Startup Guide

What is the Startup Guide?

1. Why another book talking about startup?
2. Who is this guy to talk about startup?
3. Startup Guide for Non-Startups
4. What you will find in the Startup Guide

Praise for the Startup Guide

Acknowledgements

1. Definitions and requirements

What is a startup?

1. After all, what is a startup?
2. When does a startup stop being a startup?
3. Can there be a startup within an established company?
4. Think of a startup as an experiment, not as a business

What is a software product?

1. Software product

Web, mobile or social product? Product for SmartWatches? SmartTVs? Bots?

1. Traveling to the past: web, mobile or social in 2012?
2. Mobile apps
3. Back to the future
4. Understand your user
5. Understand the context
6. Mobile is not “less” than desktop
7. Summing up

Every website and web system can and should be considered a software product.

1. Completing the Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Why having a startup?

1. Why would I create my startup?
2. Growth startup vs. lifestyle startup
3. What kind of doctor are you?
4. Dalai Lama’s Tweet
5. Ask yourself
6. Example of non-financial return

The 99.9%

1. I am part of the 99.9%
2. Keep practicing and do not forget your motivation

Who should create a software startup?

1. Multidisciplinary effort
2. Outsourcing options

Choosing what to outsource: a case study

1. Software development
2. User experience
3. Product marketing
4. System administration
5. Software product theme
6. Outsourcing cost

How much time to devote? Who should I invite?

1. How much time to devote to the startup?
2. Should I invite someone to be my partner?
3. Summarising
4. Ideas and Problems

Of course the customer knows what he wants!

1. Problem: People took too long to move around
2. Problem: parents want to go to the restaurant with their young children and want to have a quiet lunch
3. Problem: people want to re-educate nutritionally so they can have a more balanced diet, lose weight and feel better.

What is the problem?

1. Many times people do not know what the problem is
2. And sometimes people do not know they have a problem
3. Whose problems should I solve?
4. What a cool technology!

How to choose an idea to turn into a web product

1. Can you describe your idea on a single web page?
2. One additional example
3. What is the minimum conversion rate?

Problem or need?

1. Is it a problem or a need?
2. Maslow’s Pyramid
3. Hands-on: Making the digital product

Why the hurry to make the product fast?

1. Why the hurry to make the product fast?
2. Summing up

How to make your product fast?

1. The importance of knowing the customer and his problem
2. Caelum Online Courses
3. ContaCal
4. Good software engineering practices
5. Summing up: make the product fast = know what to do + good professionals + good software engineering practices

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late

How long did it take to create ContaCal?

1. Result
2. Hands-on: Managing your digital product

My software product is ready, now what?

1. Checklist before “opening the doors”
2. Okay, I am ready!
3. ContaCal launch data

Getting Feedback

1. Handling user e-mails
2. Why before the how
3. Example of rush to act due to feedback

Be careful when launching a minimal product

1. Be prepared to keep moving fast as you launch your minimal product.
2. Fake feature - a way to be lean

How to attract visitors to my website?

1. Paid ways of attracting visitors
2. Free ways of attracting visitors
3. Some examples of how to attract visitors to your website

Basic (and not so basic) SEO tips

1. Content posting frequency
2. Basic SEO tips
3. Not so basic SEO tips

How to make money with your software product?

1. Software product = software used over the internet
2. Product revenue types
3. Payment types for product usage

Searching for revenue: case studies

1. Making it clear why the product is free

Gathering user feedback

Survey results

1. Revenue from ads
2. Revenue paid by users
3. Price adjustment
4. Be patient
5. byMK / fashion.me, another case study of search for revenue

Go sell it!

1. Go sell it!
2. How?

How to set the right price?

1. Demand curve
2. Different prices for different customers
3. Perceived value
4. And the competitors?
5. What about the cost?

To offer or not to offer free plans, that is the question!

1. Do I need to have a free version of my product?
2. Next, you need to know…
3. Summing up

Widening the funnel

1. Number of people who know that your product exists
2. Number of clicks generated by your ads or by other means
3. Number of unique visitors
4. Number of visitors who become users
5. Number of users who become customers
6. Number of users and customers who are no longer users or customers
7. Widening the funnel

Watch your user!

Experiment and measure

1. A/B test
2. Practical A/B test example
3. Appearances can be deceiving
4. Keep a change log
5. Beware of the local maximum

Track long-term numbers

1. Global numbers: revenue and costs
2. Individual numbers: CAC, LT and LTV

Engagement and Churn

1. Engagement
2. Churn
3. Churn is a growth limiter
4. Churn and the lifetime of users
5. Revenue churn
6. How is it possible to have negative churn?
7. Concluding

Change of course (pivot)

1. Change of course, a practical case
2. The theory behind practice

How long does it take to start having results?

1. What happened?
2. How long to wait?
3. First month positive!

Five years later, how is ContaCal doing?

1. The evolution of ContaCal
2. Return on investment
3. So, did ContaCal work?
4. Why didn’t ContaCal scale?
5. Example of a startup that scaled
6. Concluding
7. Startup Guide for non-startups

Company that has a non-web software

1. New software marketing model
2. How to transition from non-web to web software?

Company that develops custom software

1. Creating a new product
2. Use in customer projects

Companies that do not have software development as their main activity

1. How to make it?
2. Outsourceable
3. Most indicated to make in-house
4. Example of a company that does not have software development as its main activity
5. Interviews

Cobre Grátis

1. Update

Caelum online courses

1. Update

byMK / fashion.me

1. Update

Sieve

1. Update

Locaweb’s web products

1. Update

​​Aurum’s Astrea

1. Update

Eventials

ContaAzul

1. Final considerations

To learn more

Recap

1. Power of synthesis
2. Overview of the Startup Guide
3. Next steps

Bibliographic references