How I built the legal tech document automation startup TripliQ It has than now. Create a free presentation with Google Slides, spin up a small server on AWS or create a cool infographic with Canva. With the many resources and tools out there, it can be to creating a startup quickly at the . never been easier to start a business overwhelming to find a straight path lowest cost possible As a startup founder, you have to wear many hats at the beginning of the journey. For me, that is actually one of the most compelling reasons to be a founder. I have a chance to . While everyone has a different profile, background and skills, I am , a new document automation startup, in less than a month. expand my knowledge in many areas excited to share my journey on how I built TripliQ Step 1: Ideation with the Business Model Canvas In business school, I hated writing business plans. Do not do it; as you are probably pivoting and changing your idea quite often anyways. Instead, use the framework to of your business. it is a waste of time Business Model Canvas quickly think about the most important aspects Step 2: Knowledge, Company Updates and Deals from YC Startup School Sign up for , the , with help from the world’s top startup accelerator. If you are completely new to the startup world, pick the best videos from the (they also have those as podcasts available) to expand your knowledge. Their videos are , giving you the best advice in the shortest amount of time. YC Start-Up School best place to learn how to start a company curriculum super practical and to the point The way they structured these company updates is . Every question serves a specific purpose: Log in every week to provide company updates. truly phenomenal Are you launched? Do not build the perfect product that no one wants. This question pushes you to to get feedback from customers. launch as quickly as possible To how many users did you talk and what did you learn from them? Not speaking to customers is the . This question forces you to . If you feel shy, sign up for a group session where you can share and perfect your pitch with other founders! , when it comes to user research is the . second biggest mistake talk to at least one person per week to get valuable feedback One of the best books I read Mom Test What are your top goals and biggest obstacles? When building your startup your time is super limited and . These questions help you to prioritize your goals. you can easily lose focus Once you , you have unlocked YC Start Up School . Just to give you an idea of how good these deals are here are my top 4 deals: completed 8 weekly company updates in a row deals that you will leverage in the subsequent steps in AWS credits $5k in Google Cloud Platform and Firebase Credits $3k Waived Stripe fees for your in processed payments first $5,000 of Segment credits + Segment Dealbook $30k Step 3: Buy a Domain for your business This seems like a very detailed and trivial step but it’s important to do this right. If you are , try out , an AI-based company name generator. If cool AI applications are something you find appealing, feel free to also about . struggling with a cool company logo or name Namelix check out my other blogpost 5 Awesome Interactive AI Apps for you to try Next, you will probably buy a domain before checking if social profile names are still available. The easiest way to not make this regretful mistake is using , where you can namevine check the availability of domains and social profiles at the same time. Step 4: Start with a free domain email to get Google Workspaces This is one of the hardest steps, where I could find nowhere a working solution. Most of the time when you buy a domain . They try to upsell you to expensive yearly subscription plans. Instead, create with . you will not get a free domain email account with it free email aliases for your domain name Improvmx With your new domain email address, go to your YC Startup School Profile and update it to your new domain email address. Now you can with your “official company address”. Remember you need to have at least 8 consecutive company updates for this. In the “application” Google Form take note of the email address and instruction on how to also apply for other credits like Google Workspaces. Immediately, after being accepted into the startup program, send a nice email requesting (12 months for free). A few days later you will receive another voucher code and now have Google Workspaces (up to 9 licenses) for your team. finally apply for the Google Cloud Startup Deal further credits for Google Workspaces Starter Plan This is a first big milestone as you can now use all these email addresses to sign up for the other deals and also create domain branded emails for your other team members. Secondly, I simply love Google Workspaces. with your co-founders or inviting clients in times of COVID-19. At the same time with GDrive, GDocs and GSlides. and jump on to the Google Workspace wagon. Google Hangouts are perfect for scheduling alignment meetings collaborating and storing files has never been easier Do not lose time with the Power Point version bingo Step 5: Knowledge & Project Management in Notion Notion is one of my favorite tools that I discovered quite late in 2020. While I only mention it in Step 5, it actually might make sense to set up Notion earlier. If you don’t know Notion, it is the that combines Jira, Confluence, Word/GSheets, GSlides/Power Point and even to some extent CRMs and databases. ultimate productivity tool While the learning curve can be a bit daunting, you can build great relational databases, organize and document your knowledge in a perfect structure. I might write another blog post about how we set it up, but here’s a screenshot of our to get some inspiration. Notion at TripliQ Step 6: Landing Page Creating a decent landing page was another big research effort, where I spent quite some time reviewing websites, YouTube videos and Product Hunt to find the best solution. While I think that Instapages, Unbounce etc., could be first great options, I do . Similarly, with a bit more effort, you can set up WordPress quite cheaply on Amazon Lightsail, but then again getting a proper looking theme, brings you back to the same annoying expensive themes that try to upsell you all the time. not like the vendor lock-in and all the upselling strategies After some looking around, I found on Product Hunt , . While everyone has different needs and aspirations here are my main reasons why I chose it: Shuffle.dev the Visual Website Builder as a Service With a monthly price of $15 dollars, it was a very affordable solution with no permanent vendor lock-in Even better they still allow you to within the month of purchase upgrade to a lifetime license Even with no design skills the components allow you to decent-looking , that you can then connect to your backend (Node.JS, Flask, Django, etc.) quickly build a website You still have and can create good looking websites with popular frameworks, such as . a lot of flexibility Bootstrap, Bulma or Tailwind Step 7: Creative Tools to Make Your Website Shine Having a framework can get you only so far. Therefore, I will quickly introduce my four favorite “creative” tools that make your website even prettier. UnDraw.co On UnDraw you can find . With a search box, you can find the right image easily and a allows you to adjust the illustration to your brand design. open-source illustrations for any idea you can imagine and create color picker Canva Canva is a kind of . I used it mostly to adjust photos quickly, make nice cover photos for posts like these or get inspired. Another secret, if you are a student, sign up for the where you’ll get 12-month easy Photoshop to quickly create designs Github Student Developer Pack a free subscription of Canva’s Pro tier. Dimmy.club Finally, from simple screenshots, to showcase products on your website. generate free and high-quality device mockups Profile Pic Maker Nothing more than a . Use this free service to make awesome profile pictures with your brand colors. coherent and professional team picture rounds off your website Step 8: Spin up Servers on AWS With , you have not the opportunity to now easily deploy your services with AWS. For TripliQ, I coded our landing page with the Python , using the famous . The template with the many options to choose from can be quite overwhelming. However, in the end, you can leverage a that is somewhat future proof and if you chose the docker option. Similarly, for our main document automation app, we leverage that also comes in an $5k in AWS credits Django Framework Cookiecutter Django Template very sophisticated project structure easily deployable docassemble easily deployable docker container. Finally, while being very confused in the beginning about all the traffic networking mechanics, I use Route53 to link my domain to mail services, servers and other services. Step 9: Building the Data Stack on GCP I am currently building out our data stack on GCP. While I am not sure at this point, whether it was a good decision to run servers on AWS and all data related things on GCP, I had credits for both and wanted to get also more familiar with both cloud platforms. The talk during the Project A Knowledge Conference was definitely quite helpful and impacted some of these decisions in this and the subsequent step. Furthermore, I believe that as a data warehouse got a lot of appraisal and having worked with redshift and other tools on AWS during my Udacity Data Engineering nanodegree had just been awful and confusing. Since we also use , there are two more good reasons to onboard GCP as data flows easily. Modern data stacks BigQuery Google Analytics for event tracking and Google Workspaces as office suites Step 10: Data as the centerpiece of our Company DNA Finally, I want to continue and go a bit deeper into the data stack and my plans on further building the data stack in the upcoming weeks. I mainly put so much effort and thought into this since I am not only very passionate about this topic but I also realized that the legal industry is leveraging almost no data. During my interviews with legal industry experts, . I am not talking about AI, but actually about basic dashboards to drive strategy or making informed decisions. Working as a Business Intelligence Analyst at N26, I saw first hand . almost none was using data to their advantage how data helps to make the right decisions with more certainty every single day Following the lean startup cycle, you keep on building a product, measure and learn from data to further iterate on the product. Again data becomes a . Similarly both for B2B and B2C scraping data or automating some of your marketing activities, is something few of our competitors are doing of or thinking about at this point in time. key piece to understanding whether you are on the right path Most often . You will soon regret all the missed data and might also lack motivation if you cannot understand whether you are coming closer to solving an actual problem. startups postpone this important step and do not measure properly their continuous experiments Since this blog post is already getting quite long and I still haven’t implemented the last details yet, let me quickly share my plans. We will use to and automation scripts, to build and and as a free Business Intelligence tool to . If you want to learn more about these tools check out my recent , where I automated my medium stats. Prefect orchestrate and manage all ETL pipelines DBT maintain data models Metabase draw insights blog post Conclusion There you have it, a simple and straightforward guide to quickly build a startup without needing any funding mostly based . I hope this 10 step guide gives you a jumpstart and shortcut to solve the many questions and problems you might face as well. While I know that this is quite opinionated and might not work for every case, . Another area I have not fully explored yet but which I think is also quite promising are no-code tools, like . If you have any other amazing resources you feel I should add, . on open-source tools and free startup credits I hope that some bits and pieces are still applicable zapier please get in touch with me

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