The Handbook of Building Digital Products
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Founders Handbook to Building a Successful Digital Business: An Introduction

ByIshwar Jha

The Founders Guide to Building a Successful Digital Business is packed with strategies, tools, checklists and templates to guide your journey to convert your entrepreneurial dreams into a reality and help you achieve your goals.

It gives systematic, step-by-step strategic plans, from helping you decide if you are ready to be an entrepreneur to Ideation to Understanding Competition to Business Planning to Building a Prototype to Launch to Scaling up.

I, as a founder of 6 businesses, realized that for every successful business, you need to identify something interesting to sell, someone interested in buying and also someone interested in paying for it. Whether you are a startup founder, SME business owner, or chairman of a large-scale enterprise, you are always brimming with questions like:

Using this definitive guide, you will be able to: 

  • What are the customer problems that my product will solve?
  • Who is my real customer?
  • What is my target market?
  • SWhat is my niche? Am I working on something unique? What is my unique selling proposition?
  • Is the opportunity big enough?
  • What is the potential market size?
  • What metrics will I use to measure my progress and success?
  • What current alternatives exist in the market that my target market currently uses?
  • What features and benefits can I add so that my product is better than the current offerings?
  • Is now the best time to launch my product in the market?
  • LWhat are my customer acquisition, growth and retention strategies for taking my product to the market?
  • LWhat are the critical factors that will influence my product?
  • Am I physically, financially and emotionally ready to launch this product?

Using this guide and going through the checklist and exercises, I aim to help make it easier for you to find the answers to these questions, evaluate your position and excel in business, knowing well the strategies and actions you need to achieve your business goals.

You will find strategies, processes, and tools that I used and found valuable in my journey of over 30 years when I worked in the corporate sector – from a coder to CEO in global enterprises and later when I became an entrepreneur. I have also used and suggested it to entrepreneurs during my consulting, training, mentoring and boot camps. It has helped many entrepreneurs to plan, prepare, execute, and achieve their business goals.

My Journey: From Coder to CEO to Entrepreneur

I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. My mother tasked me to sell clarified butter in the local market. When I was barely seven, I made my first sales and earnings when I was seven years old. I still remember the profound feelings of achieving my goals.

After my graduation, I shifted to Mumbai. As I had bills to pay, I joined the corporate sector. My 18 years of corporate stint taught me vital lessons to start and grow the business the right way. Early in my career, I learned that I need to act like an entrepreneur every day on my tasks and goals. That entrepreneurial mindset was the prime reason behind my becoming CEO of Digital at Zee Entertainment in 13 years without any godfather or lofty university degree.

In 2010 when I started on the entrepreneurship journey, my sole purpose was to impact people’s lives positively.

I started running Zero to Crore workshops in colleges through which I have connected with over 23000 students and startup founders. I found that many youngsters with the right skill sets wanted to become entrepreneurs but didn’t know what and how to do things the right way. Many were scared of the reality that over 90% of businesses shut down within 18 months of their commencement.

Once I decided this would be my new calling, I started studying strategies that worked for me (and those that had not benefited me). I researched extensively on processes that top global leaders/entrepreneurs followed. I made foolproof blueprints on all the steps and strategies needed to start and grow a successful digital business.

I’ve incorporated everything I’ve learned, unlearned, understood and assimilated over three decades of my life — from an employee to entrepreneur to educator. This to-do workbook has crystal clear strategies, well-defined steps, and simple exercises that’ll help you discover the direction on which to tread to become a successful business owner yourself.

Let’s get started!