#How to get beachhead map how to#

DonвЂ™t let startup founders fall into this trap. ItвЂ™s here where the pain of narrowing down and the fear of focusing on the wrong segment starts to creep in. Can they spread the word to others like them?.Is the pain theyвЂ™re experiencing a real pain (or just a minor discomfort)?.Are there enough potential customers in that segment to render it viable?.Now comes an analysis of each identified market segment, based on a few key elements: Men & women over 25 years old who are interested in food + cryptocurrency users/cryptocurrency community 3. вЂ24вЂ“30-year-old male, who is online and makes over $75K per year and lives in an urban environmentвЂ™, on the other hand,В tells you something very specific about your customer.ДЇor example, this is too broad of a description for a target audience for an AI-based restaurant recommendation app that uses cryptocurrencies: вЂConsumersвЂ™ is not a relevant market segment. Selecting broad market segments will render them meaningless. Who can use this idea or technology? Map all your ideas, without restriction. Have your startup team brainstorm all potential customers. Start viewing the customer as the hub and the solution(s) rotating around them.

Did you start your company with the solution as the center of it and customers rotating around it? Invert that. It is a pain that affects the lives of a significant number of people, who would pay money to have it fixed.ДЄs a founder, what you want is not important. Start with the problem definition framework, where you guide founders to re-frame their idea into a real problem, rather than a solution.

#How to get beachhead map how to#

If you can squeeze the juice bag with your bare hands faster than the machine, why would you buy an expensive device to fulfil the task? How to create an end user profile? 1. A less fortunate example of this is Juicero, вЂAmericaвЂ™s favorite $400 juice machineвЂ™ that came to a tragic end in 2017 after raising more than $118 million in funding from prominent VCs like Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. If founders donвЂ™t take the time to fully understand who will be benefiting from their product or service, how their new idea will be used and what those people are like in day-to-day life, you run the risk of having them create something no one will buy (or invest in). In B2B the end user is usually the employee using the new tool, while the compliance officer will be the IT manager and the economic buyer the Finance Manager.Д®nsuring that entrepreneurs thoroughly research their end user is a step you never want to skip. The Decision-Making Unit can be quite complex depending on the market you address. Sometimes the same person will play the role of the economic buyer, but that is not always the case. As itвЂ™s been my experience, having someone who already went through this process (several times) and has helped other founders filter their ideas will make the process so much easier.ДЇounders who choose to map their startup building process on the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework developed by Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship start off by creating an end user profile.ДЄn end user is a person who will be using the product or service. This is where a mentor comes in really handy. Narrowing down their own ideas is not something most people can do. These вЂњcustomer gogglesвЂќ make founders see potential customers everywhere they look. When you ask them вЂњWho will buy this product?вЂќ youвЂ™ll also get a multitude of ideas, usually starting with вЂњmillennialsвЂќ or вЂњwomen aged 25вЂ“35вЂќ. Founders have all these ideas about what their product should do and what it should look like, that they lose focus on what theyвЂ™re trying to accomplish with it. WeвЂ™ve talked about this in the context of defining the right problem to solve. The currency of modern-day entrepreneurship is ideas. From identifying the right problem to solve, to figuring out what your beachhead market is and who your paying customer is, itвЂ™s always a struggle to let go. Most of us learn this through failure, after chasing too many possibilities at once. One of the hardest lessons you learn as an entrepreneur is to narrow down your options and find focus.