What is my route to market? Who will buy our product or service?
The website thestartuptoolkit.com is a great place to begin pulling together ideas for your new social businesses.
Created by Rob Fitzpatrick in East London, we think this web service is a great way to construct, layout and reflect on your social business ideas, or to develop a coherent new business model.
This site provides you with a toolkit, or matrix, which enables you to think about, plan and keep a record of how you are to get your new product or service to market, who is going to buy it and how you will manage risks?
All new businesses, social or otherwise, involve risk and surprising responses to events – the better your plan in the first place, the better you are placed to cope with these unexpected results of your business actions.
A great way to see how thestartuptoolkit.com system works is to access the ‘instant demo’ section of the site, right at the top of the home page.
It takes you to a demo ‘canvas’ where you can answer the key questions in your business model. You can register with the site and save your deliberations so that you can return later. You can also make your ‘canvas’ public or private too.
A short blog post understates the clarity of thought and potential help that thestartuptoolkit.com offers. The site plans for additional features and services, like better collaboration tools, make this both a useful tool now and in the future.