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Useful Start Up Tools To Help You Start and Grow Your Business

At Durham Start-Ups we’ve curated some great videos to help you plan and develop your business at an early stage. Using some of these simple, yet effective tools can help you think through your business concept, understand what you are trying to achieve and provide some milestones. Here are some of our favourites which we recommend.

Strategyzer has some amazing tools to use, at any stage of your business. They are simple and help you save time. No need to start with that dreaded business plan! We recommend Value Proposition Canvas and Business Model Canvas as your starting point.

 

Value Proposition Canvas – you can download the template from Strategyzer, free, but first watch these videos to see how it works.

 

Value Proposition Canvas (Introduction):

 

Value Proposition Canvas (Long version):

 

Business Model Canvas – you can download the template from Strategyzer, free, but first watch these videos to see how to develop your own Business Model Canvas.

 

Business Model Canvas (Introduction):

 

Business Model Canvas (Version 2):

 

Customer Profiling (Customer Avatar). Understanding your ideal customers is key, particularly at start up. You don’t have the marketing budget or time or resources to target everyone or any business. You need to be very clear who wants and needs your product or service – who can you solve a problem for. Do some research and validate your idea. This will help you gain and grow your customers. Be clear, be focused. Hubspot is a great resource for marketing tips and tools. You can use Hubspot to create your own buyer persona (customer avatar): https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona

 

Customer Avatar Tutorial – 7 Questions To Create Your Ideal Customer Avatar For Your Business by Jason Whaling, The Aspiring Entrepreneur :

 

Please note: Durham Start Up Portal includes links to other websites. These links are provided for your convenience to solely provide further information. They do not signify that we endorse the website(s). We have no responsibility for the content of the linked website(s).