As promised, we made a brand new video tackling the subject of improving your idea before development. Here we cover all the necessary aspects for your startup like Value Propositions, Brainstorming Techniques and our awesome New Framework called ICI2I!
Do you have a great startup idea, but not sure if it's good enough to develop? Watch this video to improve your business idea by using our ICI2I framework,
And become more confident before launching your development!
Welcome! I'm Amaury Khelifi, founder & CEO at MyCTOFriend. Having worked with more than 150 startups as a CTO, today I'm going to share my process to improve a startup idea.
Plan to explain how to brainstorm from 3 perspectives:
- Value proposition
- Technology perspective
- Growth hacking
I will also explain to you what is my ICI2I technique to make you stand out from the competition.
Then I’ll share with you, how to prioritize your idea, so you can create a proper roadmap.
Before we get into it, here is the required tool:
- Post-its
If you don’t know me yet, you will figure out that after my computer, my best tool is a post-it.
Visual brainstorming is thousands time more effective than brainstorming on computer.
That’s also why I also have a webcam over my desk to do brainstorming remotely and record my post-its.
So be sure to have a large wall or a big empty desk to stick all your post-its before starting brainstorming.
Let’s get into it, with how to improve the value proposition.
Do you know how many types of value proposition it exists?
I mean how many different ways do you have to add value to your customers so you can charge them for it?
According to Josh Kaufman, there are 12 ways you can add value to your customers.
And it’s key to understand them as, nowadays, startups disrupt millions of markets. Technologies allow them to create new offers like:
Uber, Online banks and Airbnb etc.
There is one easy fact:
A startup always applies one of the following value proposition:
The first one is
- Selling a Product
- Offering services
- Shared resource ( asset usable by many )
- Subscription model
- Resale ( acquire an asset and sale it )
- Lease
- Agency, (Market an asset or service you don’t own)
- Audience aggregation. ( blogger, monetize affiliation )
- Loan ( lend a certain amount of money)
- Option - (Allowing people to secure an offer, early on. Could be to pre-booked an event, an apartment a car… The option is a payment to guarantee access to something. If the buyer changes his mind, the option payment is kept anyway by the seller.)
- Insurance - take the risk for something.
- Capital - ( Ownership of a business )
Once you understand what your options are, it’s time to brainstorm using my brand new technique that I call:
The I See eye 2 eye - framework
Which means that every time you’ll brainstorm on your ideas, to get more clarity, I will invite you to get ideas from:s
People that inspire you. ( in your market or not)
Competitor - people that are already serving your market. (could be with a different approach, same need, same problem )
Innovators ( Google, very successful company… ) why are they successful
Gather all your idea, and share them to influencers in your market.
That way you’ll be able to really create an innovative offer and stand out from your market.
Now let’s do it form the technology point of view. As I mentioned,
Technology is a catalyst to create a value proposition.
The most difficult part is to be aware of what’s possible as well as how easy it could be to integrate some technology by using existing solutions.
For example, I made a video before explaining how to create a mobile app in 5 minutes. Check it out, it’s in the comments section.
When it comes to creating a startup, being able to handle technology in the most effective manner is a real plus.
That’s also why many Startups with CTO are more likely to get fundings.
So, it does not really matter if you have a technical co-founder or not, the process to improve startup idea is to try and inject some technology in your solution and see if you could create something new out of it. Something that people could get some value from.
Again for that technology brainstorming, it’s good to use my framework: ICI2I
Being inspired by leaders or anyone that inspire you. Take Elon Musk as an example.
Competitor, how do they implement technology
Innovators, Corporations that already created new offers in your market by using a specific technology
You see, the “I see eye 2 eye” works in both case. I will also work on the third perspective to innovate by using growth hacking techniques.
If I would simplify or explain “growth hacking” I would say:
It’s using technology to acquire customers.
More specifically hacks, by using most of the social media or existing platforms.
Sometime a growth hacking technique could be as simple as writing the perfect message and sending it to a very narrow audience.
Or it could be a conquest, like (If relevant with your audience, people could win something and you could increase the chance to win every time you share your conquests on social media )
What we do at MyCTOfriend is that we send a video message from time to time for our clients or subscribers. People are amazed by those messages and they establish a real 1-on1 connection.
Again, these are just 3 simple examples, but you can apply the “I see eye 2 eye“ framework.
Analyzing what are the techniques people use that inspires you like competitors, innovators, and large Corporations that have effective customer acquisition strategies.
Once you’ve done that work from the 3 angles:
Value proposition,
Technology
Growth hacking point of view
It’s time to prioritize. Life is all about prioritization. Basically Prioritization is all about saying No
There are three areas to prioritize:
- Value provided
Cost
- How aligned it is with your vision. (Example, we could take commission by redirecting startup to agency and provider. If we don’t, then it’s not aligned with our vision)
To do this, prioritize all of your post-its, evaluate those criteria and give a score to your ideas.
And organize them according to 3-4 columns…
Like V0, V1, V2, V3
That’s the simplest way to prioritize features and brand new ideas after a real and effective brainstorming.
I hope this detailed process was helpful, if that’s the case, leave us a comment, like or a share.
Now, if you are serious about building a startup and want to become a better CEO & Tech manager.
Find us on IG and FB and visit myctofriend.co for more startup management tips.
