Note’s from a post on “How to build and launch a web product: an operational framework”.

The order below matters, though many steps can be worked on in parallel - don’t get too far ahead.

The basic outline

Links to articles are updated as they’re written

1. The Idea (problem to solve, value & growth hypotheses)

2. The Team (who is doing what, exactly)

3. The Market (competition, “why now?”, addressable market)

4. Customer Segments / Profiles / Personas

5. Surveys

6. Interviews

7. Overview Statement (boiling down mission & vision)

8. Overview Story (rough collection of initial user stories)

9. Advisors

10. The Roadmap (timeline of sprints & milestones)

11. Funnel Stages & KPIs

12. UI Spec

13. Tech Stack Decisions

14. Database Architecture

15. UX Flow Chart

16. Moodboard

17. Name

18. Logo

19. Financial stuff (business model, forecast, where the initial $$ is coming from)

20. Legal stuff (corporate structure, team comp agreements, terms & conditions, trade names)

21. StyleTiles

22. Wireframes

23. Mockups (do as few as possible here)

24. Cutups

25. Hookups (i.e. make it a functioning product)

26. Staging

27. Coming Soon Page (email queue)

28. Closed Beta

29. Open Beta

Foundational mistakes affect your ability to raise money

Since mistakes and bad habits formed early on can become costly savvy investors (even in pre-seed rounds) will scrutinize not only your team, product, and market, but also often-overlooked things like customer segments and funnel metrics.

In order to get funded you’ll need a validated hypothesis of who your customers are and be able to explain in detail how you’ll continue to acquire them.