Visualise that you are on a trip on your bucket list – Ladakh. The trip to Leh / Ladakh is your maiden trip to the terrain at 3000 meters. Out of enthusiasm, you take a full-circuit road trip by bike. The full-circuit journey starts from Delhi and takes you to Leh, and the distance is approximately 1011 km by road. You are confident that you can ride through this arduous journey. However, after driving for four days, you reach Leh and feel uneasy. You realise that you are sick due to the high altitude. It would help if you carried your meds and essential supplies and prepared well for the road trip. Having a Plan B is crucial. Since this is your first mountain trip, getting the basics right is critical. An early-stage startup resembles your solo full-circuit road trip from Delhi to Leh.
Your first version of MVP
Similarly, you venture into a consumer tech startup after 15 years of work experience in a couple of large MNCs in the telecom sector. You put in all your savings (bootstrapped), and a couple of family members also put in some money. You start building your product by hiring a three-member team. After a year, you develop your MVP v1 (minimum viable product) and plan to launch it. You hit the first roadblock to scale as you spent all your savings on getting to the MVP stage. The CAC is around $9. What should you do now? How to get traction for your MVP? Should you spend your resources on building a D2C or B2B2C? In other words, do you want your product to be put directly to the end user or an intermediary serving your end user? However, you are confident about D2C, which will create demand/pull.
Insight
The above startup is a true story. But should the founder focus on solving D2C and B2B2C or one of the cohorts? B2B2C is a logical one. However, the founder has a view on the existing channel. Therefore, the founder may take a few more months to reconcile with the fact.
I will be writing about my similar experiences in this section.
From 2015 to 2019, I met over 60 startups building a FinTech product. From 2020 onwards, I have worked with over 25 startups and helped four startups to raise their seed round. So if you are an early-stage startup with an MVP, I may be helpful to you.
