Are you a co-founder of a Tech Startup? Use this simple tool to rediscover yourself.

Startups need to make a lot of choices | Image Credits: Pixabay / qimono

Creating a tech startup is an exciting and intellectually pleasing opportunity and many of us techies aspire to create one in our lifetime. However, we tend to overlook many aspects of our startups. When we are finally able to take care of such aspects with time and experience, we might have lost the advantage to be the first in the market.

If you have a tech startup, chances are that technical issues are the least of your concerns. As tech entrepreneurs, you and your team members are supposed to be good in coding, designing, architecting and solving technical problems on a day-to-day basis. Solving complex technical issues gives you an adrenaline rush. However, when it comes to taking care of other important but non-technical challenges, you may get shivers.

I am a mentor and coach who works with tech startups to identify and solve their problems, become more efficient, and have better overall clarity.

At the same time, I have a tech startup of my own. I have come across many non-technical problems in the last year alone, which I wish I could have had the foresight of.

In my previous article, I discussed Mind Maps as an efficient note-taking and revision tool. Recently I applied mind maps for taking the tech startups a couple of notches up by means of re-discovery.

If you look at this mind map, the main nodes are the following:

1. Target Users: Who are your target users? Are you solving their problems or making them more efficient? If not, they may not be interested in your idea and hence may not classify as your target users.
2. Investors: All the people, organizations, entities who would like to invest in your startup.
3. Modes of Investment: How can one invest in your startup? List down all the monetary investment options and also investments in terms of skills, material, IP and so on.
4. Goals: Add all the short term and long term goals here. This can also include a list of growth goals and intangible goals too.
5. Returns: What types of tangible and intangible returns one should expect from your startup.
6. Impact: What are the impacts your startup can make?
7. Revenues: List down all the revenue sources you can expect.
8. Technology Advantages: How your idea(s) in your startup has technology advantages over others?
9. Existing Ideas / Platforms: Under this node, add all the existing ideas and platforms which are similar to yours and add their top 3 USPs.

Each of these nodes can have 2nd level, 3rd level, or even 4th level sub-nodes for a much granular picture.

You can use this template to brainstorm with your team and have a clear picture coming out within a few hours on a Friday afternoon. Focusing on these areas will give you great clarity of thoughts and a common language in your team. You can add your own nodes too to suit your needs.

And here’s the interesting part. You can apply this template to a non-tech startup or even for a non-profit organization, as they have similar challenges.

Let me know what you think by replying to this article. If you applied this template for your tech startup and found it useful, please drop a note too.

There is another aspect of tech startup which I’ve not covered in this article, which is, the need to keep oneself and the team motivated. I’ll be covering this in my next article.