Building a start-up from scratch Pt 1 : Identifying the problem

I am not sure if anyone has done this before or will do anything as crazy as this 🤔 . I am going to write about my start-up while I build it from scratch 😬. I will be writing about everything including the business model.

This is part one of the series where I write about identifying the problem. Make sure you follow Hackernoon and me (Febin John James), so that you won’t miss anything.

Enough said! A start-up must solve a problem. There are several ways of identifying the problem. Most people might vote for user research. I would prefer to identify it by active observation. I may be wrong, but I would like to give it a try.

Identifying problems through active observation 👁

It’s about drawing conclusions on problems based on real life experiences. Either facing the problem yourself or empathising with people who face it.

I have worked with several start-ups in the last four years. These are my observation of early stage entrepreneurs.

1. ) Everyone has ideas.
2. ) Funding is difficult with ideas unless you have credibility.
3. ) Most people raise funds from family , friends or they put in their life savings.
4. ) The process of hiring itself is time consuming. If they are non-tech entrepreneurs, this process is extremely difficult.
5. ) Even MVPs(Minimum Viable Product**)** need time and money to be build. Mobile development is expensive.
6. ) Due to the above problems, some drop their idea.
7. ) A few people make it to their first few MVPs. They quit due to lack of funding.

There are several problems here. However, I would like to focus on this one.

MVPs are time consuming and expensive.

Here the MVP(Minimum Viable Product) I refer to is a tool an user can get value from. Not a fake design.

I am a programmer. I spend enough time to research on tools to develop things fast and cheap. I know tools that can make a module in two to three days where others almost spend a month.

My solution need to generate MVPs with few clicks. Most Important, It should be friendly to non techies and the cost should be less than $100. My one liner pitch would be.

Build your first minimum viable product under $100 in 30 mins.

Think Big, Act Small 🚶

I can’t start developing a solution which can work for all MVPs. I have to start with a niche segment. I choose services business. I might have to narrow it down.

An example might help you understand better. Imagine you want to start-up an assisted online shopping or style consultation.

This solution will generate the app and a web portal for you. The app is for your customers. The web portal can be used by your employees to respond to customer requests or help them shop.

Now, how the heck will this be achieved will be uncovered in the later series. The competitors I am aware of are tools that allow you to build things without programming or few companies who manually build mvps at a reasonable cost. Chatbot builders are also a competition.

Nope, I haven’t decided on the name, logo , blah blah. No funding. For now my focus is on the problem.

See you next week 👋🏻

You can expect the next part of the series a week from now. You can also join the mailing list here. I will use this to notify you about more stories, beta invite, etc. Here is my email [email protected] for private messages. [UPDATE] Here is part two of the series Building a start-up from scratch Pt 2: Designing the solution.

If you are interested in making apps on the cloud, do checkout my book Cloud Is a Piece of Cake on Amazon.