Have you ever had an amazing business idea? Do you find yourself daydreaming about how to start a tech company?
For most people in this situation, that amazing business idea gets stored away. For a later time, perhaps.
But consider for a minute that your most recent tech idea is actually worth bringing to life. In that case, it’s probably wise to learn how to start a tech company from scratch.
In this post, we cover how to start a tech company in 6 key steps. They are critical to the creation of just about any tech product or service.
1. Ideate around a problem
2. Conduct market research
3. Define and create an MVP
4. Build a business strategy
5. Take your product to market
6. Refine your business strategy
How to Start a Tech Company with No Experience
Before jumping into the 6 key steps to starting a tech company, let’s address the elephant in the room. If you are searching for how to start a tech company without a tech background, or how to start a tech company with no experience, you are certainly not alone. The great news is that many founders don’t have prior experience in this field, and many success stories prove that to be true.
Successful startups are all built using teachable skills and steps. For those looking to invest in their tech entrepreneurship journey beyond this post, consider brunchwork’s Business Intensive mini-MBA course.
Our course is designed to teach ambitious students much of what is being covered in this post. For more details, check out the syllabus or skip to the bottom of this post.
1. Ideate around a problem
Define and validate the problem and possible solutions.
This first step is the most fun. As you ideate around a problem (and a potential solution), allow your mind to run free and get creative. While your ideas for solutions can be relatively fuzzy (solutions will gain clarity as you test your ideas), it’s important to know exactly what you’re trying to solve. Nearly every successful company seeks to improve or solve a well-defined problem.
The key takeaway: Clearly defining the problem you’re trying to solve will set a strong foundation for creating your company.
2. Conduct market research
Learn the competitive landscape, existing solutions, market size, etc.
Once you’re convinced you’ve discovered a problem worth solving, your focus must turn from creative to empirical. To start a tech startup without proper market research would be impossible.
Market research involves analyzing existing competitors and market solutions that are already available. It also includes taking a high-level look at the market size, which will help you understand the size of the business opportunity.
The key takeaway: Seek evidence that the problem exists, the market exists, and the solution you’re creating has legs to compete.
3. Define and create an MVP
Create something to start testing.
This is the stage at which many startup ideas fail, because for the first time, something real needs to be created.
Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can be intimidating, especially for no-code founders. At this point, you might need to actually write code or spend money for some help in doing so. For some clever ideas on how to start creating an MVP, learn first-hand insight from brunchwork’s founder. Even when starting a tech startup, some non-technical testing and surveying might be all you need to test the waters.
The key takeaway: Turn that elusive startup idea into something real, so people can start experimenting with it, showing interest, and even lining up to purchase.
4. Create a business strategy
Build a roadmap for the company’s future.
With a promising MVP in hand, it’s time to start thinking about a business strategy. This is the step at which you might start to flesh out a real business plan, or a roadmap for the company’s future.
A business strategy or business plan typically ties together some of the progress made up until this point, but also sheds light on new aspects of the business. This includes additional market research, marketing & sales strategies, financial projections, and more.
One of the goals of brunchwork’s Business Intensive course is to teach the requisite skills for creating a successful business strategy. Our course covers Strategy & Finance, Pricing, Web Development, Communication & Presentation, Sales & Influence, Customer Research, Marketing, and Branding.
The key takeaway: With an MVP promising intriguing potential, it’s time to get serious about the core elements of a business that can support the marketing, sales, and distribution of the product or service.
5. Take your product to market
Put your business strategy in motion.
We must note that funding your business strategy and taking your product to market is not always a walk in the park. It’s entirely possible that executing your strategy requires capital, and that could come from any number of sources, like crowdfunding, venture capital, savings, or a loan. Since startup fundraising is a massive topic in itself, those details are best saved for another post.
The issue of funding aside, you’re off to a great start if you’ve made it to this step. Going-to-market is no small feat, and at this point, you’ve just about earned the title of “startup founder” or “tech entrepreneur.” This step is all about turning the gears of whatever you’ve outlined in your business plan. For many founders who start a tech company, this step revolves around selling seats of their software service, or driving new users to download their mobile app.
The key takeaway: With a sound business strategy in place, begin the process of deploying resources and setting the plan in motion.
6. Refine your business strategy
Tweak, halt, or double-down as you go.
From here on out, running your tech startup is all about building on what’s working, and fixing what’s not. This goes for all key departments of a startup, from sales, to engineering, to marketing, to customer success, and more. Successful startups sometimes start strong, but more often it’s about experimenting and pivoting until it clicks.
To keep track of where your business has been and where it is going, refer back to your original business strategy and amend it as you go. With a product in the market, and maybe even a few co-founders working to give it life, the game becomes one of experimentation, agility, execution, and business acumen.
The key takeaway: Strike the right balance of having clearly defined strategies, but also creating plenty of room for experimentation as your startup sprouts from the ground.
Tying It All Together With Business Intensive
brunchwork’s Business Intensive promises to teach students a proven approach for validating, prototyping, modeling, marketing, selling, and presenting business concepts. For those looking to get serious about how to start a tech company, Business Intensive involves immersive co-learning projects that provide a foundational education around entrepreneurship:
• Refine and test a business concept
• Run a market sizing, revenue growth and competitor analysis
• Deliver a high-caliber presentation
• Analyze financial reports and models
• Develop a brand strategy
• Build a no-code website
• Conduct user interviews
• Develop and execute a marketing and sales plan
• Pitch a business idea with conviction and charisma
This 7-week mini-MBA program has been named by Forbes as one of the best MBA programs. And it costs less than $2,000, a fraction of the cost of traditional MBA programs. Weekly guest speakers include high profile business leaders, like former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang, PayPal Founding COO David Sacks, Ellevest Co-founder and CEO Sallie Krawcheck, and Peloton Co-founder, Graham Stanton.
To learn more and to sign up for Business Intensive, prospective students can read up here.