10 Courses On Building A Product Startup Using Services
By: Sramana Mitra
Tags: It, Startup Lessons, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Entrepreneur

This is for IT and IT-enabled businesses wanting to understand how to get early clients by providing services, as well as existing IT-service companies looking to transition into product businesses.

Why is this set of skills so important?

Raising funding for startups in Silicon Valley is a low-probability game. Fewer than 1% who try actually succeed.

Outside some of the global startup hubs, the startup ecosystems are mostly immature, and the probability gets even lower.

Seed investors are mostly operating as growth investors, expecting that the entrepreneur will somehow manage to bridge the gap and bring a concept to realization. In fact, what these investors really want is to invest in businesses that have traction, not just validation.

As an entrepreneur, how do you go from concept to traction? How do you bridge the seed capital gap? What do you do if you are full of dreams but stuck in the gap between concept and seed?

Offering a consulting service is one of the best ways to bootstrap your way to early revenue. You could sell your services to a prospective customer and be paid while validating your business assumptions. This will help in two ways: you get to know your clients better and you validate your assumptions.

If you take this course, you’ll see how other successful entrepreneurs have done just that.

Don’t forget about other ways of bootstrapping your startup before you are ready for outside funding. The following courses cover other bootstrapping methods that have been used by successful startup founders.

In fact, you could very well end up combining several of these methods above.

You could be a solo entrepreneur bootstrapping with a paycheck and piggybacking on a platform, providing services to a customer. You then productize.

You could be a startup team bootstrapping with a paycheck and piggybacking on a platform, providing services to a customer. You then productize.

You could be a startup team bootstrapping with a paycheck and piggybacking on a platform, providing services to a customer. You then productize. And you directly exit.

We love bootstrapping, but we never rule out outside capital. This set of courses covers the various stages of startup funding, from pre-seed to series A. Get to know how investors think, so you can speak their language and attain that elusive Holy Grail of investor-entrepreneur fit.

All of the above courses are based on The 1Mby1M Methodology. This collection contains a tribal knowledge of successful tech entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders that can’t be found anywhere else. By taking those courses, you can gain instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving IT-business methodically, step by step, instead of guessing.

If you have any specific question, come and see me at a 1Mby1M free roundtable.

P.S. We’re looking to partner with community leaders who write blogs, teach and mentor entrepreneurs, and help support startup ecosystems in every corner of the world, no matter how small or how remote. I have written about my own journey building startup ecosystems around the world, and how you can draw from my lessons from the trenches. If you’re interested in partnering with 1Mby1M, please consider joining our ambassador program.

Looking For Some Hands-On Advice?

For entrepreneurs who want to discuss their specific businesses with me, I’m very happy to assess your situation during my free online 1Mby1M Roundtables, held almost every week. You can also check out our free Bootstrapping Course, our Udemy courses, YouTube channel, podcast interviews with VCs and Founders.

Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash.