Prathima's Miles & Milestones

When you have answers to the following questions, you are on the right track with the hunt for a Product prospect of yours.

• B2B or B2C or a SaaS?
• Who are you, what’s your story?
• Why are you building?
• What’s the problem faced?
• Who are you building it for or your target audience?
• How are you optimizing/coming up with a solution?
• Who are you getting feedback from?
• What comprises your MVP?
• How long would you give this a try before you get obsessed with another idea?

Familiarise it with you

• Test your concept with a landing page & create a waitlist.
• Make a list of your contacts who’re optimistic & will be the first ambassadors of your product. Start from your phone contacts.
• Test your pilot program with your ambassadors.
• Create micro-strategies with smaller cohorts.
• Create a referral program & grow to own the network.
• Hunt down the organic channels. Eg: Telegram groups, Discords, Whatsapp groups, local offline groups, etc.
• Be an irrational optimist. entrepreneurs are hustlers & have a growth mindset even if no one trusts you or your idea.
• Go down to the streets & market it.

Eg: Flipkart was marketed with pamphlets in its initial days.

• Provide incentives like Amazon coupons to convert the ambassadors to repeat customers.
• Create a feedback & suggestion mechanism. Hear from your customers.
• Read the stories which inspire you.

Eg: Rapido started with a Telegram group of drivers,

Dunzo started running their service on a Whatsapp Business account,

FamPay used their friends’ circle to start with.

Revenue vs Acquisition

• In e-commerce, it’s usually 6 paying customers that lead to breakeven to revenue generation. Find out your digits.
• Find all possible ways to minimize the CAC. (Customer Acquisition Costs) given that you run ads on various platforms.
• Stick to your ICP. (Ideal Customer Profile) Do not diversify in the initial stages.
• Do not choose virality tricks unless it happens organically.

Mantras to live by

• Insights do not need money but your efforts.
• You do not need anybody’s permission to build.
• Hustle — until you know what your customers do not know that they need.
• Less social media & live by your grind.
• The core team is very important. Choose people with the right mindset.

Feel free to share your views & opinions if I have missed any.