From Seed to A: What is your next step?

This week's Mobileye deal is a great achievement, which most startups aiming for. Surprisingly this deal didn’t leave the owner to rest – they are already asking – what is the next step. Surly, the startup industry was built by this question. An entrepreneur constantly challenged every technology by asking themselves – what is the next step.

 Looking at the startup's lifecycle, I think that this is an imperative question to A round stage. Succeeding A round is an entrepreneur's bootstraps into the marketplace. At this point, it's all about scale, making growth, getting customers, and building the marketing infrastructure and not just the product.  What is the next step? Where is the right customer local or abroad? What need does the product answer? How to compete with corporate over on qualified engineers?  Etc.

in the past month, I have attended meetups, and I set down and asked some entrepreneurs, from various fields, brainstorming on the most important elements that every startup needs to take into account, immediately after round A. Here is short insights list.

Finding the right market need

CB Insights recently parsed 101 post-mortem essays by startup founders to pinpoint the reasons they believe their company failed. The number-one reason for failure, cited by 42% of polled startups, is the lack of a market need for their product.

At this stage, it's time to figure out where all the action is aimed to.  Formulating a SWOT matrix of the arena (not the product), will give a good view of what the market future needs and understanding the competitors. This will assist in developing the right product and design of your marketplace.

The questions that should be asked - does your idea solve a problem? Can you find potential buyers? Is there a market?

These questions will give an external look to the product offering, and determine if it really meets the existing market problem and short-term goals by the MVP set.

Evaluate your target audience

Many great ideas can flounder in the marketplace because there isn't an audience for the product or service.it may come as a supersize to you, but asking if my product has an audience, is a trebling question is any cooperation frequently. Nevertheless, 31.2 billion $ are spent worldwide every year on research in the marketplace. 40% of these researches are focus on understanding what do the customers need and are ready to pay for.

Analyzing the startup's target audience is essential, it will give a peripheral view of possible challenges, and maybe will require flexibility in product development. Understanding the current and future needs of your target consumer can be the difference between success and failure.

TACT is a good example. They learned the problems in transferring information from the salesman to the CRM within the exciting dashboards. Hence, identify the customer's needs. Up-to-date sales data flow bi-directional to and from the CRM. Their solution is harnessing the smartphone's accessibility, to upload sales information to CRM remotely, in a conversational way such as SMS or voice.

Build Your Team

Three years ago, Bill Gross, who founded Idealab, did research within the startups he had invested in throughout the years. He wanted to know why startups fail. The main reason was about listening to the market. The number-two reason for failure, cited by 32% of polled startups, is building the team. Building the right team means execution, adopting change frequently, formulating creativity in real-time, its ability to face the customer. In most startups, we usually find the Millennials - the Y generation.

Millennials, statistically don’t stay in the same position for more than two years, studies show that 6 of 10 Millennials are willing to listen to other jobs. Furthermore, they will choose to work where he sees value, challenge then more money.  Studies show that today's employees perhaps are more difficult for conservation. But, overwhelmingly, are ready for the challenge, want to learn, work hard, get ahead at work, and sees their work as part of their own definition and its development.

The cold statistics show that one of every 10 startups will eventually succeed. Having a great idea or funding is not enough.  Finding the need your product answer and target audience will ensure durability. So what is your next step?