Weekly question poll <!channel> As an early stage startup founder, what do you believe is the most critical area in which to focus your financial resources? I personally know a number of business owners, particularly early-stage startups that are unsure how to spend their money. That is why I wanted to ask the majority of the founders here what are the essential areas in which startup founders should focus their financial resources? 1️⃣ Employing Good, Qualified Talent 2️⃣ Self Education 3️⃣ Product Development 4️⃣ Effective And Consistent Marketing 5️⃣ Professional Social Media Strategy 6️⃣ Outsourcing 7️⃣ Other (Let us know in thread of this message)

Definitely the talent and managing the talent. Both equally important.

Founder must be even-handed. Product development and marketing must both commence from day one.

In the mobile apps realm: market research and analysis. The ones with the best data can win big. There's actually a lot of data in this market. It just has some costs.

self education and research, figure out if your idea has a good product market fit or not, who should you target and after that it should be produced development

Good point @Ajitesh Mishra, I also think good research is crucial to a successful startup.

1️⃣ - 4️⃣ is critical at the early-stage, so getting it right should be the priority of a great founder looking to attain product-market fit that is defensible. 5️⃣ - 7️⃣ can wait until PMF is attained.

7️⃣ Lead generation / user acquisition

@Stefan Despotovski Is developing your brand part of your marketing? If not, I'm a 7 with branding. Vetting your idea is the #1 priority, nothing else matters if your idea doesn't have legs, don't waste your time and money after that. If it's a go, work on the product and the brand, get a clear picture of your identity and voice for your product that speaks to your audience, also work on your approach with investors. Then get a marketing plan together for launch that includes social media strategy and lead gens.

In the early stage of a startup, the focus should definitely be on validating the idea, getting the market fit. Without testing and validating ideas, any professional Social Media Strategy or Consistent Marketing would be a waste of time and money. You can validate and shape ideas without high quality product development. At some later point you will want to re-write your app (for better performance, better UI/UX, deprecated libraries, etc). So I would invest in talented people who can understand the market, the customers, and shape up a good desirable product.

I absolutely agree with both @Julia Murariu and @Jana Bramwell before investing in anything you should validate your idea, that is a must. maybe I should have specified and said startups that have already validated their idea. And I believe branding is part of marketing, a big part, but still a part of a general marketing strategy.

Just going to chime in again to expand on my point earlier and why this is important. Lead gen and user acquisition is the mechanism that gets you paying users for your product. It's the system every business owner SHOULD want to see and understand... Do you have a go to market strategy? Has it been proven to drive user engagement and successful product adoption? Do the economics stack up? You can build a following, an email list, a community of engaged prospects without a brand or an offer... As long as your content (and product) speaks to your target market and works to qualify leads that are ripe to trial your product. This gives you stability for marketing and one of the most valuable assets you can own - audience attention!

@Stefan Despotovski ok, got it, then is not early stage anymore. Next step after idea validation, is the product-market fit. (_better visual explanation: _). At this point you need to invest in marketing and have predictable/scalable KPIs, which of course in the next stage you will want to optimize.

As a solo tech founder, I've realized that finding a mentor or joining a small cohort with a mentor is really essential for me, at least for my first project to succeed.