7 Tips to start your startup in a developing country like Morocco

Don’t get frustrated in the beginning

Patience is a startup superpower.

Why ? Because we are continuously seeing opportunities, and knowing when to act is the key to winning. Now, in developing countries, other variables may be added, be it funding, legal infrastructure or market education. This will not come easy and you should be prepared for this. This barrier of patience, once overcome, can lead to beautiful market opportunities. Patience is understanding that overnight success can take ten years to occur.

You should also be willing to reject things that come before the right thing. Even though there is no indication of the right thing, patience can give sufficient perspective to determine your end goal

Don’t Create a Need — Find One!

If you’re the next Steve Jobs, you can skip this part. But chances are you’re not, we’re not all visionaries (nor can we afford to be, as it is expensive to educate a market). So instead of thinking about what would be really cool to have in 10 years, think about an actual problem that you can solve. Also, don’t assume that it is just because you have this problem that everyone has it. What if you’re different ? .

startups despite the complexity of the markets and the scarcity of the resources available, young Moroccan entrepreneurs hustle to create their own jobs, stay in the market, bring value and participate in the development of their country’s economy.

You need to test. Is this problem real ? Can it be solved ? How ? What value does my product bring to the user ?

Without the answer to these questions, you’re not ready yet to build your product.

It’s easy to build a product. Write the code, design the products, working on the user interface — these are cool and fun. There’s no challenge. But you could be inventing the meat burger for a vegetarian country.

Do not build a business without getting your hands dirty.

Yes, building and designing an app is cool. Pitches, investors, press, conferences are great but it means nothing if you didn’t get your hands dirty in the first place. And that means talking to customers, get to know them, what they like, what they don’t like, what they NEED. Know your customers more that they know themselves.

If you know their pains, frustrations & goals, you will be able to design a product that brings value to them. A nd THAT is how you build a killer business.

That being said, i’m not saying that you shouldn’t brainstorm or build your business plan and all of that, just know that these are here to change. You will pivot, you will change your mind. That’s normal

Test your assumptions

If you want to start an airbnb for professionals, you better start by asking yourself if businesses are willing to be in a temporary address.

For a company that always receives postmail or needs a permanent address. Probably not.

But it’s a good start, make those assumptions and open the discussion, maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. Data will tell you (not your guts). You’ll be surprised at what you can learn by testing your assumptions.

Once you find your ideal target and user persona, ask questions and validate or refute your hypothesis.

Find questions that will make you really know your user. What’s important for businesses that are looking for offices ? What’re their frustrations ? What would make their life easier ? …

You will be surprised to see that most people don’t know themselves nor can tell you what they need. You need to come up with those answers and ask the right questions and iterate on ideas. When you spot something interesting, dig deeper.

By iterating on ideas you will find the big pain that your product will solve, the struggle that affects a good number of people.

Each batch of people with bring new assumptions, test them on the other batch and you can go on and on and on

Each new round of customer questions must go deep and test new assumptions. Based on what you learn, update your assumptions.

And so on and so forth, until it solves the pain point and people would pay for it.

Upon consultation by a public institution, I was asked about the levers and barriers to entrepreneurship in Morocco and whether it could become a “startup nation”. When we think of the “startup…

Better done than perfect

You must know the quote “If You’re Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late”, here’s why:

You can’t predict what “prefect” means to your customers if they didn’t use it first

Need to beta test your product, to be in a “build it a debug it” phase. This will save you time and money. Don’t work on something people will never use.

Don’t focus on scalability first, your vision should be scalable but not your first tasks when you beta test your product. The more straightforward you are in your approach to fix bugs and improve your product the earlier you can go to market.

Don’t grow before time

There is no second chance to make a first impression. Even though we just talked about launching your product already and improving it in the beta test, that doesn’t mean go big on the “launch”.

Launching a product that doesn’t work or doesn’t fit to your market can be a killer game for you. That’s why you need to take time during the beta test phase. I know we can’t wait to go big, tell everyone about our product, get traction and talk to the big guys. Be patient. Your time will come if you pass this stage.

Build your early access beta tester community and collect honest feedback to improve your product. Do it quickly, the market won’t allow you to take your time during this stage. The market is very competitive and if you reach your market fit you will not be alone.

Once you feel that you get some good feedback and correct your main functional bugs, ask your community how likely they are to recommend your product to their friends and family. The more objective and unrelated those people are to you, the more honest those feedbacks will be.

If the answer to this question is most likely. It’s time to go big !

startup

When you reach your Product Market Fit. You’ll know it

You probably heard a million times about product market fit or PMF. Everyone tries to give it a definition. There is no silver bullet to reach the product market fit. If you ask yourself, did we reach our PMF ? Chances are you didn’t reach it yet. When you reach your PMF you know it.

How ?

1- Your product is solving a specific problem to a specific target and they are willing to pay for it

2- Your CAC (customer acquisition cost) is less than your LTV (the total amount a customer is expected to spend in your products, during their lifetime), in this scenario you are more likely to be scalable

3- People are recommending your product

When you answer these statements, it’s the beginning of a new journey..

Final words ?

Find a product that solves a problem, talk to customers about it. Test, improve, repeat.

And that is the silver bullet. ❤️