For the past 100 days, I’ve been running the Bootstrap First Incubator, a startup incubator dedicated to helping idea-stage founders and pre-revenue businesses get off the ground. This experience has taught me much about launching startups—more than my previous roles, working at incubators, and reporting on emerging technology companies.
My goal for each startup in the program was to accomplish at least three things:
- Design a financially feasible business model.
- Conduct customer discovery interviews to perform real market research and gain firsthand accounts of the pain points their customer segments experience.
- Design an early adopter MVP (Minimum Viable Product)and subsequently execute an early adopter launch.
I’m happy to report that four out of the seven companies had at least one repeat customer by the end of the program. Two startups had numerous beta testers—10 and 350, respectively—using their platforms, and two raised funding during the program ($100,000 and $3,000 [crowdfunding], respectively).
Thanks to the successes and struggles these companies faced along the way, this first cohortgave …