In this week’s edition, we discuss
How to devise your startup’s strategy (yes, you do need one)Lessons learned from building and selling a dotcom business
Let’s get to it.
Every startup needs a strategy — but how do you devise one?
If you ask 1000 entrepreneurs to define “strategy,” 999 of them will say it’s “a blueprint for how to reach your long-term goals.” Really, it’s an agreement about what you will and won’t do to develop your startup.
Strategist Svyatoslav Biryulin shares his simple five question structure to help you reach this understanding:
What are your core markets?— Define your target market, their needs, where do they live or work, how many are there, and how much are they ready to spend for a solution to their need?What is the customer need? — Needs are conscious or unconscious desires that your customers have. Define these, and you have your possible solution.What are your customer values? — Customer values are about what a company offers to its customers to satisfy their needs.What are your critical assets? —Resources aren’t unlimited, so focus on the assets you must create and develop first.What are your crucial processes? — Building a list of priority processes means these procedures shouldn’t be underinvested. And the leaders must provide all the resources these processes need.
👉 Dive deeper into these questions: 5 Critical Questions to Devise Your Startup’s Strategy
The rise, sale, and fall of a dotcom business
Today, JP Stonestreet is a blogger & YouTuber with millions of views. But in the early 2000s, he was swept up in the dotcom boom. Here, he shares the story of Quotecatcher.com, and what he learned from the whirlwind experience:
By the spring of 2008, we were generating close to $100K monthly in revenue from online lead generation.At that point, our vision to make a better widget was working well enough to get the attention of a large competitor in Silicon Valley who offered to buy us out. However, we were growing rapidly, and thought we could hold out long enough for a sale that would let us retire, so we turned them down.That’s when we learned a painful lesson: When a big competitor offers to buy you, and you say no, it makes them very unhappy. Vengeful, even.
👉 Read this brilliant story here: What I Learned From Building and Selling a Dotcom Business Then Watching It Die
Till next time,
Dave Schools, Stephen Moore & Amardeep Parmar.
Weekly 🔥 35: Startup strategy 101 was originally published in Entrepreneur’s Handbook on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.