The First 100 Days of a Startup

From the big ‘A-ha’ moment to validating your idea and founding a startup overnight, some of the most pivotal achievements, as well as mistakes, can occur during the first 100 days of any new venture. It’s a time of trial and error but it’s also a time for your startup to leave its mark, because if it doesn’t - it probably never will. Although every startup is different in its own way, their journeys are not too dissimilar.

That journey usually begins with you coming up with your Big Idea that you believe is so unique you are ready to quit your full-time job and spend your life-savings on. But before you do any of that you need to identify who your customers are and how your product is going to help solve the problems they are facing.

How frequent is that problem? Is it high or low intensity? How is it currently being solved? Answering these three questions will help you sharpen your focus and clarify your idea before proceeding to the next stages of your startup journey.

A mistake often made by entrepreneurs is that they come up with a solution and try to find a problem that fits in. The issue with that is it won't show you whether your product is fit for market. That's why validating your idea is crucial for the future success of your startup.

By doing a design sprint and developing a minimum viable product (MVP) you will not only be able to see if there is indeed a market for your idea but also generate valuable user data to further refine your product before the Big Launch.

Originally developed at Google, a Design Sprint is a proven method of success for launching new products. It is a week-long process aimed at solving big problems and validating ideas rapidly. It helps you to align your team around the problem, design a prototype and test it with real customers so that you know what to build and what not to. Due to Covid, these design sprints and workshops are now done remotely and with the help of tools for collaborative work like Miro this process has been greatly facilitated. 

As I write these lines, I realise I've used 'validate' a lot throughout the article but this goes to show how important it is to 'validate' your idea and use the various design tools at your disposal to do so. It is the reason why I founded nuom and offer founders a purpose-built product team of design and tech experts to help them build better products, faster. My 3 step tried-and-tested approach is built upon 12 years of experience learning from successful (and some not so successful startups) and believe me when I tell you this - I have seen it all.

Running a startup is hard and the brutal truth is that 90% of them fail in the first year. Why? You've guessed it - because they haven't validated their idea. You want to have a successful startup? Ideate, Validate, Initiate.