How to bootstrap a business for beginners

I am meeting so many people nowadays with startup ideas and wanting to build their side projects that I thought I would create a simple guide based on my own experience and from my interviews with other entrepreneurs in my podcast

Step 1 - Find an audience

I know that it is a bit contra intuitive but it will help in the long run. Start by thinking about the things in life that bring you the most joy. Is it reading about startups? Running? Building houses? After that, start finding out where the members of that community hang out (could be Instagram, reddit, twitter, etc…) and start hanging out with them, get to know their buzz words, the main influencers, their problems, etc…

Step 2 - Find a common problem

Now that you are part of your favorite community, you probably understand what their problems are. For example, if you are into building houses, maybe you realize that it is hard to find quality materials or to know how to price a building, etc…

After finding the problem you want to solve, ask your community what are their current solutions. This will help you both determine how important the problem is for them and what solutions are there in the market.

Step 3 - Build a solution

Now it’s time to build the minimal viable solution to solve the problem. Pick only the necessary features and make them work without any flaws.

Step 4 - Marketing

Share your product with your community and see their reaction. It’s important to collect all the feedback you can to determine if your product is actually solving their problem. Based on your users feedback you can determine what features to work next…

This is an oversimplified guide because in reality there are many ways to build a product and each of these steps will take a lot of time and experimenting. But these steps already form a great base for you to follow.