan of action Once you have done these;
- you can start to understand and document your initial technical requirements. Depending on your market-fit strategy, these may be used to create a prototype, minimum viable product (MVP), or a full product.
Creating a technical requirements document will save you tens of thousands of dollars and hours of wasted work. It can help you get investment if you need this, get accurate quotes if you are paying someone to create your product, and can even be used to check the quality of the designs, prototype, and final product.
There’s a lot of detail that I’ve missed out in this article (see https://softwarestartupcoach.com/getting-started-course for a detailed step-by-step guide to getting started) but I hope that it gives you the reassurance that you can do this and helps you to JUST GET STARTED.
Written by Stuart Prestedge
Stuart has over 30 years of experience creating and exiting software startups and helping other founders create their own startups.
Check out my LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartprestedge/ for helpful posts, courses, and upcoming events).