As a founder, you’re busy working on your idea, aiming to build the next million-dollar product. You strive to ship the product out quickly and make a big impact. However, soon, you start to wonder —
“Hey, do people even need this product?”
“How would I know if customers want my product unless I build it?”
It’s a classic chicken and egg problem, and many founders find themselves in the same boat tackling these questions.
To try and answer some of these questions (and perhaps more) from founders, SaaSBoomi in collaboration with Kerala Startup Mission organized a Playbook Roundtable discussion for early-stage founders at Kochi last month. Here’s a download on how it all started, the questions we addressed, and how we were able to equip founders with the right frameworks and tools to answer some hard questions.
The Big Why
This story goes back to February 2024, when the SaaSBoomi team came to Kochi. After talking to key players in the ecosystem, they realized founders in Kerala often wrote code and built products before validating their ideas. As a result, they struggled to reach $10K ARR and found it challenging to sell their product.
This led to the idea of conducting a Playbook Roundtable for early-stage founders with a focus on idea validation and finding an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your product.
The idea was to reach out to an audience who were:
- Pre-Revenue or Prototyping Stage Startups: Founders and teams in the early stages work on validating and refining their startup ideas.
- Startups Considering New Products: Startups exploring new product lines or expansions as part of their growth strategy.
- Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Individuals or teams with a nascent idea, looking to validate and shape it into a viable startup.
The Big Day
We had a lot of founders turn up for the session; from hobbyist developers looking to take their product to the market, to folks dabbling with ideas, and even some curious students. All of them had a common factor—they had started building the product but hadn’t validated their idea yet.
The session was led by Matthew John, founder of Typito AI and a SaaSBoomi volunteer. Here are the ideas that Matthew focused on during the session.
1. Ideal Customer Persona (ICP): A focus on Customer & Problem
The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the targeted customer segment that will benefit from your product. Having a clearly defined ICP is important as it helps in addressing the specific pain points of the target audience. As a startup founder, understanding the problem (job) you’re solving for your customers means identifying their key pain points or challenges and how your solution helps them overcome these hurdles.
2. Market Position & Differentiation: Competitive Landscape, Unique Point of View (POV) & the Right to Win
Understanding the competitive landscape helps you discover your niche and differentiate your startup. The participants analyzed their competitors, identifying strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to reveal gaps and opportunities in the market.
This session also emphasized finding your Unique Point of View (POV)—a perspective that sets your business apart from competitors—and establishing your ‘Right to Win’, the unique advantage that positions you for success in a crowded marketplace.
Through exercises and teardowns, the founders learned to articulate what makes their solution different and why they are best positioned to win over their target customers.
3. Go-to-Market & Value Proposition
A well-crafted Value Proposition communicates why customers should choose your product over others. During the roundtable, participants learned how to create a simplified value proposition canvas to connect customer jobs, pains, and gains with their product features. Additionally, they also understood the importance of developing an initial go-to-market strategy that focuses on key segments where they can gain early traction.
Conclusion: Going beyond the drawing board
We kept the session interactive to create a space for founders to share their experiences and air out questions about validating their ideas.
The session concluded with a group photo, leaving plenty of insights for founders to apply to build their products. From the feedback we received in the week after, it was clear that Founders took home a fresh perspective and practical tips – the only thing to do now is to keep moving onwards and upwards! ?
This article captures the learnings from our Playbook Roundtable Session. To learn more about Playbook Roundtables check out our initiative and join the community for exclusive insights and takeaways you can put to action.
