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5 Steps To Turning Your Technical Expertise Into A Services Startup

Ali Hussain, Partner Vixul Inc

Please go to URL to open the worksheet: https://airtable.com/appLiNIwUVCgUM7yi/shrvKaCVsXeqlNV7u

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Engineer Took A Fast Growing IT Company To An Exit

Now partner at Vixul, trying to make it easy for others to grow their tech services company

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Agenda

The Emerging Tech Services Opportunity
Build Your Startup Plan In 5 Steps
Conclusion
Q&A

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The Emerging Tech Services Opportunity

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What Are Emerging Tech Services (ETS)

A professional services company focused on solving a set of specific problems for a defined customer-base using emerging technologies

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The Opportunity For An Emerging Tech Service Startup

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Build Your Startup Plan In 5 Steps

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The 5 Steps

What do you bring to the table? Workshop 15 mins
What problem do you solve? Workshop 15 mins
Who are your customers? Homework
What are you offering? Homework
Get out there! Homework

Please go to URL to open worksheet 1: https://airtable.com/appLiNIwUVCgUM7yi/shriXMdbYjmd5YC9X

Homework worksheet 2 is on: https://airtable.com/appLiNIwUVCgUM7yi/shriXMdbYjmd5YC9X

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Step 1: What do you bring to the table

You already have one paying customer your employer
Understand what you’re already selling so you can sell it as a business
Examples:

Flux7: Performance and benchmarking, pipelines and distributed systems, Have seen CI/CD
Vixul: Experience how to grow tech services companies, teaching DNA, Fewer blindspots to early-stage pains

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Step 2: What problem do I solve?

This is WHY your solution is important
Check out TEDTalk by Simon Sinek, also a book: “Start With Why”
Examples:

Flux7: Valuable developer time is wasted dealing with inconsistent systems and busywork
Vixul: A founder of a tech services company wastes time and money, making mistakes that could have been avoided with the right guidance

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Step 3: Who are your customers?

Understand your customers

The problem they have
How to solve it
Where to find them

You sell to both a business and a person
You know how to sell, you just haven’t sold in this context
Examples:

Flux7: Middle managers of innovation teams in large enterprises
Vixul: Founders of tech services startups with 10-50 employees

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Step 4: What are you offering?

We will be “Working Backwards” from the problem similar to Amazon’s way of working
Some rules of thumb on pricing:

30% gross margin is minimum to survive
50% is comfortable
Your annual salary with the 3 zeroes removed per hour is 50% gross margin
You can price higher than you think

Examples:

Flux7: Help innovation teams at large enterprises use cloud and containers to gain developer productivity through automation
Vixul: Help early-stage tech services founders scale their business by adding focus and operationalizing their business

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Step 5: Get out there!

Sort out finances

Check money saved
Can supplement with pre-seed funding

Pitch yourself at a conference

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What we accomplished today

You drafted the question to what you can sell
You have next steps to figure out who you can sell to
You have a framework to check the practicality of starting a company

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But what’s the worst thing that can happen?

Success:

Monetary reward
Your career trajectory makes you an executive
Feeling of accomplishment

Failure

Learn more about business
Learn how to sell and practice taking risks
Live without regret
A loss of 2.5% of your lifetime earnings

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Two pieces of advice as you embark on this journey

Do a 6-month experiment. If you can’t find customers you find a job.
Everything not directly bringing to you first signed contract is procrastination
Reaching out to potential customers
Incorporating learnings from your experiments reaching out

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“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”

George S. Patton

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Thank you and Questions

If you found value from this workshop and feel Vixul’s work is important please help us spread the word - Please publicly appreciate this workshop

https://www.linkedin.com/company/vixul/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliasgharhussain/

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