"Where should we invest our precious resources and effort right now?"
To really understand what your
startup's fingerprint should be, you'll need to look at your team's
skills, culture, motivation, maturity as well as the demands of your
business model.
Do you understand your current needs
across the six areas of sales, marketing, finance, legal, management and
technical/product?
How do you fill those needs today?
What are your projected needs?
If you don't know, find someone who
does. A bad spending decision can be devastating to a startup. Overbuy and you lose precious capital. Don't spend enough and miss a
critical step.
Take the time to survey all the
options. In most cases, the price and help choices cover a broad
range. As we like to say, there are Different Kinds of Cheap (DKoC).
You can actually map your spending needs
into a DKoC graph like the one shown above. Each color represents one of the
six areas mentioned above (Marketing, Legal, etc.)
Of course, mapping your team's skill
needs is just the tip of the iceberg. Make sure your partners are
personally a good match for your team. If you don't communicate well,
it doesn't matter how good your team is.
We use a process called
"right-matching" to elaborate on these questions. It provides an assessment of where your start-up is, what your current and projected needs are, and recommendations on fulfilling them. Click here to contact us if you would like to receive a sample report or for additional information.
