5 essentials for every tech founder

Based on my experience of building tech startups and helping others since 2004, below are the key essentials every tech founder needs to succeed. Please note this is not an exhaustive list and I’ve only picked the key ones.

All of us start with an idea. Most of us create tech startups to solve an itch we may have. Others study the market and identify a gap. Some just stumble upon an idea and decides to do something about it.

Irrespective of how we came up with the idea, it needs to be validated before we spend our lives trying to create a business out of nothing. Some validate the idea by speaking to a few people. Others validate by conducting extensive market research including organising focus groups.

1. Vision and Drive

Vision alone isn’t sufficient. You need to be passionate about it. Passion leads to drive, the drive to create a meaningful product used by hundreds of other businesses and/or millions of people.

Vision and drive are two key fundamentals that the founding team needs to bring to the table.

2. Know-how

Next, you need the know-how of building a tech startup. If you have never built a business before or have not taken an MBA, you would need serious help to acquire the know-how.

To rise to this challenge, accelerators were born replacing the old incubator model. Today the world is full of accelerators with varying business models of their own.

Techcelerate is a trusted founder network, which can provide the know-how you need to get started. Specific areas our Specialists can help you with:

• Setting up and growth – Andrew Threlfall and Manoj Ranaweera
• Scaling via channels – Stewart Townsend
• Structuring your tech startup for growth and financial governance – David Bailey
• Legals – Stuart Scott-Goldstone through Aaron & Partners
• Account and finance – Paul Whitney and Hallidays
• Product architecture to development – Amila Gamage and Wire Apps
• Building your team – Chris MacCarthy and Focus 5 Recruitment
• Scaling mobile tech startups – Gary Partington of Apadmi
• Sci-Tech Daresbury ecosystem including office spaces and grants – Paul Treloar

Techcelerate is not an accelerator or an incubator (even though, both Deal Lite and SkilledUp Life were incubated within). We have no issue with our Tech Founders attending accelerators.

3. Talent

Companies are built by people. The smallest tech startup is just the founder. If you are lucky, you might start with a few co-founders. You might be a competent software engineer who could single-handedly create the first usable version of the product. Or you might learn to create the first usable product using no-code apps. You might then struggle to commercialise without know-how and talent.

Once you subscribed to SkilledUp Life, you can start building your team, as we provide unlimited free talent, who would commit 1 to 3 hours per day for 3 months under a Volunteer Agreement.

As you can see from the below image, 13,000+ free talent on SkilledUp Life can help tech startups from designing the product (UI/UX) to customer support and beyond.

Techcelerate product partner, Wire Apps could also provide the help you need to build your product. This could range from fractional CTO service to building the full product. They can also integrate free talent through SkilledUp Life to keep your product development costs low.

If you need full-time employees, Techcelerate Talent partner, Focus 5 Recruitment can find the best UK talent.

4. Capital

No business can be started with zero capital. If you register your tech company in Germany, it would require circa Euro 25,000. But in the UK, you can register your company for free if you know what you are doing. If not, this would cost less than £20. You would still need cash to buy a domain and for a few other essential services. If you have £1k to £10k, that could go a long way, in the UK.

SkilledUp Life subscription starts with £30/month for unlimited talent.

We believe in gaining traction before chasing investors. This does not mean we don’t believe in the value investors can add to a growth of a tech startup. Our experience shows that it’s better to de-risk for investment while not diluting founder equity prematurely.

5. Intelligence

Whilst not mandatory, it would make sense to know what’s happening around your world, especially in terms of the competitive landscape. It’s vital for any tech startup to position their offering in the market place to minimise direct competition as much as possible.

Deal Lite is a good way to keep tabs on your UK competition. Deal Lite pricing starts from £50/month, but currently include this as part of Techcelerate annual Membership.

The lonely road to Exit

Building and scaling tech startups is not straight forward. There is no formula that gurantees succes. As the CEO of your tech startup, you journey to eventual Exit is a lonely one. Andrew Threlfall (20 year Malinko journey), Manoj Ranaweera (8 year edocr.com journey) and David Bailey have all gone through this journey.

Do get in touch with Manoj, if you like to consider joining Techcelerate.