1. Allan Chao
Startup Consultant
Startup V8
allan@startupv8.com
UC Berkeley Extension, Summer 2012

2. Question of the day:
What do you need for an idea to be
a viable business?

3. The Agenda
 Quiz
 Quick review of last session
 4 topics today…
 Website Introduction
 CMS Tools
 Market Research
 The process of building a website
 Team hands-on time!

4. Quiz Time
Good luck!
10 minutes max

5. Quick review of prior material
 Pitch  Pitch Deck
 Elevator Pitch  Cover
 Components  Mission / Vision
 Focus is critical  Summary
 Angel Investors  Team
 Investor’s fund  Problem
 Investor’s point of view  Solution / Demo
 Pitch deck (details at right)  Technology
 Naming Tools  Marketing
 USPTO, domain, Secretary of State
 Business Model
 namecheck.com
 Competition
 CrunchBase
 Milestones / financial forecast
 Dropbox
 Conclusion

7. Components to a Website
 Domain Registration
 $10/year
 = the data record of who owns what virtual
property
 Email
 (free with google apps)
 = what happens to an email to me@anything.com
 Web Hosting
 varies greatly, $10-$2,000/month
 = actual physical server cost, with hard drives,
networking, and electricity
 Web code
 code is free, engineers cost $$$
 = the HTML, PHP, or anything else that happens
when the website is accessed by a visitor

8. Domain Registration
 www.________.com
 Getting the ownership of virtual property
 A lot like owning real land.
 Once you own it, you can build on it, sell it, or anything.
 Generally very cheap, $10-20/year per domain
 Registrars:
 Namecheap.com
 Godaddy
 Use a dedicated registrar, not a “secondary” reseller

9. Buying already-registered Domains
 Domains that are already registered
 Legitimate reasons
 Domainers (domain name speculation)
 Cyber Squatters (typos, near existing brand names)
 Depending on the name, cost can widely vary
 Usually at least $1,000, up to millions
 Private sale (sometimes through broker)
 Auctions: SEDO, Godaddy
 Entertaining website that is not accurate at all:
http://www.valueis.com Why? Because it’s the brand.

10. Pro tips for domains
 Top Level Domains
 .com, .org, .net
 The rest only get for branding protection
 Some companies/products are named for the domain
 del.icio.us , task.ly , bit.ly , fold.it , chronolo.gy , my.betali.st
 Domain hacks better for tech-savvy crowd, not for mainstream
 For startups, register domains for 1 year
 Startups tend to die or change their names, so no reason to register
for longer
 Get the privacy add-on to avoid junk mail and scams.
 Lots of scams out there! Be very careful with your domain.

11. DNS = Domain Name System
 Foundation of how the internet works
 Technically, converts www.______.com  135.57.249.152
 Commonly called the “internet phone book / address book”
 Frequently part of your registrar,
you can tell it what to do with
the domain for various
instructions
 http://_____.com
 http://www._____.com
 http://somethingelse._____.com
 Email to ____@_____.com

12. Google Apps
 Free* and Awesome!
 * free for small accounts, like startups.
 Better than the alternatives
 Lots of great collaboration tools
 Email
 Calendar
 Documents
 Chat
 Moderately-easy setup (requires DNS changes)

13. What about the website?
 Must set up DNS
 Point to someone else’s server
 We will do this for the market research phase
 pointing to other web apps (launchrock or CMS)
 Point to our own server (must buy hosting)
 A CMS like Wordpress or Joomla running on our server
 Or, our own custom code (web application)
 We will do this in a few sessions

15. What are CMS?
 Content Management System
 Modify a website without programming
 Generally built for non-techies, but even techies use them
 Easy to install, easy to update, easy to manage
 Examples
 PHP-based: Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, CakePHP
 .NET-based: DotNetNuke, Umbraco
 Proprietary: Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, Moonfruit
 Many, many, many more

16. Pros and Cons of CMS
 Pros  Cons
 Easy to install  Limited by feature-set of the
 Easy to update chosen platform
 Easy to manage  Platform change cost is very high
 Requires minimal  Not a good foundation for a
programming or custom web application
engineering effort  A lot of things “out of your
control”
The Bottom Line:
 Sometimes, use a CMS to start, but plan to start over later.

17. Launch Page
 Send people to it while the “real site” is in development
 Real website will take lots of time to build
 Launch page gives some info, gets them interested
 Collect email addresses for a mailing list
 Contact them as you progress.
 Do a “hot” launch, not a “cold” launch
 Assess business opportunity
 Run advertising to see marketing costs (CPC, CPA)
 Analytics on visitor data

18. Launch Page: (a.k.a. Coming Soon)
http://sixrevisions.com/design-showcase-inspiration/25-beautiful-examples-of-
coming-soon-pages/ , http://launchsoon.com/gallery.php

19. Building a Launch Page
 Use an online Launch Page builder.
 You will replace it later, anyway. Consider it temporary.
 May have a small cost. Consider it a “bridge” cost.
 Will need to set DNS records to point the domain to the host
 Online Tools that build Launch Pages
 LaunchRock
 Kickoff Labs
 Unbounce
 MyBeta List
 Wordpress theme: Launch Effect

20. Wordpress Platform
 Much more robust than a simple launch page…
 Lots of very useful features
 Lots of customization
 Can run a whole business website
 Many small business websites are running on Wordpress
 It’s my tool of choice for small business websites
 Can even be customized at the programming level
 Extensible to be like a custom web application
 Very simple custom web applications can use a wordpress
foundation.

21. What is Wordpress?
 Wordpress.ORG
 A free, open-source platform. Managed and improved
by the goodwill of many programmers around the world.
 Built for all (simple) websites, NOT just blogs.
 Easy to use, but requires installation
 Wordpress.COM
 A company (for profit) that makes it simpler to get
started with wordpress.
 Free to start, but charges for “add-ons”
 Can be limiting, and doesn’t have the full flexibility of
Wordpress.ORG

22. Wordpress.com Step 1 - home

23. Wordpress.com Step 2 - signup

24. Wordpress.com Step 3 – theme

25. Wordpress.com Step 4 – dashboard

26. Wordpress.com Step 5 – editing

27. Wordpress.com Step 6 – site is live

28. CMS vs Custom Application
 CMS  Custom Application
 Easier, faster, cheaper  Harder, slower, costlier
 No technical skills  Lots of technical skills
 Limited by platform  Unlimited… dream big!
Our strategy: use a CMS to put something together quickly,
as a placeholder, while we develop our main web application

30. Our Goals
 Is this a viable business
opportunity?
 What is the market interest in
this product?
 Who are the competitors?
 Who are the ones we need to
be most concerned about?
 Who are our users/customers?
 Do some customer
development!!

31. Google SERP
SERP = search engine result page
Just do Google searches for related
keywords… see what comes up
Which ones are direct competitors?
Which ones are niche focused?
Which ones are unrelated?

32. Google Insights and Google Trends

33. Google Analytics
 The purpose is to
understand who your
visitors are
 Where are they coming from?
 What are they looking for?
 What are the trends?
 Requires minimal setup
 Complex tool with lots of
data
 Learn it during the
marketing pilot, then use it
for the real product.

34. Google Adwords
 The purpose is to understand what kind of advertising works best
 What keywords are best?
 What ads work best?
 What is your conversion rate?
 How much does a user cost?
 Costs money to run
 set a budget before starting
 Requires significant setup
 Complex tool with lots of data
 Learn it during the marketing
pilot, then use it for the real
product.

35. In-Person Market Research
 Run focus groups
 Ask them lots of questions
 Have them take surveys
 Do interviews with
potential customers
 Use your existing
relationships
 Reach out to new people

36. When to stop?
 It’s a judgment call, stop when you feel comfortable.
 Perfect results don’t guarantee a successful product
 Yet, a product can still succeed despite terrible results

38. Before we begin…
 Building a “web startup website” is very different from
building a “small business website”
 Just like starting a “web startup” is very different from starting
a “small business” – remember last session?
 By a factor of at least 100…
 Much more difficult
 Much more expensive
 Much more time consuming
 You get what you put into it (money, time, effort)

39. Why so different?
 When you build a web application, you’re actually
building something completely new that’s never been
done before.
 When you build a small business website, you’re actually
just using someone else’s web application
 All the small business website builders are web startups
 Wordpress.com
 Wix
 Weebly
 SquareSpace
 Moonfruit
 If you use that, you are just a customer “user” to their startup.

40. Software Product Development
 Creating the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
 Functional Requirements
 Wireframes
 Graphic Design
 Code
 Content (Copywriting, Social Media accounts, analytics, etc.)
 Deploy (aka Release)

41. Functional Requirements
 Questions to answer
 What customer problem
does this product solve?
 What are the customer
use cases?
 How will the customer
use this product to solve
his problem?
 How will the product
make money?

42. Sitemap

43. Wireframes

44. Graphic Design

45. Content
 Every single screen… text, images, videos
 Instructions to the user
 Search-Engine-friendly URLs and content
 Long tail keywords
 Content Uniqueness
 Any emails that are sent?
 Blog posts?
 PR releases?
 Social network accounts (Facebook, Twitter)?
 Analytics tools

46. Code
 HTML, CSS, Javascript, Jquery, Node.js, Django,
python, Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET, Java, ….

47. Traditional Software Development

48. Agile Software Development
 Start Small
 Minimum Viable
Product
 Iterate quickly
 Track user data
 Flexible software
 Release frequently
 Cycle weekly or every
two weeks

50. Homework (In Teams)
 Register the domain
 I recommend namecheap. A different registrar is OK if you already use a registrar.
 Set up Google Apps (for the email and calendar)
 Set up Launch Page
 I recommend LaunchRock. Using a different launch tool is OK, but may be more time
consuming.
 Get it the launch page running live, and test it
 Market Research
 Investigate the Google SERPs for related keywords
 Set up Google Analytics, optionally Google Adwords
 Spread the word about your new startup and send people to your launch page
 Begin the Design
 Write out the functional requirements
 Design a sitemap
 Don’t forget… Work on the pitch deck as much as possible with your team.