Introducing The Path Forward
How do you turn an idea into a valuable business in 12 months?
That's the question at the heart of a new framework that we launched today; The Path Forward.
The Path Forward describes the journey of ecommerce and marketplace startups from raw idea to valuable business in the space of 12 months.It's a practical guide for entrepreneurs that stresses the importance of acquiring a deep understanding of customers’ real needs, building emotional resonance into products from the start, quickly getting to revenues, growth and scaleable economics.
Central to the framework are our beliefs that it works best when ecommerce and marketplace entrepreneurs first focus on making sure they have a valid idea, then a valued product and then a valuable business, and that finding a point of emotional resonance with customers should be the first priority.
Our thinking has roots in the Lean Startup methodology and in Design Thinking but first and foremost it’s a distillation of what we've observed and learned working side-by-side with nine startups in our offices over the last two years.
Have a read, we'd love your feedback.
Forward Partners has written the launch content and will continue to contribute new articles each week but the goal is for The Path Forward to become a community project with lots of contributors providing actionable insight for startups.