Think of this as an actionable version of āLEAN Startupā meets āGoogle Product Sprintā meets āJobs To Be Doneā meets āProduct Led Growthā for the Bootstrapped founderās next side-project.
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Iāve combined this experimental approach with approaches Iāve synthesized from books, interviews, podcasts and articles on how to launch a new product or company. Iāve broken this down into 8 chapters of success that lead up to a launch. To pass each level, we get feedback on our idea, prototype or initial product that demonstrates out idea has value. It takes over 200 hours because building a company is hard. However this is structured so that ideas that arenāt going to work out are identified in the first weeks and not months.
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Life is too short to waste your time on nights and evenings for months without getting paid or learning as you build.
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Chapter 1: Audience Discovery
- Low competition keywords ā Discover using AHREFs or RankIQ
- āPeople in Motionā
- Regulatory, Economic or Societal Tailwinds
Find the audience, understand their problems, write to them and build and audience. Day 1 SEO basicsā¦
Chapter 2: Problem and Solution Research
Or how I convince my wife that reading Reddit is part of my job
- Time Frame: 1 week
- Result: A deep understanding what users want, do and say about the problems they are solving. We understand the language they use to describe their actions and how they select between existing products in the market.
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Useful Tools:
Chapter 3: Product Ideas, Landing Pages and Leads
Are people picking up what weāre putting down?
People are starting to find us and resonating with the messaging. We should be getting a lot of āhead nodsā as people read the websites and steady signups.
- Time Frame: 2 weeks
- Result: We have 2-3 landing pages being A/B tested with different product positioning and core features live on a domain. We have a started growing an Early Access Email List and have published some initial content published on 1 channel. We get user feedback and make landing page changes after each week until we get sufficient user engagement.
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Chapter 4: User Flows and Wireframes
Do people find their way? Itās ugly but can users quickly and easily do everything they expected, given the information on the landing page?
- Time Frame: 3 weeks
- Result: A Flow chart that implements all features from the top landing page. Each part of the wireframe is implemented in a wireframe were we test: Sitemap, Text, Layout and Interactive elements with users.
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Chapter 5: From Vaporware to MVP
Does the look and feel add to the engagement and satisfaction of the user?
- Time Frame: 4 weeks
- Result: We solidify the data models and how the users transition between all parts of the app. A lot of core calculations use the āWizard of Ozā approach and are faking the core analysis. We add color, fonts, animations and better user logging.
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Chapter 6: Real Data, Authentication and Payment flows
Are people paying when they hit various upgrade limits? Are they using all features and getting satisfaction from them?
- Time Frame: 6 weeks
- Result: Users should now be able to create accounts, log in and out, pay, and complete all of the features listed on the landing page. We are ready to soft launch.
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Chapter 7: Activation, Conversion and Retention
Do we have a self-sustaining business with sufficient margins?
- Time Frame: 6 weeks
- Result: Focus on converting new customers who walk into the door into being engaged, paying and returning users of your product. Is expansion revenue outpacing cancellations? Monitor and interview users.
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Chapter 8: Growth Model Analysis
Are we ācrossing the chasmā? Do we have accelerating growth as we start to get more āmainstream usersā.
- Time Frame: 6 weeks
- Result: A review of the highest growth levers for the business. Do we need more resources put to existing channels, develop new leads channels, do we need support staff, sales staff, developers, raise capital?
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