I keep a list. Every time a founder tells me what they “need” before launching, I add it to the list. It now has 247 items.
Custom logo. LLC formation. Trademark registration. Professional photography. A CRM system. A detailed business plan. An accountant. A lawyer. Brand guidelines. A content calendar. A social media strategy. An advisory board.
Two hundred and forty-seven things that people believe they need before they can start selling.
They need seven.
I know this because I have launched businesses - my own and others’ - with only these seven things. Everything else on that 247-item list is either unnecessary at launch, a form of procrastination, or something you can add after revenue starts flowing.
Here are the seven.
1. A Clear Problem Statement
One sentence. Who has the problem and what the problem is. Not your solution. The problem.
“Freelance designers in the DACH region spend an average of four hours per week on invoicing and expense tracking.”
That sentence does three things: it identifies a specific customer (freelance designers in DACH), names a specific problem (time spent on invoicing and expense tracking), and quantifies the pain (four hours per week).
If you can't write this sentence, you don't understand your market well enough to launch. Go talk to customers until you can.
If you can write it, you have the foundation for every other decision - what to build, how to price it, where to sell it, and who to sell it to.
2. Evidence of Demand
Not belief. Not hope. Evidence. Exactly: proof that real people with this problem would pay real money for a solution.
The evidence can take several forms. Pre-orders from a smoke test. Email signups from a landing page. Verbal commitments from customer interviews where people described the problem in detail and said “yes, I would pay for that.”
The evidence doesn't need to be overwhelming. Ten pre-orders. Fifty email signups. Five strong interview responses. Enough to say: “This isn't just in my head. Real people want this.”
Without evidence, you're guessing. Revenue is the only real validation, but pre-revenue evidence of demand is the next best thing.
3. A Minimum Product or Service
Not a finished product. Not a polished product. The minimum version that delivers on the core promise.
For a digital product: the simplest possible version with one core feature that solves the one core problem. For a service: a clear description of what you'll do, for whom, and what outcome they can expect. For a physical product: a working prototype, even if it's ugly.
Your first version should embarrass you. If it doesn't, you spent too long building it. The goal of version one isn't to impress. It's to learn. You learn by putting something in front of real customers and watching what happens.
Every feature you add before launch is a feature you built based on assumptions rather than evidence. Ship the minimum. Observe. Then build what customers actually need.
4. A Way to Accept Money
This sounds obvious. But I have met founders who spent months building a product and never set up a payment system.
Stripe takes fifteen minutes to configure. PayPal takes ten. Gumroad takes five. There's no reason - none - to delay this.
Your payment system doesn't need to be sophisticated. A Stripe link in an email works. A PayPal.me link works. A bank transfer with an invoice works. The mechanism matters far less than its existence.
Set it up before launch day. Test it by buying your own product. Make sure the money arrives and the receipt sends. Then move on.
5. A Way to Reach Your First 10 Customers
Not your first thousand. Your first ten.
Who are they? Where are they? How will you tell them your product exists?
For most first-time founders, the first ten customers come from three sources: people you interviewed during validation (they already know and trust you), communities where your customers gather (they have already seen your posts), and your personal network (they want to support you).
You need a plan for reaching these ten people on launch day. Not a marketing strategy. A list. Actual names or specific communities, with a message ready for each.
Map your watering holes. Know exactly where your first ten customers will come from. On launch day, reach out to every single one of them.
6. A Sales Page or Offer Document
Your product needs a place where a potential customer can understand what it does, who it's for, what it costs, and how to buy it. That place is a sales page or a one-page offer document.
The sales page doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be clear. It needs to answer the visitor’s four questions:
- What is this? (headline)
- Who is it for? (one sentence)
- What will I get? (three to five bullet points)
- How much and how do I buy? (price + button)
You can build this in two hours on any landing page tool. The copy matters more than the design. Spend your time on the words, not the pixels.
7. A Feedback Mechanism
After your first customers buy and use your product, you need to hear from them. What worked? What didn't? What did they expect that they didn't get?
This doesn't require a sophisticated system. A personal email after purchase asking three questions works. A Google Form works. A five-minute phone call works.
The feedback mechanism matters because your first ten customers are your product development team. They will tell you what version two needs to be. Without their input, you're guessing again.
Set up the mechanism before launch. Automate it if possible - a thank-you email that goes out 48 hours after purchase with a link to a three-question survey. But even manual follow-up works at the scale of ten customers.
What You Do NOT Need
Here's the partial list of things founders think they need but actually don't - at least not before launching.
You don't need a logo. Use your name in a clean font. Nobody has ever decided not to buy a product because the logo wasn't professional enough. They decide not to buy because the product doesn't solve their problem or the page doesn't explain it clearly.
You don't need a company. In Austria, you can operate as an Einzelunternehmer (sole proprietor) and start selling immediately. You can formalize the company structure later when revenue justifies it.
You don't need a trademark. Trademark it after you have proven the name has value. Before that, it's an expense with no return.
You don't need a business plan. Business plans are comfort blankets. Write a one-page experiment sheet instead.
You don't need a co-founder. You can start solo. Find a co-founder later if you need one. But don't let the search delay your launch.
You don't need perfect. All great things start terrible. Your version one is supposed to be rough. That's how you learn fast enough to make version two good.
You don't need social media followers. Ten direct contacts who trust you're worth more than ten thousand followers who scroll past your posts.
The Real Checklist
Print this. Tape it to your wall. Check each item off. When all seven are done, launch.
- Clear problem statement (one sentence)
- Evidence of demand (pre-orders, signups, or strong interviews)
- Minimum product or service ready to deliver
- Payment system set up and tested
- List of first 10 customers and how to reach them
- Sales page or offer document live
- Feedback mechanism ready
Seven items. Not seventy. Not seven hundred.
Everything else is either optional, premature, or a way of avoiding the one thing that matters: putting your product in front of a customer and asking them to pay.
The checklist is short because starting is supposed to be fast. The complexity comes later - after you have revenue, after you have feedback, after you have proof that the market wants what you're building. Then you add the logo, the company formation, the trademark, the business plan.
But first, you need the seven things. Only the seven things. And then you need to launch.
