Presentazione S. Bernardi InnovAction Talk 27.10.2011

1. STARTUP QUESTIONS
Quello che la tua startup non può ignorare

2. Stefano Bernardi
Ange ISS
l/VC I
Blogg nvest
2009-2011:
er, Ma or,
• Startup Investor: Iubenda rketin
• Tech Marketing: GoWar, Coderloop
g
• Advisor, Angel Investor: Iubenda, Coderloop
• Conferences: TC Disrupt, LeWeb, FOWA
• Lecturer: Universities, Events, Startup Schools
• Employee: Stealth Startup
K, CODER,
GEE NEUR
ENTR
90’s & 00’s:
•
EPRE
Entrepreneur: GoWar, Equeety, Hosteeo
• Developer: Vluta, SaveMyInbox, Equeety
• User Groups: Italian Startup Scene, UpStart Roma, HackItaly
• Engineer: Ruby / Rails BSc Computer Engineering

3. STARTUP QUESTIONS
99 questions to ask yourself
before starting a web company.

4. WHY
• Why are you really building this company?
• Are you ready to be an entrepreneur?
• Do you have what it takes?
• What problem are you solving?
• How are you going to solve it?

5. PRODUCT
• What is your product going to look like?
• Who is going to build it?
• How much time will it take to build it?
• When can you launch a private beta?
• Is it a feature or a company?
• What are the minimum features for your
MVP?
• What is the killer application?

6. TECH
• What technologies are you going to use?
• Why?
• Will you be able to find developers that
know these technologies?
• Are they easy to learn?
• Are they scalable?
• Are they fast?

7. LOCATION
• Where are your customers?
• Where are your competitors?
• Where are your partners?
• Why are you not there too?
• Does it make sense to stay where you
are?

8. TEAM
• Is every team member 100% committed?
• What if you run out of money?
• What if they are offered a job at Google?
• What is each person going to do all day?
• How are you going to divide equity?
• Who is going to take a salary? How much?
• What is the size of the option pool?
• Who is going to do customer care?
• Are you the right team do do this?

9. FUTURE
• What are the vision and mission of your
company?
• How many people do you see your
company employing in 1, 3 and 5 years?
• What exit are you looking for?
• Is your company going to be relevant in 3
years?

10. CUSTOMERS
• Who are your customers?
• Would YOU be a potential customer?
• Where are they hanging out?
• How can you get their attention?
• Are they willing to pay?
• How are they solving this problem today?
• Are you going to either make them more
money or save them some time?

11. METRICS
• How many users do you want to have?
• What are the most important metrics for
your company?
• Is the lifetime customer value of a customer
bigger than the total customer acquisition
cost of a customer?
ARPU * CLT > CAC + (Salaries+Infrastructure+etc / Users)
A: Acquisition - where / what channels do users come from?
A: Activation - what % have a "happy" initial experience?
R: Retention - do they come back & re-visit over time?
R: Referral - do they like it enough to tell their friends?
R: Revenue - can you monetize any of this behavior?

12. MARKET
• What’s your market?
Tip: If you have a travel website, your market is not the $2.5
trillions global travel market.
• How big is your market? TAM?
• What are its growth expectations?
• Is it going to still exist in 5 years?
• How is it divided at the moment?
• How much do you want to take of it?
• How are you going to do it?
Number of Poten@al Customers * Price of Product = ?

13. COMPETITION
• Who is your biggest competitor?
• Why should someone invest in you
and not them?
• Why are you going to beat them?
• What do you know about the market
that other competitors don’t?
• What if Google does it?
• What can you do less and better of
your competitors?

14. FUNDRAISING
• How much money do you want to raise?
• How many rounds do you want to raise?
• Debt or equity?
• When do you want to raise it?
• Who's going to raise it?
• What’s the current economic condition
and how does it affect your fundraising?

15. BUSINESS MODEL
• What is your business model?
• Is it scalable?
• Is it legal?
• Where does most of the money come from?
• How can you make more money?
• How many users/customers do you need to
get to break even?

16. (IF) SALES
• Who is going to sell your product?
• Who is he going to sell it to?
• What is the price of your product? Why?
• With whom should he speak in such
companies?
• Which investor could help you out with
this?
• What commissions are you going to give
to sales agents?

17. (IF) SAAS/FREEMIUM
• Will customers trust you with their data?
Should they?
• Can customers export their data?
• Do you plan on having a free plan?
• How can you ensure you maximize
conversion from free to paid?
• Can people start using the software without
interacting with a human?
• Can you deploy without downtime?
• Do you have APIs?

18. (IF) MARKETPLACE
• Can you easily market to both sellers and
buyers? Tip: you are building two companies
• Have you solved the chicken-egg problem?
• What percentage are you going to take?
• Can someone bring it outside the system
and game you?
• Is it legal?
• Can people do it on ebay?
Tip: if they can, they will.

19. (IF) ECOMMERCE
• Who's gonna handle logistics?
• Will you need a lot of money to build
your inventory?
• Do you have cash flows problems?
• Who's gonna build/provide the products?
• What is your margin?
• How do you handle returns?
• Do you have exclusives?
• If not: do you have the lowest price?

20. (IF) ADVERTISING
• How many users do you need to have
before getting revenues?
• Why would someone advertise on your
site and not on Facebook?
• How much is it going to cost to advertise
on your site?
• What kind of users are you offering to
advertisers?
• Where else can they find them?

21. AND THE REAL QUESTION
What are you doing here?
Go home and code.