5 Step Bootstrapping Framework to Protect Your Time
Founders are itching to build. Many build a team or product before they even know what they are attempting to do. Many think raising capital is the first step.
If you are an early stage founder.. take a pause. You have something far more precious than code to be worried about: your time.
There is a journey you have to go on, by yourself, before you dive into the deep end.
TLDR:
→ Stop focusing on the ideal solution. Early founders should focus on one primary objective: “is this a problem worth solving?”
→ A problem worth solving can be defined as: A large market size will pay high margins to solve a clear pain point that’s currently stack-ranked
→ You can start validating customer market size, willingness to pay, and the stack-rank of your problem without building any product.
→ Focusing on strong product instructions will increase optionality of how to build a cost-effective MVP. Implement with stuff you buy, not headcount.
→ Constantly eliminate recurring burn to control your time. Calmly answer the main question: is this worth it? Then commit, fundraise, and buckle up.
The Primary Objective: Vetting a Problem
As a Founder, your first objective is not figuring out how to solve a problem, but to identify if the problem is worth solving.
What makes a problem worth solving:
“A large market size will pay high margins to solve a clear pain point that’s currently stack-ranked”
Your time is on the line if you skip this objective.
There is no magic eight ball to identify if an idea is worth pursuing. Unfortunately, founders have to roll up one’s sleeves to figure this out. This marks the difference between a founder and the early employees.
Common reasons Founders jump to building a team:
- “John Doe is super excited to join our company”
- It’s exciting to work with rockstars. But ask yourself, are they excited about the solution or the unflattering customer problem you need to solve?
- “I need a team who can scale”
- Are you sure you are going to scale soon? Do you know what types of scalability problems you will have? If not you will likely hire the wrong people.
- “One 10x developer can ensure my customers will love the product”
- You are expecting one human to be good at product, design, user experience, and actual coding. These people exist. If you aren’t one, are you sure you can already attract one?
5 Step Bootstrapping Framework to Protect Your Time
This framework optimizes for the following:
- Accelerated validation of your hypothesis
- Keep burn low <- critical when you need to reclaim your time
- Maintains optionality to build a rockstar team at the right time
Step 1: Find Strong Product Assistance
Product, not engineering, is the challenge of the hour. WHY your solution will solve your customers pain point is more important than HOW your solution works.
Why Product instead of Business development? Well, validating the business is your only job.
A good product person can help you:
- Explore your vision, your use case, and your growth strategy
- Will probe the right questions about your customer’s pain points
- Will break it down your grand vision into a step-wise MVP
Thus, instead of searching for the right developer, search aggressively for the right product consultant/advisor.
Step 2: Build your Product Instruction Package
Product writes the instructions that coders use to code. The goal is to consolidate your unstructured thoughts into a clear plan of action for developers.
Misconception: Engineers can convert your thoughts into a reality you will like.
Reality: They cannot. The fastest website builders are “what you see is what you get”. The fastest product builders are “what you spec is what you get”.
A good product package eliminates back and forth due to communication gaps. It consists of:
1) A List of Requirements
- Focus on marketing level specs (what do you want to pitch to the customer). Every requirement should begin with “The user can…”
- Marketing spec: “The user can securely login without a password”
- Engineering spec: “The software shall implement an email magic link to be sent to the authorized email address for app authentication”
2) Wireframes of the Product vision
- Don’t worry about beauty, just focus on flow. How do you see the experience working. What options are needed, what rough pages are needed. (Balsamiq is a great tool for this)
3) List of integrations & partnerships required
- Software gets tricky at the edges where your software touches the real world. These serve as boundary conditions to define what level of scalability is sufficient.
- What external data sources do you need to read from?
- What APIs will you need to deliver data to?
- Are there vendors that you cannot avoid?
Step 3: Iterate the Vision with Customers
Is it time to build yet? Nope. Not yet.
This next part takes some time, but is a necessary “slow down to speed up” activity.
To validate the primary objective, you need to show a clear pitch to the customer and practice the sale. A picture is a million words, so I recommend involving a UI/UX designer at this stage. Share your product package and watch the teardrops form in their eyes as they pick your brain about brand, colors, and “vibes”.
Misconception: designers want freedom.
Reality: No, designers want to be creative within strong directional constraints. Too often they are asked to “start over” because the design “doesn’t feel right”.
Now, it’s time to validate your solution. Talk to customers for feedback, and loop it back through your product and design consultant. Iterate your product package. Learn which features are needed and which are nice to have.
At this point, you should be able to get users on your waitlist, secure LOI’s, pre-orders, or orders. If you aren’t, you need to iterate more before proceeding forward.
Step 4: Shop Till You Drop
At this stage, you may have an urge to race out there to hire a bunch of engineers to build your vision. After all, your vision looks crisp and your customers are pretty excited. Some may even be ready to buy.
But this can be a costly mistake. Payroll is distracting. It shifts focus to cash flow management instead of focusing on the main objective: “Is this company worth building?” There is a better path to an MVP.
Global remote work has created a tremendous number of phenomenal dev-shops, groups of friends who are now consultants, and contract engineers.
Misconception: part-time resources are not as good as full-time resources and will cost you in technical debt.
Reality: Most people have bad experiences w/ contractors and dev-shops because they have a weak product package. Dev-shops tend to be bad at product.
You will be their superhero when you walk in with a product package. Everyone hates the endless back and forth of a rough “idea”.
You should also be thrilled. You can talk to everyone under the sun to shop your product package across multiple dev-teams. Shop the price and timeline. Vet their competencies and communication skills. Run it like a fundraise to get the best terms and the best partner.
You could easily have a team ready to develop code within 30 days, versus hiring maybe 1 resource in that same time.
Step 5: Is This Worth Your Time?
Through this framework, in a few months, you will have delivered a true MVP of your solution to your customers that looks and works nearly identical to the vision. You will have iterated on the product with your customers before development. Your product will solve a specific validated goal.
During this whole time, you will have kept recurring payroll to nearly zero by avoiding a team, but instead used modern fractional services.
You, as a founder, can now focus all your efforts towards sales, customers, and revenue without time pressure. You can validate your market size and focus on fundraising without payroll rushing you towards a “default dead” situation.
⭐ With a calm mind and brutal honesty, you can ask yourself “Is this a problem worth solving?”. Once committed, you can fill this rocket ship with high octane fuel, a stellar crew, and prepare for takeoff.
After all, you know it is the best use of time in your life.