Category: Startups

So you have an idea but you have never run a startup?

Your lack in business experience should not dissuade you from introducing your product to the world. With the right startup venture studio, you can do wonders in transforming industries and impacting the lives of your target audience. Your goal may be to become a household name, or simply offer functionality that bridges a gap in a much larger project; in either case, getting the right assistance can make a world of difference in how the product comes out.

Management consulting for startups have started to become a go-to option for many startups and for good reason too. It does not matter if you dont have all the resources or you are simply unsure about where you should start, a venture studio or a startup consultant is the perfect place to make sure you and your startup is on track.

If you have a brilliant idea that you are sure can change landscapes; here are all the reasons you need an app development venture studio.

1. All You Need to Walk in with is an Idea

When you sign up with a venture studio you gain access to a myriad of resources. This does not mean a workspace and working phone line, but tools for research, a team for app development, a marketing wing, reliable administration, guidance, and mentorship.

If you are someone who has never run a business, they will teach you to fish. Venture studios host workshops on topics like financial forecasts, fundamentals of business, cash flow accounting, and legal considerations.

Trial and error is so last decade, post-2020, you want to nail the game from the get-go.

2. Expertise from Experience

App venture studios are kickstarting dozens if not hundreds of new apps every year. They know what to expect when you launch in the market. They know what apps fail, they know what you need as an app with limited funds, and they know not to panic but to be prepared for the inevitable ups and downs of the mobile app industry.

That is valuable insight that you need on your side. A partnership like that can help you make the right decision and learn about the world of startups without having to do trial and error with your ideas.

3. Low Cost for Sophisticated Services

What a team of top-notch developers would cost you working for you exclusively, an app incubation will save you the money and give you access to expensive development teams and equipment.

One of the challenges of a startup is to find the right talent and then be able to sway that talent to work for them even though the startup may not be able to afford them. What usually happens is that professionals get outbid or you have a very small pool to choose from.

A venture studio has that handled for you already. They have loyal employees who sign no disclosure agreements and have been working for the venture studio for a while.

4. Funding

While a venture studio may not offer you funding in exchange for some of the equity, it can help you find it.

A venture studio will guide you in what you need to show the potential of your startup. They will help you devise astartup business strategy, they will do the market research for you, and they will churn out the projected financials for your business so that you have numbers backing your claim. And beyond that, is likely to have a list of renowned venture capitals and independent investors to whom you can pitch.

5. Exposure to Industry Leaders

A venture studio also has access to influential people in the industry or they have access to people who know them. There are many mentorship programs that a business consultant for startup can offer as well.

Networking can create opportunities for the startup entrepreneur in the form of sponsorships or any other insight regarding the industry and its forecasted trends.

6. Taking Care of Tough Situations for You

As a startup entrepreneur you will find soon enough the challenges of the routine running of a new business. These can be both internal and from external sources. It becomes very easy for these situations to become exhausting and overwhelming, especially if you are someone who believes they should not exist in a smooth running business. Well, the truth is these situations are inevitable and someone has to resolve them.

Having an experienced consultant from the venture studio helping you manage everything is a big help. They know exactly what the right course of action is and even read people. They know the consequences of a situation escalating and whether it is even a real thing to be stressed over or given attention.

7. Managing Expectations

All startup founders are brimming with energy and impatience. This can be motivating and a perhaps the only kind of vibe you should bring to the table as an entrepreneur, but it can also lead you down a path of disappointment and frustration, and not neccessarily becuase your business is doing poorly.

If this is your first time leading a business it is easy to set deadlines and projected milestones early on than realistically possible. Even if you have the best team in the world, you still have to factor a lot of things before you define actions as quick results or efficient processes. Most entrepreneurs often fail to gauge how soon the market will respond to their product or updates to an existing product.

A startup consultant can help you paint a realistic picture of what might most likely pan out. You need them to know that you are on the right track with perfect pace and not that you are slowly doing downhill.

8. Resource Allocation

It is likely that as you embark on your journey you will not lock the investment that you ideally wish for. In this situation, you will find yourself trying to make do with the funding that you were successfull in securing. What you need now is to strategise how to use this wisely.

In the modern world of competitive businesses you cannot afford to run a few businesses and fail at them to learn anything. You need to get this right in the first go. The experience of a venture studio that has allocated resources of many other startups with perhaps even lesser funding than you is exactly what you need.

They can help you let go of things that you can do without that you might have not noticed, and help you get affordable and quality resources on board that can really help your business grow without breaking the bank.

9. Sharing their Unbiased Opinion and Feedback

A business consultant with a stake in your startup will not hesitate to get real with you. As the leader of the business, you may find that most people you interact with who are employed by you will have a tendency to sugarcoat what they think of aspects of the startup.

The venture studio can not only critique your business model but also give you suggestions on how to improve them. When you are in a position where it is difficult to judge whose advice to listen to you do not have to mull it over if it is your app startup, business consultant.

10. Business Focus and Discipline

As a first-time entrepreneur it is very easy to get caught up in the pressure of things, and often to lose sight of the path that leads you to your vision. A venture studio offers you a tried and tested structure.

The first thing a good startup venture studio will offer you is a business plan which is the heart of a successful app startup.

With this in place, you will have fewer things to distract you so that you can focus on your role and give it your hundred percent.

Not every startup has what it takes to grow at a steady pace. A startup consulting firm sees potential in ideas and entrepreneurs and meets their need for resources that would take them the distance in the mobile app industry.

As a small or medium-sized business, you should not be shy in seeking out a venture studio that really has your best interests at heart. Think about how you want to scale your startup and which venture studio has the expertise that directly aims towards your vision.

For most existing businesses adapting to the digital way of things seems to be an afterthought, an option that they can do without.

What they do not know is that this keeps them from staying relevant to their target audiences and their evolving demands, which are at risk of being fulfilled by a competitor brand, ready to dominate the market, as well as your customer base. And all the while, you will be wondering what they have that you don’t.

Before you get lost in the mist of buzzwords it is important to understand what digital transformation is and how it can be applied to your business.

Depending on what industry you operate in, digital transformation can mean different things. Primarily, digital transformation means the collaboration of different digital technologies with the way your business works internally with your workforce, markets to your customers, and presents the core of what you are offering. For example, you could own a cleaning agency, or you could create a platform where cleaning professionals match up with clients in the closest proximity.

By integrating digital tech in your strategy you can stay on top of the game and offer your customers a better experience every time they do business with you. You could have an idea or could have already established a business, taking it to the digital frontier is only going to make it more efficient, and profitable.

But is that all digital transformation is worth? Check out some of the top business benefits of digital transformation that you too can take advantage of.

Enhancing Customer Experience

The fast-paced world is obsessed with finding ways that can make their tasks easier and more convenient. People recognize steps that they could do without, or one that only take up time that they could have spent elsewhere.

Everyone is looking for valuable solutions to all of their challenges. This becomes the very core of your digital strategy. By using modern technology you can provide these conveniences. Some of the popular examples include faster delivery, shorter customer journeys, digital customer journeys where your customer mostly dwells, and targeted remarketing.

By making the customer experience more memorable and appealing, you are earning loyalty and trust from your target audiences, which is a long term competitive edge in itself.

Information Based on Analytics

Do you ever wonder why you keep seeing the product that you might have in the past almost put in the checkout cart on ecommerce website? Or why is it that the internet cann read your brain and before you even realise you need something it pops an ad at you for the very same thing?

No tiny internet people are not spying on you. In fact, you have certain patterns that softwares catch up to, like what time of the day you log on to Facebook most often and what are your primary interests.

Part of software business plans is to invest in digital marketing efforts. Unlike conventional marketing where you cast out a giant net everywhere, you get to spend your money targeting only the people relevant to your product or service. These are profiles that may be actively looking to buy a product like the one you deal in or fit the demographics whose attention you are trying to gauge.

Because digital marketing fosters such targeted metrics for you to work with every campaign it provides you with analytics that can help you make your next campaign even more accurate.

With such valuable insights marketers are better able to ensure their strategy yields a higher return on investment.

It Encourages Agility and Innovation

Startups are disrupting industries more and more each day. What is it that these businesses have that rooted businesses could never accomplish.

While managers may constantly chase innovation, it is hard to do so if you are barring your company from entering the digital age. In the digital landscape there is always change and so much to keep up with even for someone who is well versed. This is because there is always a better way to do things, an easier way to do things, and tech that can enable it.

Agility is when businesses are able to improve and develop their digital processes as trends come up or there is a demand for a new feature or action. This ability to innovate or adapt is highly rewarding in a modern marketplace.

If you are looking to compete in terms of quality, this is definitely the way to go. You are able to offer better services and can set a higher price for it as well. Internally you will find that a digital environment makes a work day more efficient where tasks are completed faster and you can optimize the use of your resources.

Creates an Adaptable Workplace

If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that digital workplaces were able to adapt much faster in order to keep operating under a global quarantine.

A digital workplace allows you to tackle inevitable obstacles without any hindrances to your operations. People tend to embrace change and are unphased by challenges that may overwhelm those who are used to conventional workplaces.

For a lot of people just the idea of changing the status quo is daunting and that can be true across all departments and range of professional experiences. By enforcing a digital transformation, departments find it easier to collaborate, and therefore begin communicating more than they used to.

The objective to learn unifies the entire organisation. Social barriers are lowered and with this increased communication comes room for innovation, agility, and growth.

Improves your Product

These days potential customers do not convert just by judging the quality standard of your product or service. They want to know whether they can order it from the comfort of their home? how soon a product can be delivered to their doorstep? is there an app they can use which will get the job done in a coupple of clicks and swipes?

With the digitization of your product it is easier to achive all these things while keeping yuor cost to a mnimum. It is also a tried and tested way to thwart the competition as a new startup on the block.

Helps Make Your Case

When you are creating a startup business plan having a digital front on your side can really help you get investors. VCs for example do not just look at the business but how adaptable the leadership is to the evolving needs of time.

You can list down all the things that you hope to gain from creating a software based business or consolidating your idea in an app or website and back that up with the data that you can get from digital analytics.

Updates your Skillset

When it comes to scaling your business it is expected that you match the advancement in your specialized skillset as well. Industry leaders that the future of digital businesses will soon be dependent on a particular set of skills. These include AI, AR, cloud computing, growth hacking, analytics, and machine learning.

Without digital experience or talent and combined with a reluctance to change, companies keep their workforce from acquiring this skillset. This ultimately translates to them not being able to meet the needs of their customers or to optimize their operations in order to compete with the industry.

The biggest hindrance for businesses not accepting digital transformation is that they view it as an unnecessary expense, when they should be looking at it as an investment. By inmproving how you engage with customers, gauging important analytics, and increasing the skillset of your employees you are able discover new sales channels for your business and even untapped opportunities with massive potential.

Unlike the dinosaur who could do very little to survive before it went extinct, there is so much that businesses can do, none of which too complex, that will help them thrive in their respective industries. It is important that digital transformation is celebrated and encouraged starting from leadership so that it is always an essential element of the way things are run in your company.

At ConvrtX we pride ourselves in the expertise to transform landscapes. We are not another software consultant but a 360 degrees venture studio that can help you make bring your idea into a digital-savvy reality.

Whether you want an app business plan or complete corporate digital transformation, we will ensure that you get the gold standard.

Your biggest strength when building a startup is working on a business plan. Software business plans can be 20 to 30 pages long. It can also be 10 pages long, as long as it everything you need to make sure your business not only survives but thrives once it launches in the market.

Without a business strategy, you may have a brilliant idea for an app or a business, but it may be short-lived. 17% of startups fail during the early stages because they do not have a viable business plan.

You may have done your homework on the market, on your audience etc. But it is equally important that you structure it into a strategy that applies to your goals.

Check out some of the vital elements of a great business plan that notable startup venture studios always incorporate for startup investment opportunities.

An Executive Summary

An executive summary is crucial when you are pitching your business to investors or simply want the marketing department to understand what your startup is all about. Like we said before the reader commits to the dozens of pages ahead, they should have something to intrigue them to it. Venture capitalists are often busy and have a roster of candidates for startup companies to invest in who they have to hear out next. Your executive summary is the first impression that will persuade them the plan is definitely worth perusing.

The executive summary should talk about your business concept which is what market you plan to cater to, what your product or service is exactly, and what your unique selling point is.

Then you should take a couple of lines to mention impressive financial points of your startup for example, how many units you have sold in the short span of time you have introduced the product. This must be followed by how much capital you require to grow your startup and what equity you are willing to give in exchange for it.

You should also list a short description of your business’s current standing. You must detail the legal structure of ownership and operation of startup, when it started, and who the principal owners are. You can also list the key professionals that make up your business hierarchy.

Business Description

A business description should give context regarding the industry you are trying to penetrate. When you are describing the industry make sure you discuss the present outlook as well as possibilities of future growth.

Explain the market and talk about how trends and changes in this market will affect your business. Make sure everything you say is backed by reliable research. A neat way to do this is to add footnotes with sources. This is very important when you are seeking funding because an investor wants to know your plan is based on credible data.

Move on to the structure of your startup. Is it a partnership, proprietorship, or a corporation.

Market Share

Making sure that you have listed the correct market share is very important. The most painstaking part of putting together is compiling enough market research. The objective is to become familiar with as many factors in your market that you are able to make decisions that you can profit from.

This knowledge also helps you be able to foresee the future of the industry and anticipate patterns.

When conducting market research you should begin with the size of the market, sales potential, and growth prospects. All of the aggregate sales of your competition will give you a close to an accurate estimate of the total potential of the market. You will also be able to assess market segmentation in terms of the attributes of your ideal customer, and geographic location.

After you have researched the target audience, the next step is to outline the feasible market. This comprises of all people who can be converted if the conditions of the market are ideal with very little competition.

Your Business Positioning

Before you can arrive at an answer for this, you must first ask yourself a few questions: What customer needs are you looking to fulfill? What is the positioning of your competitor brand? And what unique features does your product have that nobody else in the market possesses?

When you have arrived at the answer for these strategic questions you can devise a positioning statement that should have its own place in your business plan. This is everything that you want your product to be seen as by your competitors and your customers.

Competitor Landscape

A startup consultant will advise you to find out exactly what the competition is doing. The point of this is to make a list of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. You have to see what your competition did in the existing market that worked well for them, and what they did that they failed and how you can do it better. Instead of doing the trial and error process yourself, you get insightful data from a similar business’s experience, as well as further insight on how your target audiences tend to react.

Often times doing a competitor analysis can help you identify an untapped opportunity that you can take advantage of. It is also possible that you are able to identify a kink in their strategy that you can play against by offering the market something better.

When compiling this analysis the first thing you have to do is identify who makes up your direct competition and who does not. It is extremely rare that you would not have a single direct competitor for your business.

Development and Design

People who want to invest in startup want to have a full view of the product and all of its design work. This gives context of how you want to develop your product and how you want to market it as well. You must give information regarding its production budget that is in line with the goals of your business.

All of these elements will be examined from the point of view of funding where your startup will be generating a continuous income. You can set feasible timelines using this.

The People

Investors may like your idea, and they may like your business plan so far, but in order to truly believe in your startup, they have to know that the people running the business can be depended on.

Notable personnel in your organization with impressive backgrounds should be highlighted, even if just in the chain of command. You should also give a short description of yourself and your professional experience and why you can take your startups to new heights.

But at the same time, you have to be realistic. Not every startup will have access to the best of the best. You can even mention that with the new funding you plan to hire people in certain key areas.

Investors will also take a look at the positions that you have highlighted. The way your organizational chart is built should depend entirely on how you plan on running the startup and what goals you want to meet in the near future, as opposed to a traditional template-like hierarchy.

If you already have all the personnel you would want in your dream startup team, you have to now start integrating them into the development process by assigning tasks and filling out a job description that gives the investors more context.

Financial Statements

Financial data will forever be the heart of your business plan. As a startup, you may not have a lot of financials to report. Therefore a smart thing to do here is to get financial projections for at least the next 3 years to come.

Investors will be particularly interested in how much of a profit your product will make and when it will finally break even. They also want to know all the cost of running your business and when your startup may potentially need fresh injection of capital.

The three most crucial statements you should absolutely add in your business plan is a profit and loss statement aka income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement.

All three of these statements are connected even though they detail different areas of a startup’s financial health.

And there you have it. The complete checklist of what should make it to your business strategy in order to impress investors. Remember your investors are probably going to be people with experience in running a business, so when they see potential they will be interested. Plus these are not people who want to get lost in filler conversation. Cut to the chase and pitch your story and then back up everything you have done for your startup with numbers. Make a list of possible questions that VCs may throw at you in a board meeting and practice how you will be addressing them.