You just raised your seed round. What should be your main priority for the next 3 months?
Aleks Miric
24 replies
Assuming you already have an MVP...
They threw a pile of cash at you and your quest is to spend it smart. Some of it will go to distribution, but not much before there's a clear PMF. So most of it is going into the product. That means people.
But when you hire your first few employees you want them to be the best for the job. And that can take months...
So what do you in the awkward period between getting all that money and completing your dream team?
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Avinash@go_avinash
Setup time to talk to your users and continuously iterate to reach Series A level product maturity.
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Forget the dream team, get to $1M ARR as quick as possible. This will help you to get a dreamier team in place.
@prateek_mathur I was just going to come in here to reply and say user adoption. Focus on user signups and capturing rich feedback to improve your product. Which will obviously lead to more users as your product continues to improve and grow.
I believe someone asked a similar one on IndieHacker as well....hmmm
@karanveer Well, yep... That was me. Is there an issue? :D
Slightly different tack but here's the first thing to do! https://racket.com/yehoshzl/rrB8E
Focus on testing the MVP and searching for a PMF. Even better, (pre)-sell it. Get it in front of as many potential customers as you can. They'll probably provide you with more useful information than your dream team members.
Walking around fairs and pre-selling our prototype helped us get to the break-even point only 2 weeks after we had gotten the first pieces out of production (hardware product).
Is anyone pre-PMF actually raising a legitimate seed round nowadays?
@parker_miller I have the same question. It doesn't seem possible to get a seed round with just MVP like some are suggesting.
@ikennaobieze Yeah lol not sure what everybody's talking about here. Maybe pre-seed / family and friends? lol
@ikennaobieze I haven't, you are right. 👍 When I said this is my status, I meant I am raising fund and connecting with people.
As for "Test MVP, get more validation from customers/clients." <-- what I'd do if I have raised the fund I'm looking for.
I hope this explains.
To create a sustainable competitive edge in terms of the men and/or my product which has to be good enough for the organization. If not sustainable then it will be copied. I want to also create a great work environment first. I have always believed that its not how much you pay but how much you pay respect. They would not be put on pedestal but I would be included in 'they'. We would be creating an exit strategy for the investors too. I am not worried about investment but I am excited about selling to the market of 7 billion people and see some of them throwing it back to us. I want to create the best product but also want to create the best practice within people. People, both employees and customers should feel that we are the perfect soulmate which they thought will never find.
Now all this together seems impossible but it's not it's just that we have to give time, step by step.. However the only step by step phase in my life is when tomorrow morning I will be homeless..
Accept that it takes time to find the right people, which means investing earlier in the process of finding talent. Write up great job descriptions, get them posted, but start searching for people immediately, don't sit back and wait.
Keep the momentum going, if you know you're going to hire another role in 6 months, don't wait 6 months to start the process.
Prepping candidates for hire start years before. People you hired on contract base and were happy with before, interns, mentees, previous co-workers, new grads in your school, people you interacted on GitHub, network of existing employees ... I would start way before raising anything; especially most of the effort is giving back to the community and keeping in touch anyways. It’s rather easy hiring in your own domain e.g. SWE hiring swe. I find it harder to hire in domains I rarely interacted before and still regret not keeping my network wider.
Experiment on distribution channels that will give your product exponential growth and double down it.
As Ben Horowitz said focus on the 3 P's (in that order):
1/ People
2/ Product
3/ Profit (not real profit but we needed a P - I guess it's revenues first)
1. I think nobody will give you the money without you explaining what you will do with them. So you have to have a plan long before that pile of cash.
2. I assume it's smart money, so there are some mentors/advisors as well. Advisors bring connections, connections can help with hiring.
That said, I would definitely hire a person as a contractor for a month or two first so that I can be pretty sure of them when switching to a full time.
Continue with MVPs and stay focus on ARR for series A. You only have 12-18 months to get tasks done. Everything that makes progress only counts. The rest is un-important. Take care!
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