8-Week Startup Manual for Solo-Founders

Being a solopreneur is often a lonely experience. You feel like you are ready to conquer the world but no one around believes in what you have to offer.

All right, all right... If you are lucky, there may be a few people supporting you but this is often not the case.

You may have a full-time job that helps you pay the bills or you may have recently left your paycheck to pursue your dreams.

Either way, ambiguity, fear, and anxiety are the kind of feelings waiting for you around the corner.

I've been there, I've done that! Believe me, it was blood, sweat, and tears to get to that EXIT point where I sold my startup.

I was lucky to have a co-founder but we all know that finding a business partner is usually tough.

I've had it all, I learned from my mistakes and now I want to help other founders have a smoother journey than mine.

------------Here comes your 8-Week StartUp Manual------------

Let me quickly describe the kind of activities you need to do in the first 8 weeks of your startup journey:

Note 1: IDEA is what you have as a startup idea.
Note 2: No, you will not write any code in the first 8 weeks!!!

Week 1) Perform an extensive online search to learn about your IDEA space.

a)Make a record of the competitive businesses in the same area. Add new names/links to that competition list even after the initial research is over to make it a living document.

b)Think about competition as all the solutions that a potential customer is using now to solve the problem in the context of your IDEA.

c) At the end of the first week, ask yourself a few questions and try to give honest answers

aa) Is my IDEA legit?
bb) Are there any other solutions that already made their way into the market?
cc) Is there a real customer problem that I can solve with my IDEA?

If your answers were positive and you still want to pursue that same IDEA, then spend your time discovering the problem and spotting your early adopter customers.

Week 2) Write down your problem hypothesis statement
https://www.7-fit-framework.com/problem-hypothesis-statement

Week 3) Start looking for your early adopter customers
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/early-adopter.asp

Week 4) Write down your problem discovery interview questions
https://allfactors.com/blog/customer-discovery-interview-questions/

Week 5-6-7) Interview 8 customers

Week 8) Analyze the results of your interviews using JTBD to define THE PROBLEM
https://jobs-to-be-done.com/jobs-to-be-done-a-framework-for-customer-needs-c883cbf61c90

I know this seems like an extensive practice but in fact, this 8-Week Manual is bound to save you months let alone years!

In these 8 weeks, your aim will be to find the "Customer-Problem Fit". We can also rephrase this as "finding a problem that a certain group of customers is willing to pay to have it solved".

If you cannot find a big enough problem and start coding, the chance of your IDEA reaching Product-Market Fit would be nearly zero.

Try these methods that worked for my startup and please let me know where you get stuck (believe me, you will !) and ping me if you need help.

May the force be with you :)