Making it happen
So, your prepared,
you have identified your know-how
you understand who your customers are
you know how your going to support them
you have worked out how to get your value delivered
identified the right revenue model to enable you to scale
Describe it.
How to start building a Development Brief?
The RAGDAR (Roles, Areas, Goals, Data, Abilities, Results) project brief provides you a framework to think about your potential solution
Roles. The types of people and what they want and need from the solution.
Areas. Lists the various areas of the system like accounts, user dashboads, settings, onboarding and your key Value capture and delivery areas.
For each role, in each area
Goals. What are the goals they have.
Data. What data is required to be captured and presented?
Abilities. What abilities do you need to give each party?
Results. What results are expected?
Review the Development Brief guidelines and contact Robin if you need help filling them out.
Validate it.
Ensuring your investment is going to resonate with your audience is the next critical step. A this stage you need to to take the pitch deck created by the Commercialisation plan and talk to as many of your target market as you can.
Depending on the solution, this may simply need to show you Value and solution and gain the feedback necessary, sometimes you need to create a working prototype to validate key risk aspects within the solution.
Plan it
Based on the type of solution you have chosen, and the starting point you have (idea, working model, working prototype, existing legacy system) Redgum and Transform Studios help you plan forward the next stages.
You can read about how Redgum plan the technical aspects of the solution in our Deliver Architecture description.
Cost it.
A common question everyone has is “how much is this going to cost?”
The actual answer comes from doing the commercialisation plan, creating a brief and then developing a software architecture draft. Before you have done all that however here is a series of ballpark estimates from previous solutions to give you a feel.
When you are ready, talk to Rob to get a clear understanding.
Fund it.
A common reaction at this point is to create a pitch deck and go and talk to some Angel investors or Venture Capitalists.
In reality less than 5% of businesses successfully go through this famous path, and of those that do more than 80% still fail.
Self funding
There are many alternative funding paths especially if you already have an existing business.
Work out what you can afford to invest monthly and create your plans and growth to sit within this budget.
Create a plan so that you see a rapid return on investment, use this income to increase your rate of progression.
Use existing sales and savings and explore government grants and the R&D Tax concession. This allows your investment dollar to go much further.
Pre-sell licenses to customers for a grandfathered discount. This gives you 2 critical things, cashflow and proof that your customers see value and are willing to pay something.
Consulting. Quite often your know-how can be delivered in a 1 on 1 consulting format. Use this to generate revenue to pay for growth, to collect customers and testimonials, and to refine your know-how.
Start as a “Result as a Service” or Wizard of Oz. Make it look like its an automated solution but still do the manual/high risk steps yourself, slowly automating elements until you’ve removed yourself from the behind the curtain.
Competitions and other incentives. There are a wide range of competitions and incentives open, each one has a “point of view” or a reason for being run, you need to find something that fits your solution rather than trying to shoehorn your solution to win a small competition.
Investment options.
If you do need investment there are a range of options open to you depending on your know-how and situation.
Corporate “sponsorship”, this is where you get a large company to pay for the development, either they take a stake in the ownership OR they get to influence the product to suit their needs but you retain ownership.
Collective sponsorship. Group several smaller customers together and make them an offer to invest in your solution. They get to use the solution, they get to shape the solution for their needs and they get a return on their investment from the rest of their industry.
Angel investors. Typically Angels are solo or small groups, ideally they have come from your industry, know the rules of your industry and see the value in your solution. They contribute some money but their bigger input is connections and ideas from their network.
Crowdfunding and CrowdEquity. Depending on the type of solution, the audience and the “mass market appeal” crowdfunding can be a great option for both getting starting capital, getting a customer base and critically proving to other investors that there is a market that values your solution.
Venture Capital. Once you have established the product, got customers and can prove you can acquire customers consistently for a price (Cost of acquisition), and that you can retain customers after acquiring them, THEN you can approach venture capitalists to help you scale the sales, marketing and additional product features to appeal to wider audiences. Generally, the key question from most VCs is “how will you make this a $100 Million dollar company in 5 years” you won’t get anywhere with them until you prove from sales this is possible.
Banks. In Australia if you have a house you can loan against or a business with assets or proven cashflow you can loan against, then you can approach a bank, otherwise they won’t talk to you until you have a tangible item they can take.
Build it.
The process for software development
Each project has different requirements and risks, the process your developers use should reflect the needs of your project.
Ensuring your developers understand your solutions risk profile and have chosen and adjusted their process to suit your situation is critical to the long term health of the solution.
Understand Redgum’s Adaptive Deliver Process and how it adjusts to the risks in your solution.
Sell it.
Marketing and sales are critical to the success of your solution. As with everything else the right sales and marketing strategy will depend on your solution and your market.
Working with Transform Studios, we will help you plan out the online and offline elements and help you tune them in over time.
Establish a sales pipeline.
A typical sales pipeline will involve a few steps of taking your prospective customer from unaware you exist, through the journey of discovery to the point they are ready to engage, the sale is the end of the pipeline.
For successful software platforms the first sale is only the first milestone, then once engaged, how do you onboard them, ensure they are successful using the solution and keep them delighted and engaged throughout your solutions lifecycle.
A critical point to clear up early on is the hand over between the sales pipeline and the onboarding to your solution.
Analytics and tracking.
Define expected statistics and track these to see what the actual values are and tune in.
Tracking every touch point with a customer is critical for scaling a solution.
Website, SEO and SEM
Setup website and online presence with the right mix of social media or other industry specific groups.
This should be an integrated part of your sales pipeline with key metrics going back into your tracking system.
Awareness and engagement
Create market education materials (like this website) so your prospective customers understand what is involved and what is in it for them.
Protect it.
When you start working with your know-how you will need to ensure you are covered legally.
Here is our mutual non-disclosure agreement. Both parties will need to be disclosing trade secrets, you for your know how, the developer for how it translates into a SaaS platform.
Here is our Development Agreement for when your ready to start the build.
You will also need some of the following
Privacy statement for your website - Here is ours
GDPR Statement
End User License agreement.
Terms and Conditions for using your service.
Disclaimer. We are not lawyers, you will need to discuss the full range of issues with your lawyer.
Exit it.
You should always start a new solution with the end in mind, it doesn’t matter if you don’t end up where you expected but it does change many of the decisions you make along the way.
Typical exits include
Public listing. This is a big dream to be listed on the stock exchange and be publicly traded. This is a good goal but it sets up a series of decisions and steps you otherwise don’t need to take.
Trade sale. Selling to a competitor, to a larger portfolio group or to a company that sees what you have as strategic to them. The main reasons a company buys another is either to get access to the solution or to get access to the customer base. The decisions you make when building your solution may influence what makes your company attractive.
Management Buyout. If your staff believe in what your doing and love their job often when you want to leave they can group together to buy you out.
Portfolio buyout. There are several large investment companies that simply buy companies for their ongoing revenue, then use their reach and influence to increase those revenues once they own the company.
Generational change. Building a legacy and handing a great income to the next generation is a common goal for a lot of people. If this is your goal the decisions you make are much more long term than a 3 year trade sale to your competitor.
Through Transform Studios, Redgum have access to a broad range of contacts in all of the above specialities, we help you navigate the growth of your system in order to prepare you for the outcome your aiming for.
Work out if you a ready to engage with a development team?
Take this survey to work out what aspects you still may need to address. If you need help book a time to work through it with Robin.