1. Define the Market:

Getting to product/market fit is the holy grail of startups - it’s the difference between floundering growth and rocket fuel. When you launch a new app it’s critical to pick a segment of the market to go go after hard - we call this your beachhead. It’s critical to validate your thinking with real customers. We have a variety of tools to help you do this including surveys, short-form customer meetings, and industry analysis and benchmarks. Building strong understanding here will help you raise capital later.

2. Customer Interviews:

Once you pick a beachhead, the your focus shifts to getting close to customer. Customer interviews help you understand your customer’s key pain points. This includes qualitative pain (how the problem makes them feel) and quantitative pain (financial impact). Doing these interviews right is crucial - it’s the difference between a customer that never buys and an eager buyer and short sales cycles.

3. Define the MVP

Armed with insights from customer interviews, you'll decide what you need to build. Here you'll define the feature list that maps pain to app features you can build to address that pain. We'll work with you to narrow the list to the most important features that can be built quickly - this will help you to launch quickly and confidently.

4. Wireframe App:

 you’ll move into the visual realm, crafting the skeletal structure of the app through workflows and wireframes. This is where things get exciting - you’ll turn customer pain points into an interactive app design that you can show customers you interviewed. It’s also an important step in prep for developing your app - it ensures you have a shared vision among stakeholders before the process of coding begins.

5. Usability Review:

People need to love your app. User experience (UX) reviews with experts helps make sure your app is easy to use for your intended customer. Depending on your needs, we may include folks from the Wildfire Mentor Network to provide feedback and guidance on how to make your app great right away.

6. Validate with Prospects:

Before your app gets built, validation with prospects helps make sure you will get paying customers right away. This involves presenting the app's concept or prototypes to a subset of potential users and collecting feedback. This proactive validation step serves as a reality check, refining and optimizing the app based on real-world insights. You’ll also get customer commitment by asking them to sign a beta agreement to confirm the app has value and they are committed to using it.

7. Code MVP (Minimum Viable Product):

Your hard work upfront helps speed up app development. Our goal is to get your MVP built in 6 weeks. Doing it fast helps keep the amount of investment you’ll need down and will give you rapid feedback from customers. Software is easy to change and iterate on - the key is to get something out there and start getting feedback.

8. Launch Beta Program:

When the app is done and tested, you’ll launch your beta program - inviting a select group of users to test the MVP in the real-worl. The beta phase is a crucial bridge launch and scaling up, as user feedback becomes instrumental in uncovering unforeseen issues, refining features, and ensuring the app's readiness for a broader audience.

9. Go to Market:

Before you raise capital, you need to test your marketing and sales plan. This isn’t a full scaled-up attack, it’s a test to see what works and validate the the model will scale. We help you with resources to test marketing channels, develop a repeatable sales funnel, and begin adding people to the process. Nailing this down while you’re still in the accelerator will pay dividends as you grow.

10. Raise Funding:

As your app gains traction, the final phase involves seeking external funding to scale operations. We look at various pre-seed options including a go to market accelerator (The Battery), Angel funds, and individual investors. Wildfire has resources to develop your financial forecast, pitch deck, and prepare for investor due diligence.