What I learned from a 5 day business incubation session?

Hello friends, I joined a 5 day business incubation session recently. In this blog, I will be sharing what I learned from the 5 day session so that you won't have to join such sessions.

Firstly, the main thing that I learned is that "Entrepreneurship is all about problem-solving". The first step of starting a startup is to find the problem that you are solving. You should always be sure that you are directly attacking the problem.

After finding a problem, don't directly start working on solving it. First validate your problem. Because in most of the cases, the problem which you are attacking won't actually be a problem. To prevent this, you must validate your problem.

Problem Validation

The process of problem validation is simple. It is all about "asking questions". Firstly, take time to know your audience. And, be sure that the problem you are trying to solve is actually a problem and not just a symptom. Then, ask a lot of questions to validate your problem. Ask the questions to the people who have faced the problem. Ask the questions to the people who have spent more hours on the craft than you.

Always remember, the ultimate truth is not with you, it is with the one who will be using it.

In order to validate your problem, you may also go for A/B testing. If you have got more than 1 problem statements, then validate both and choose one out of them using A/B testing.

Find the Solution

After you have validated your problem statement, try to find out the solution for the problem. To find the ultimate solution, you must have a clear idea of your targeted customer segments, target market, revenue streams. In that way, you can craft the ultimate solution for the problem.

Prototyping

After you know what you are trying to solve and how you will do it, you must move on to the Prototyping phase. In order to make a prototype, always have a clear idea of the "need to have" and "good to have" things. For this, you must be close to the end users. And remember "What fits one may not fit the other". Always start with a rough prototype. Make the simplest rough prototype of your product in small time frame, in that way you can be sure of your goal.

Interact with your customers

After you have prepared your first prototype, give it to your targeted customers for testing. Take feedbacks from them. Ask questions to them. Find ways to improve your product. In this way, you can make an actually good product.

I also learned how to pitch in front of investors. The most important thing for pitching to investors is "prototype". You can only gain the trust of investors by showing a prototype.

Here are some more things that I learned from the session:

1. Always stay hungry to learn.

2. You don't need to be the best, you just need to be better than the rest.

3. Risk is always relative.

4. The quicker you fail, the closer you get to success.

5. You will never become good at your craft if you never lose sleep on it.

To sum up what I learned from the session, Entrepreneurship is all about finding a problem, validating it, finding a solution for the problem, building a product for solving the problem and improving it as per the customer's need. This is all for today's blog, Thank you for reading this and,

Stay hungry, keep hustling! 🚀