Startup Secrets: Turning Products into Companies | Harvard i-lab
by Parker · 92 things on Twos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=092JQrye9IM
- Even if you have a great product, you need one market of people that will use it
- You need enough money (usually more than you think) to build a great product
- Have the balls to hustle
- Find a really good product marketer. Not just writing ad copy. Someone who really understands the market and customer. Defines the market. And write a product marketing document to explain what the engineers need to build
- Raise more money than you need
- Really understand the market
- The expenses flip:
- Early on 100% is spent on R&D
- Expenses change from R&D -> Sales & Marketing
- Marketing is your pipeline, without a pipeline you don't have a business
- Develop value
- Develop less: focus on your CORE
- Partner for whole product
- Start up secret: co-create value
- Be your own customer
- Be open and extensible (Software APIs)
- Enable external multipliers to your value
- What problem are you solving? How significant is it?
- Make sure you are solving a valuable problem
- Do a before after
- Get out of the building and understand why customers will have joy if they buy your product
- Validation is $ + Why?:
- Understand the gain the customer gets, but also the pain they need to go through to get the gain
- There is inertia and risk standing in the middle
- Focus on ONE primary value prop for a single audience
- Look for the underserved market
- Target and segment that market
- For each potential customer ask what is their need?
- Then find similarities of needs for different users
- Then you don't need to change your marketing and product for each new user and they will refer you to new users
- What is your need? Make them get very specific so you understand what the actual problem is. Then ask what will you pay for it?
- Pad lock the door and put up a sign, nobody can come in until you talk to at least 3 customers
- Targeting segmentation: figure out the blatant critical need: busy people, need to write down things they need to remember
- When will people die?
- No longer just product market fit
- It's about go-to-market fit
- Narrow your target
- Segment it by need
- Focus your product
- Vital for
- Positioning, messaging, communication
- Packaging and pricing
- Channels & distribution, partner alignment
- Enables
- Reference selling, network effects, virality
- Overall business alignment
- Narrow your focus as much as possible
- Always validate from customer viewpoint eg NPS
- Take all the friction out of having a customer see, try, buy, implement, deploy, and own your product
- Make your product slippery
- Simple
- Advantage = Innovation * simplicity
- Less is more
- Knowledge management was supposed to be a multi-billion dollar market
- Evernote is simple
- Simplify your C.O.R.E. value
- Capabilities
- Of
- Really
- Exception
- Low to no initial cost
- You ultimately need to upsell customers to make a business
- LinkedIn
- People can monetize off the network
- Installs easily
- Change is risky, painful, time consuming & costly
- Proves value quickly
- Give consumers instant gratification
- Show them data, visibility on progress, reports to prove the value
- Plays well with others
- Easy to use
- Give them a delightful experience
- Templates
- ROI is obvious
- Quantifiable
- Increase revenue
- Or
- Reduce risk
- Drive a competitive advantage
- Your customers can't live without it —it's sticky
- Leave customer's wanting more
- Startup secret: disruptive innovation, yet non disruptive adoption
- Events force action
- Perfect is the enemy of good
- Hiring is the most important thing you do
- Sales people who say they don't care about money aren't good sales people. Fire them
- CEOs create the culture
- Write hand written notes
- Celebrate victories and anniversaries
- Never take credit, give it to the team
- Have fun, it's the journey not just the outcome