Technological startup: what to do if money is no longer a problem?

So, if you followed the checklist for the first investment or completed the required steps on a whim, then at some point the issue of attracting investment will no longer be the most pressing. At least for a while. We assume that you have successfully attracted your first investment and look something like the Jimmy Wales in this photo.

What to do next and what not to forget to pay attention.
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Check-list for the first six months after receiving the investment

1. Establish a hiring process

Hiring is your key concern right now. It always takes longer than originally planned. Therefore, it is worth starting the preparation in the process of closing the deal. Connect a marketer to this task, as hiring is first and foremost communication. Make a blog post, add to Huntim (well, Habr has an excellent program for startups ), Dou.ua, Djinni.co and Angel.co. In the job description is best to provide a link to an article about you on TechCrunch.

2. Adjust the development process

Choose the most effective approaches. It is necessary that your team was comfortable working. Select the appropriate tools for key activities: analysis, development, testing, implementation and correction of errors. It is not so important that you use - git or svn, ruby ​​or node, Trac or Jira - think over the processes and work according to the scheme that suits you best, periodically adjusting it. If you can not decide, then throw a coin;)

3. Revenue vs Userbase

For the next round, you need one of two things: financial autonomy, or a huge and growing user base. Priority depends on the complexity of the product and the stage of its development. Without product-market fit (PMF), neither the one nor the other will happen. Read how to detect PMF here .

4. Put in order the metrics and analytics

It is very useful to look at the event flow in Google Analytics. Set events to see the order of user steps. You will see the steps at which end use of the product and will be able to adjust these places.

5. Provide feed flow

You already have quantitative indicators collected by Google Analytics. Now you need to add quality to them.
We noticed that small single-page questionnaires work well after the user has done something useful with the product. 30 answers will be more than enough to separate the signal from the noise.

6. Agree on a development priority with the team.

If you already have a publicly available product, the sequence looks like this: critical bugs → analytics → then everything else. Adding new features can be preceded by tests with fake functionality (this is when the button is there, but there is no such feature yet).

7. Minimum Salable Product

In the literature, there is the concept of MVP, at this stage it is useful to think about MSP, sometimes it is not the same thing. MSP is a set of functionality that you can sell to some part of your target audience. You will not be able to come back to this when you dig into product development. This is necessary if your product is large and there are still many hours of R & D ahead of the MVP.

8. Simplify product for early users.

Example. The first step of the user in our application was initially connecting Google Drive. This step could not be missed and it required additional efforts from the user who had not yet realized the usefulness of the service. We have added sample images that can be processed by the editor "without departing from the cash register." We also made the Drive connection step optional and recommended. Usage rates have increased.

9. Solve user leakage problem.

If in the process of using the product, users fall off, you may be happy with the strategy of splitting a complex product into its component parts.
This is what we did in the end. It is better to do 1-2 things well, than 5-10 bad. In addition to simplifying the user experience of early followers, you will get several times more reasons for publications and, accordingly, traffic. However, this is a subtle point. If you give something for free, then you will not be able to pick it up, you will have to convert it with some other features. Think it over immediately.

10. Have a blog and SMM as if you had no product.

This is a very useful exercise for an internet marketer. It is important to understand that people constantly need some interesting and useful materials, just think up a form of their presentation that will make you a useful source of information. Almost all of the SMM is built on content management.

11. Use every opportunity to get money.

The Global Technology Foundation ( GTF ) grant program, about which a serious discussion has flared up at DOU, perhaps the best such opportunity in Ukraine. An additional $ 30k and mentoring support from large funds is more than a solid reward for 2 days of extra work (one day to submit an application and one day to present).

12. Consider forming an advisory board.

You attracted the first money, it is a very good signal for someone experienced from the industry. For some questions, it is better to contact people external to the team. Here, by the way, organizations like GTF will also be useful. The main thing is not to be shy and ask for some useful contact.

And according to tradition, we will debunk several myths. This time about the GTF

GTF is not an organization to support “young and promising”, but an organization to identify and support teams with a chance for great success. And this is the only correct criterion in our venture world. In order for young and promising to become a team with a chance of success, most of the money is not needed.

GTF does not give money to start-ups of the pre-seed stage, it gives money to teams with a chance of great success. There is no particular difference between a start-up who announced the attraction of the first money and a start-up who did not announce this. At the time of filing the application to the fund, we did not yet have angel investments. In the process of evaluating our application, they appeared. I do not think that it is fair to shoot according to this criterion of the team. It should be understood that giving $ 30k and mentoring support, GTF "pays" for direct and intimate contact with the best teams in Ukraine. Not with teams that for some reason have not yet found an investment.