Starting a tech business means, understanding and dealing with several issues like finance, legal, sales, and marketing. Now as you have that interest to start a tech business it means you have taken the leap of faith to become a doer.
Decades of innovation have led many of us to take advantage of growing technology and integrate it into business processes. With the increasing demand for innovative solutions available in the market, entrepreneurs are trying to explore new business tech solutions. Thus, the emergence of the tech start-up trend in the IT industry has shown immense growth.
According to stats, there are more than 500,000 start-ups launching every month in the US, where every entrepreneur dreams big and aims at becoming the next Snapchat or Facebook. But the fact is that more than 90% of these fail because they didn’t make a product people actually needed. While the stats paint a bleak picture, knowledge is on your side. By having a solid idea in place to build, market, and sell, your tech start-up has a chance for survival.
This brings you to the question, how to start? Don’t worry, that is exactly why we are here. What follows is a comprehensive guide listing the steps you need to follow to begin with a startup product development process. Establishing a tech business is all about hard work, but it’s not as difficult as you might think. With this in mind, let’s begin our tech start-up guide.
10 Steps to Start a Tech Business
It’s not that all companies start the same. Regardless of how a company started, its growth heavily relies on how it was planned, focused, and executed. For this, there is no perfect formula but there are a few guidelines to note when starting your own tech start-up company.
1. The Idea
The key to every successful business lies in a unique and strong idea. Now, how can you get an idea about beginning a start-up? It’s easy to get caught up in the glamour of successful start-up stories.
However, because of the proliferation of overnight success stories, too many dive into entrepreneurship without a proper idea or plan, limiting their chances of fortune and glory. So if you’re hoping to hit it big in the technology sector, you need to start with a strong tech business idea.
How to identify a great idea for your Tech Start-up?
- Look for problems
- Find a problem that interests you more
- Find an innovative solution
2. Thorough Planning & Market Research
So, now you have a great idea for your tech business. Now, it’s time to do a bit of research, actually mean doing extensive research. Not doing your market research is a sure way to doom your business before you even get it off the ground.
This helps you know the nature of your tech business and also can figure out who your target demographic is. The purpose of the market research is to validate the business idea regarding the strategy, target customer, product, and marketing communications, etc.
For a start-up to be truly market-driven, it has to observe, engage, and listen to the market system continuously.
3. Go-to-Market Strategy
The go-to-market strategy is the process of marketing your product before reaching a product-market fit. Many people think marketing or sales is a black box. But with analytics and several new technologies, entrepreneurs can optimize their products from a very early stage to accelerate business.
A go-to-market strategy starts with a strong value proposition, so once you are clear on what your value proposition is, bring clarity on what the offering is, who the customers are, and how the customers can be reached.
4. Build a Technical Team
Building a technical team to start your tech business is inevitable. Finding an efficient team to implement the project is one of the major problems that most start-ups tend to face.
With tight budgets and tighter deadlines, try to grab the experts from the market. Choose professionals based on your business niche, project scope, and specifics, etc.
5. Create Product Requirements Document (PRD)
PRD describes the product you want to build. It drives the efforts of the entire team that includes design, development, marketing, and customer support. The purpose of this document is to clearly identify the product’s objective, its features, and functionalities.
6. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Finally, this is the process where you will be actually working on your product development life cycle. MVP is the most basic version of your product (built quickly and cheaply) which aims to validate if people are interested in your business and are willing to pay for it.
This phase includes the product design and development which is an essential part of the entire software development process where the team gather, define the app requirements, create the prototype and test the solution with end-users.
Why MVP is required?
- Generate early leads
- Know Customer feedback
- Saves time and money
7. Formulate a Business Plan
A business plan plays an indispensable role when starting a start-up. The business plan includes all the necessary aspects of a business including the business goals, strategies, the time frame of goals, details about profit and loss, finances, marketing methodologies, etc.
Even the most efficient and cheapest tech start-up idea is going to require money to get off the ground and that’s why it’s important to secure money to fund your business as soon as possible.
8. Name your Start-up & Understand the Legalities
Naming your start-up may seem like an easy thing, but it is actually not. Make sure to choose a name that resonates with your business idea; keep it simple and easy to understand.
Understanding the legalities of starting a tech company should start right from the concept stage. Some do not take these considerations, which later end up making legal mistakes that affect the company very badly.
9. Branding, Website & Launch
- Branding: Once the funding is done, and then begin the actual work of building your organization on different levels. Branding your tech start-up essentially means to establish an identity creating its own voice, image, and personality that makes it recognizable for your customers.
- Website: Creating the website is another crucial factor because it is the best platform that helps you to stay active in this competitive market and easily interact with your customers.
- Launch: On completion of all the above-listed factors, your tech start-up is now all set to launch. Before launching your start-up, be prepared with launching campaigns that will help you make a better launch in the market.
10. Marketing Strategies
To avoid failure, market your business. For this, you need to understand the industry, know the competitor, understand the upcoming trends, and market strategically.
Final Thoughts
Altogether, the whole process of starting your own tech business might sound daunting and hard, but with a perfect idea, the right action plan, a clear goal to solve problems using technology, and a great tech team, will surely position you ahead in the competitive market.
NeoITO is one of the leading custom web & mobile app development companies in Utah, Salt Lake City. We create custom product development for tech startups. Our process of excellence, digital and technological capabilities, and domain knowledge has helped us drive growth for startups, scale-ups, and enterprises. We have a pool of talented and experienced techies who can help you kick off your startup product development process to be well on its way to success.