9) Minimum Viable System for initial marketing - get 50 beta testers!

Now the product has a backbone there needs to be a consideration for the business processes! Start to look at automating the onboarding, but with a focus on the experience these new customers have. (It’s worthwhile looking at page 13 of AJK’s roadmap http://getting2alpha.com/downloads/Getting2Alpha_Breakthrough_3-Game-Thinking-Blueprint.pdf - we are between stages 2 and 3). Your aim is to remove the barriers to USING product. Your about to start getting leads and the last thing you need is a leaky bucket once you’ve got them through the funnel.

One of the common areas that can be an obstacle is data import. If your product needs a backlog of data to be present before the user can start to gain a benefit you have a BIG on boarding problem. Find out how you can reduce this need. Look for alternative user journeys to ease the pain during the initial data loading phase. Can you scrape other sources to help prefill/default lengthy data fields? You want to try almost anything to avoid a traditional data import – invariably the source data will be inconsistent and this will lead to crap data in your pristine new system which will only look bad on you! Remember - Rubbish In, Rubbish Out and you’re spending a load of marketing money telling them their old system is rubbish!