You just raised your seed round. What should be your main priority for the next 3 months?
Assuming you already have an MVP...
The general consensus is to focus on finding the PMF and start hiring.
What about all the other stuff though? Do you outsource?
Good question, was thinking about the same when I was talking to investors. Like they will throw a pile of cash at me and my quest is to spend it. Spend it fast but smart. Some of it will go to distribution, but not much before there is clear PMF. So most of it is going into the product. That means people.
But when I hire the first few employees I really want them to be the best. But I guess it takes time to hire great people. Like they are not just laying down on the street, they get inquiries like this every week.
So what do I do in the meantime of having the pile of cash and hiring the best first 5 employees I can.
Hiring contractors?
Is this the right thinking about the problem?
That's exactly what I was wondering. The awkward period between getting the pile of cash and completing your dream team.
I guess it depends a lot on your particular product, the state of your MVP and what kind of team you had to begin with (to even get the funding).
Here's a slightly different way to think of the "pile of cash" that you might find useful in your analysis: you just bought yourself certain amount of "runway", measured in months. Money = time. What will you do with that time?
Spending/hiring/etc shortens your runway.
Raising more money/getting profit lengthens it.
What combination of activities will increase your runway so that you can continue building? Quite often companies use seed round capital to do just enough to raise the next round - that's one way to run your company (and if you have certain kinds of investors in your round, you might feel the pressure to do just this, because they aren't a charity)
Others go for broke and try to build as much product before runway ends hoping to find revenue or more money based on a more full-featured product - also works sometimes.
Bottom line: don't forget to think strategically about time and money in the context of "building a product".
(this is not my original idea, this framework comes from one of the lead angel investors in my last company, fwiw).
Your priority should be whatever you told the investor you would do with their money - I have to believe there was a discussion on "how you will use the money" during the fundraising.
Show us your MVP! I think everyone here likes new products.
That makes a lot of sense, cheers.
There's no actual MVP, this is just for my research around positioning our value proposition towards startups.