So you’ve got this amazing idea that you think is worth something and deserves to see the light of day. You’ve decided “I’m going to turn this idea into a product and I’m going to build a startup from scratch and then become the next Elon Musk.” That’s a wonderful idea.

We think it’s great when people aspire to build something and turn their dreams into reality, but building a startup from scratch is no small feat. It is both a delicate and an arduous task that can either result in huge failure, or great success and sometimes, somewhere in between if not handled with great care and tenacity.

People love to talk about startup failures, we don’t blame them, we believe it’s natural human behavior to laugh at failures. However this creates a fear of failure in many people and discourages them from trying out new things.

Building a startup from scratch isn’t all about failures, there are stories of success out there, and that’s what you need to focus on. Let go of all the thoughts of your startup failing and just focus on building its success.

We understand how difficult building a startup from scratch can be, and that is why we’ve put together this guide to chaperone you on your entrepreneurial journey and lead you to success.

This article has no fluff, it is packed with real actionable advice straight from RocketDevs playbook, actionable advice designed to help you in building a startup from scratch.

In this article, we’ll discuss the following:

Why Build a Startup from Scratch?
How to Build a Start-Up from Scratch
Building Your Idea
Validating Your Idea for Success in the Market
Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Building Your Startup Team
Marketing! Marketing! Marketing!
Funding Your Startup
RocketDevs – The Startup Team You Need

Our goal at the end of this article is to equip you with a working blueprint to aid you in building a startup from scratch and turning your idea into reality.

Why Build a Startup from Scratch?

building a startup from scratch

This is a question most entrepreneurs ask themselves before embarking on the journey.

“Why should I build a startup from scratch? When I could just work my safe 9 to 5.”

Honestly, this is a question we wish we could answer for you, but the answer to this question is one only you can give yourself.

You have to find your reason for becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business.

A lot of people build their startups for money, others just want to help people and make a difference and some just enjoy the freedom that comes with entrepreneurship.

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Find your reason
Based on our experience, money shouldn’t be your number one motivator to becoming an entrepreneur, it’s always best to have something you’re really passionate about and grow your start-up around that.

To help put things into perspective, here are some reasons people start companies.

Passion for Change

This is something most successful entrepreneurs have a passion for. Take for example the SpaceX founder Elon Musk, he has a passion for change and innovation.

He believes in change, and every one of his innovations is geared toward that. He’s looking to build a colony on Mars, he’s looking to mass produce electric cars, and moving worldwide transportation away from fossil fuels. He has a passion for innovation.

To Add Value

Adding value is another reason for building a startup from scratch. Most entrepreneurs just want to add some value to their community and the world. They do this by creating a valuable product or providing a very much-needed service. Sometimes founders add value not by creating a bright new idea, but by improving on an old one that has some flaws, thereby creating a much better product or service, and giving more value to their customers.

Market Opportunity

Another reason for building a startup from scratch is spotting a huge market opportunity. If there is a market for your idea, it might be a great time to jump on it and build your start-up, because the earlier the better, and sometimes, timing is everything.

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How to Build a Start-Up from Scratch

Building Your Idea
Validating Your Idea for Success in the Market
Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Having an idea and a reason to start your company is great, but that’s just a small slice of the pie. A huge part of the process has to do with actually building a startup from scratch. How do you go about it?

A lot of people get it wrong when it comes to building a startup, hence the reason a lot of startups fail. They jump into the process and get it all wrong, and in the end, they’re overwhelmed, confused, and have no idea what to do next, and then they give up.

But let’s forget about all that negativity and focus on the positives. It is such an exciting feeling to build a startup from scratch, because there is always so much to learn from the journey, no matter the outcome. You get to not just build your company, but also your vision, your attitude, and your personal growth.

Building Your Idea

how to build a startup from scratch

Building or developing your idea is an important step to building a startup from scratch. Without an idea, you really can’t have a direction on what to focus on. So a lot of successful founders will ask: "What is that idea you want to build? What’s that idea you’re passionate about?”

It doesn’t have to be a brilliant idea, it doesn’t have to be the best idea, and it doesn’t have to be something unique, just have an idea and get started on it.
Like Mark Zuckerberg would say, “Ideas don’t come out fully formed. You just have to get started.”

Now we understand how difficult developing an idea can be, especially if creativity isn’t your strength, but there’s no need for panic. We’ve got you covered.

Here are a few steps as to how you can generate your idea;

1. Observe the Market Trend

Having an idea is great, but before you go to work on that idea, you have to ensure you check with the markets if that idea is feasible or not. While it is not necessary to do this, it does help to ensure the long-term success of your startup.

Some easy ways to approach this would be to;

Check out market reports, and try to understand the data
Understand your target audience and try to envision how your product can impact them.
Check out your competition and how they are fairing in the market. How are they targeting their customers, how do they approach their clients, what is their business model?

Understanding these will help you develop your idea and craft a viable plan for the direction you’ll be headed.

2. Utilize Your Findings and Create a Plan

Observing the market trend allows you to get a much broader perspective on things, it aids you in tailoring your developed idea to the right market and target audience. All you need now is to come up with a great implementation plan and strategy.

Remember that your idea doesn’t have to be totally unique; you can come up with a better solution to a problem by improving on the previous solution.

When crafting a plan from your findings, remember to factor in your competition, because you are probably not the only one in your niche. Then do a self-evaluation on what makes you different from them.

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Ask questions like:

What problems is your target audience facing?
How can your startup
solve these problems?
How can you solve their problems better than
your competitors?

Remember most times, the solution to the problem is already out there, your customers just want a better alternative and that is where your startup comes in.

Understanding these suggestions will not only help you develop an idea but will also help you build a well-thought-out plan when building a startup from scratch.

Validating Your Idea for Success in the Market

While the previous section talked about building and developing your idea, it’s just as important to also validate your idea. It’s one thing to build an idea, and it’s another thing to validate it for success in the market.

A lot of people begin building their startup from scratch without actually validating their idea. There are several reasons why you should validate your idea.

One reason is to know if your product is the right fit for the market it was planned for, and also to know if it is the right time to enter that market.
Another reason to validate your idea is to determine how well it would do in the market. It helps you understand your potential customer base and how your product can connect with them.

When validating your idea, keep in mind that there are several steps to follow to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.

Setting up clear goals
Developing a product from your idea
Testing the product with potential customers
And finally validating the product.

Idea validation helps you determine how far your idea can go, helps you get honest feedback, and gives you insight into the necessary direction to go when launching your startup.

So here are some steps to help validate your idea when building a startup from scratch.

1. Get Feedback from Your Potential Customers

Getting feedback from your potential customers is one way to validate your startup idea. We mean these are the people your product is meant for, so it’s important you know what they think of your product before it launches.

Now there are several ways to get the feedback you need. One way is to talk to your family and friends. Talk about your idea with them and ask for their honest opinion. Simulate a problematic scenario and ask them how they would like you to solve this problem with your idea.

The feedback they give can help you fill in the gaps in your product. It will go a long way to assist you in adding, removing, and improving the features of your product.

2. Another way is the Internet

Getting feedback from the internet can be a little overwhelming sometimes, but it just takes some understanding. It involves making use of tools to gather data and get insights for your product.

Some of the best tools that can used for idea validation are; Google Trends, LinkedIn, Survey Monkey, and Google Forms. These tools help you gather feedback from people on the internet through online surveys, emails, interviews, and forms.

You could then use data analysis tools to quantify the data from your research for easy comprehension.

3. Landing Pages and Advertisements

Another Way to Get Feedback is to make use of Landing Pages and Advertisements.

Landing pages are a great way to get even more information after surveys. It can help you focus on a group of potential customers, by running ad campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, to your landing page. You will be able to reach a wide range of people who are more likely interested in your product and can give you the feedback you need.

You could use techniques like A/B testing to get even more accurate results and validate your idea properly.

Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

build a startup from scratch

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the simplest form of a product that can be released to the market. It has just enough features to attract your first batch of customers. It can also help to further validate your product concept early in the development cycle.

Building an MVP is a method majorly used by startups to help manage time and resources, by focusing on the core functionalities of the product and ensuring that they meet the needs of the first batch of customers who represent future customers.

MVPs help startups to easily evaluate the performance of a product, its functionality, and its features. It also helps to provide data on core improvements to be made to existing functionalities.

Here’s a more complete guide to help you develop your MVP, however, we will proceed to outline some steps that can guide you when developing one.

Identify Core Features

You always want to identify the core features of your product and build around that. This will help you get the best feedback from your first group of users. Focusing on the core features helps to improve feedback, and gives you an insight into the problems that you may have missed during the building process. There is a much broader understanding of how your product may fair in the market.

Build the MVP

After identifying your core features, proceed to build your MVP. Remember to ensure that your MVP is simple and user-friendly. This helps to reduce the clutter around your product and allows you to focus on a much clearer objective.

Test the MVP

The next step in the MVP building process is the testing phase. You need to test with real users who represent your target audience. During the test phase, you get to analyze user behavior and gather important data and feedback. You can then use the data collected to implement changes.

Related: 13 Successful Minimum Viable Product Examples

Iterate the MVP

Based on user feedback, you can make some changes to the product thereby creating an iteration of the MVP. This iteration is an improved version of the previous one and is more likely to do better. You could also make some more iterations as you go along the way because a product is never really finished, it just gets better.

Optimize and Scale

Once the product has been validated, you can then proceed to optimize and scale it for the general market.

Building Your Startup Team

When it comes to creating an MVP or building a startup from scratch, it is almost impossible to get it done alone, especially if you lack the technical skills.

That is why you need a team. It could be a team that comprises designers, developers, or even marketers, depending on the type of product and the stage of your startup. A team helps build your product and take your startup to the level it needs to get to, cause let’s face it, you just can’t do it alone.

When building a team for your startup, you have to look at your product and what it needs to come alive, you have to look for the gaps you cannot fill, and find the people who can.

Usually in a startup, there are two teams one should consider getting.

Founders team and the Operational team

Getting a founders team is not necessary if you don’t need one. Most people like to get co-founders if they find there is a key area they are lacking that others can fill.

For example, a non-technical founder would search for a co-founder who has technical skills to assist him in building his product, the two of them working together could create amazing results, but there is a conundrum to this like having to share your equity with someone else, which a lot of founders aren’t too keen on.

Having a co-founder has its advantages like having someone who is just as interested in pushing the dream as you are, and works to make the startup a success, not just cause it’s a job but because they have an actual stake in it.

There are however alternatives to getting co-founders and that comes down to an operational team.

An operational team will help you build your startup, but success also comes down to hiring the right team.

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There are things to look out for when hiring candidates for your startup team.

Some of these things include:

The candidate’s knowledge of the product
The skills possessed by the candidate and how relevant they are to your company.
What soft skills do they possess?
How experienced are they? In terms of “work experience”
How passionate about their work and joining your team?

These questions are important to ask when hiring for your startup. If a candidate ticks the right boxes as regards those questions, then they are most likely a good fit for your company.

It’s important to not caught up in all the academic achievements and work experience, and then forget to look for cultural fitness, values, and passion.

If you hire someone with all the qualifications and experience and don’t have a passion for the project, then it might affect the progress of your startup. Perhaps this could give you more insight as to how you can build a great start-up team.

RocketDevs: Your Hiring intermediary

how to build a startup from scratch

We know how hard it is to hire the right candidate for your startup, one little mistake could cause you a lot. Hiring the wrong designer could end up giving your product a bad user experience, hiring the wrong developer could cost your product time and efficiency, and you might just end up quitting the whole thing.

So yeah we know hiring can be a hassle, especially when you do not even possess the skills to vet these candidates for quality. But we’ve got you covered.

Hiring is what we’re about at RocketDevs. We know how hard it can be and that’s why we do the hiring for you. We pre-vet our developers, ensuring they take the right tests, tick the right boxes and they’re cooked and ready to go.

All you have to do is get on our website, sign up, and find the right developer for you, and we’re affordable so you don’t have to break the bank.

Marketing! Marketing! Marketing!

After putting together a team and successfully building your product, your next line of action is creating a marketing plan. For this, you might need a marketing team if you can afford one, but we’re sure you’ve got that covered.

Marketing is all about letting the world know that you’ve got a working product you’d like them to try. A product that is tailored to their specification and solves whatever problems they might have encountered.

Marketing takes a lot of time, creativity, and most times money, there’s a lot that goes into putting your product out there, and it’s way beyond creating landing pages and running Facebook ads. There’s a lot of testing to do before finding what works for you, and it’s up to you and your marketing team to figure that out.

Funding Your Startup

Now that we think about it, we probably should have put this at the top of our list of things to do when building a startup from scratch, but if we’re being honest, it is best not to think about it too much at the beginning of the process, cause it might just deter you from even starting at all. If you have an idea, just get started on it and forget about funding at first and just get your idea going.

But then you can only put off funding for so long, there’ll come a time in the process of building a startup from scratch that you’ll have to talk about funding, building a product can cost money, and so does marketing. But where do you get the funding for your startup?

There are several ways to secure funding for your startup.

Crowdfunding

You could source funds from people out there, using platforms like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. You could set up accounts and talk about your product, and perhaps you might get lucky and have members of the public just help you out with the money to build your dream.

Angel Investors

Angel investors are people who come to your rescue to help you fund your startup. They might get some of their friends to chime in. They are people who understand the pain of building a startup and are offering to help you see out the process financially. Angel investors are quite successful in their ventures and are just happy to help you build your own.

However, they won’t just throw their money at you, you have to have a great product and must know how to pitch it accordingly, honesty and genuineness count when pitching to angel investors.

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Venture Capitalist (VCs)

Venture capitalists are people who invest heavily in startups, and they just don’t bring in finances, they also bring a certain attention to your startup. However, it can be quite difficult to reach out to them.

But you do not have to worry about that right now, cause they come in in about 3 to 4 years after you’ve launched your startup.

Accelerators

Accelerators are also another great way to secure funds for your startup, but they don’t just provide funding but also help you with networking, mentorship, and even opportunities.

RocketDevs – The Startup Team You Need

build startup from scratch
While building a startup from scratch can be a herculean task, RocketDevs has made it a mission to tackle the problem with simple solutions (Prevetted Developers).

If you’re a founder seeking developers to help bring your startup to life, there is no need to search rigorously through the pages of Google trying to find the best way to get developers for your project.

We are the solution you need. We are the best value for developers on the web, and the sweetheart choice for startups. We've got top-tier developers made just for you to help bring your project to life.

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