# Startup Questions to Answer

###### tags: `Revenue` `Brainstorming`

### Overview

- What does your company do uniquely well for whom?

## Team

### How and why was this company founded?

https://grey.software/founding-story/

- How are you uniquely qualified to build this business?
- Share a brief overview of your trajectory: What’s impressive? What’s not?

## Market Opportunity

### Why now? (Why is this the right time for this business?)

- Devtools have never been more open and accessible
- VSCode
- Gitpod
- Node ecosystem
- Remote work and learning has never been more accepted and technically feasible

### Is this a new category? How new?

### What is the market size?

> **Bottom-up market sizing = \[# of Customers\] * \[Price They’re Willing to Pay\]**
1. Who is your specific customer?
2. How many of them are there?
3. How many of them can you realistically reach?
4. At what price will they buy?
5. Then, perhaps the most challenging: How many will buy from you?

## Product and Value Proposition

### What is your value proposition?

> **For** (target customers)
> **Who are dissatisfied with** (the current alternative)
> **Our product is a** (new product)
> **That provides** (essential problem-solving capability)
> **Unlike** (the product alternative)

**For** university students

**Who are dissatisfied** with how their outdated curriculums are not effectively preparing them to create or scale software products

**Grey Software is** an organization of passionate software creators and educators

Who build open products and publish educational content to **help students worldwide learn by example**

Unlike universities that **can't teach students** how to build up-to-date software products **because they don't create** any of their own

### What unique combination of Discontinuous innovation, Defensible technology, and Disruptive business model are you using? What makes it truly compelling?

> - **Discontinuous** innovations offer transformative benefits over the status quo by looking at a problem differently.
> - **Defensible** technologies provide intellectual property that can create a barrier to entry and an unfair competitive advantage.
> - **Disruptive** business models yield value and cost rewards that help catalyze a business’ growth.

### Competition

- What is the overall state of competition?
- Are you targeting whitespace?
- Where does your company outperform the competition?
- Where might it underperform?

## Go to Market

### What is your go to market strategy?

### What is your rationale for pursuing this strategy?

### What challenges will you encounter?

### What will be your key milestones and timeframe?

### What are your Multipliers for Rapid Market Expansion?

> Multipliers help you drive revenue, reach, and coverage, which is vitally important when you consider amortizing and then profiting beyond the cost of customer acquisition. Take a close look at the P&L of a traditional software company and you’ll notice something potentially surprising: On average, sales and marketing expenses are 2X research and development in a steady-state model.

### What are your levers to Drive Down Costs?

> Levers help you reduce time, cost, and resources to deliver your value proposition. Open-source and other co-creation models are great examples of leveraged business models. Here, you sell value, often in the form of services, support, and perhaps commercial add-on products, on top of a core product that is built and maintained by the community.

- Vue and Nuxt
-

### With what possible partners would you work?

- MLH
- Fireship
- FreeCodeCamp

## Customers and Partners

### Who are your buyer personas?

### Who influences your persona's decisions? Describe their decision-making unit (DMU).

### What highlights from customer feedback validate the effectiveness of your go-to-market approach and business model?

### What verticals or industries could benefit from your product? How much product or implementation customization would they require?

### How tightly knit are the customers in your segment?

> Do they talk to each other in (for example) community forums or trade associations? The closer they are, the more likely they are to reference each other efficiently. Think of this as the beginning of your viral loop.

### Through which channels can you reach your MVS?

> Following the point above, if your MVS can be reached via the same channel, that can help you focus your marketing.

### Where does my MVS live/work?**

> If your MVS is in a close geographical area, you can easily reach them—a critical attribute in a high-touch-oriented solution.

### Business Model

Share an overview of your [business model](https://underscore.vc/startupsecrets/disruptive-business-models/) and pricing. How does this company make money?

### What is it is that makes you different at your core?

### Why did you adopt this business model?

- What milestones will you target in its evolution?
### Are you aligning with well-established technology stacks?

- Nuxt
- Gitlab

### Is your product SLIPPERY?

> - Simple, Low or no initial cost
> - Installs easily
> - Proves value quickly
> - Plays well with others
> - Easy to use
> - ROI is obvious
> - Your customers can’t live without it

## Investment Details

### What are the key risks that would be involved in making this investment?

### What plans are in place to mitigate these risks in the next period?

- Public Pioneer posts

### Milestones for the Round

Describe the [key milestones](https://underscore.vc/startupsecrets/series-a-milestones/) you’ll target as you move from your current to a future round.

- Which milestones will increase your company’s value?
- Which milestones will de-risk the venture?

## Problem

### What problem are you solving?

- University programs don't stay updated with or practice with the latest industry tech
- Internships and boot camps fill in the gaps but many students still fall behind their potential
- Changing established systems is possible but difficult due to bureaucracy and perpetual demand for degrees

### What problem will be solved at the end of what you are doing?

### What do we expect the result to be?

### Can you state the problem clearly in two sentences?

### Have you experienced the problem yourself?

- Can you define this problem narrowly?

### Who can you help first?

### What can we address immediately?

### How do we get the first indication this thing is working?

### Is the problem solveable?

## Products and Services

### Do your products and services actually solve the problem? Be truthful. How and why not?

### Which customers should you go after first?

### How do you find people who are willing to use the initial versions of your product?

- University students

### Are you discounting or starting with a super low price? Are you consider this approach? If so, why?

## Performance

### What are you using to measure how users are interacting with your product?

### What 5-10 metrics are you measuring to understand your impact and value? Why those metrics?

### When you build a new product or feature, what is the metric that will improve because of that feature/product?

### What are your top level KPIs(revenue,usage) to show how well your company is doing?

### What are the underlying metrics that contribute to achieving your top level KPI(newusers, retention of users, content created => DAUs at Social Cam)?

### Which of these metrics are you trying to move this development cycle?