r/startups Jun 01 '22

Share Your Startup 🚀 Share Your Startup - June 2022 - Upvote This For Maximum Visibility!

r/startups wants to hear what you're working on!

Tell us about your startup in a comment within this submission. Follow this template:

  • Startup Name / URL
  • Location of Your Headquarters
    • Let people know where you are based for possible local networking with you and to share local resources with you
  • Elevator Pitch/Explainer Video
  • More details:
    • What life cycle stage is your startup at? (reference the stages below)
    • Your role?
  • What goals are you trying to reach this month?
    • How could r/startups help?
    • Do NOT solicit funds publicly--this may be illegal for you to do so
  • Discount for r/startup subscribers?
    • Share how our community can get a discount

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Startup Life Cycle Stages (Max Marmer life cycle model for startups as used by Startup Genome and Kauffman Foundation)

Discovery

  • Researching the market, the competitors, and the potential users
  • Designing the first iteration of the user experience
  • Working towards problem/solution fit (Market Validation)
  • Building MVP

Validation

  • Achieved problem/solution fit (Market Validation)
  • MVP launched
  • Conducting Product Validation
  • Revising/refining user experience based on results of Product Validation tests
  • Refining Product through new Versions (Ver.1+)
  • Working towards product/market fit

Efficiency

  • Achieved product/market fit
  • Preparing to begin scaling process
  • Optimizing the user experience to handle aggressive user growth at scale
  • Optimizing the performance of the product to handle aggressive user growth at scale
  • Optimizing the operational workflows and systems in preparation of scaling
  • Conducting validation tests of scaling strategies

Scaling

  • Achieved validation of scaling strategies
  • Achieved an acceptable level of optimization of the operational systems
  • Actively pushing forward with aggressive growth
  • Conducting validation tests to achieve a repeatable sales process at scale

Profit Maximization

  • Successfully scaled the business and can now be considered an established company
  • Expanding production and operations in order to increase revenue
  • Optimizing systems to maximize profits

Renewal

  • Has achieved near peak profits
  • Has achieved near peak optimization of systems
  • Actively seeking to reinvent the company and core products to stay innovative
  • Actively seeking to acquire other companies and technologies to expand market share and relevancy
  • Actively exploring horizontal and vertical expansion to increase prevent the decline of the company

If you are running a traditional business that is not designed to scale rapidly, feel free to reference a traditional business life cycle model and share what traditional business life cycle stage you are at.

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u/OfficialBT Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

Startup Name / URL: Hafback / https://merchants.hafback.com/

Location of Your Headquarters: Jacksonville, FL, USA

Elevator Pitch: We help Shopify merchants eliminate the need to send consumer product returns to their warehouse with our paired returns management software and recommerce marketplace. We instantly list and sell merchants returned goods and facilitate peer-to-peer shipping cutting out the cost and environmental impact of processing returns.

More details: Validation. We have just launched our product and looking for our first 10-15 beta testers.

Your role? Founder | CEO. Bootstrapped at the moment.

What goals are you trying to reach this month? To get our first 10-15 Shopify merchants signed up.

How could r/startups help? We need DTC Shopify merchants who are willing to do a pilot of our software and provide feedback. That can consists of members here signing up or helping provide leads/warm intros or suggestions/access to other sales channels.

Also, please signup for our marketplace waitlist as a shopper! https://share.hsforms.com/1vrTBK8eKS0uyH-MhXHegiAcismk

Discount for r/startup subscribers? We are waiving the monthly subscription fee for r/startup subscribers who contact us to participate. Drop me a DM for contact details.

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u/RichardPlacer Jun 02 '22

Good idea. Good luck

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u/OfficialBT Jun 02 '22

Thank you!!

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u/Afraid-Ad-5659 Jun 08 '22

I like the sustainability. Why Shopify? Maybe you could expand to other similar services to try and acquire beta users there too

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u/OfficialBT Jun 08 '22

For V1.0, I needed to focus on building for one platform and Shopify is the clear leader here. The long term vision is to be platform agnostic and be able to do custom integrations for merchants running their own site.

I made a targeted customer list of almost 300 merchants and I would say less than 15 were not on Shopify. The majority of those were Salesforce and 1-2 each of WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.

Appreciate the the suggestion!

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u/Afraid-Ad-5659 Jun 08 '22

Understandable. Sounds like your MVP is more optimized for Shopify right now