Building a fan base is a crucial step in building your startup

I am taking a course on how to start a startup that will be thought over a fifteen week period. In this course I am supposed to build a team, find an idea and start a startup. No time was wasted. The team, later given the name BAASH, was built in the first week and the brainstorming session began. Our idea originated with a problem that one of our team members had. As she began sharing her problem with the team we realized other team members also had problems with the same product. The problems varied but they were all related to the same product that is already on the market. After a little bit of goole-ing we found out that many other users had problem with the same product. Our mission is to solve these problems.

Our next step is to build a fan base for our product. Feedback from potential users is important. Like we learned in our brain storming session, different users can have different problems with the same product. It is important to get out of the office/classroom and talk to potential users to see if they are dealing with the same problem and would be willing to use your improved product. 

We have already built our business model canvas, which was helpful as the team sat down together and discussed the strategy of the startup and our vision for the future. Now we are all on the same page. We are working on our value proposition canvas to further clarify why our product will be useful for our potential customers along with creating a prototype of our product. When the prototype is ready we can go out and talk to potential customers to get their feedback and see if our product can fulfill their needs. It is highly unlikely that your startup will be a success if you keep your idea for yourself until it is fully developed. You need to share it with the world. By sharing it you will hear other peoples concerns about the product which you can use to make your product better, increasing the likelihood of your startup being a success.

I am learning about startups, listening to Balas lectures, reading material online but the reason this class is so good and useful is that we learn by doing. You will not get good at figure skating by reading about figure skating, you will have to go to the ice rink every day and practice.