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How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers

704 points by itsbenlee 8y ago

h3ft 8y ago
most detailed guide drop I've seen in a while on here, thanks
- itsbenlee 8y ago
  Appreciate it! I'll be pushing some bonus material next week. Here's how to get on the list yobenlee.com -> Read My Book
daniel_iversen 8y ago
Looks very interesting, but the doc is very busy right now. If you want to download a PDF copy of the doc for reading on the go, here's the link (let it load for a while): https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uqt0neYHCPxu-aUl4CuSQ/export?format=pdf https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uq...
- itsbenlee 8y ago
  Thanks!
- brogrammer2019 8y ago
  Thanks
- tugberkk 8y ago
  I was also wondering putting a PDF version on a Github would be more efficient to everyone. Thanks.
- jonathansorum 8y ago
  As someone further up in the thread posted: give the guy some love and download it from his website AND get it nicely formatted with a proper layout. Go here https://first100.yobenlee.com https://first100.yobenlee.com
csytan 8y ago
My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers (92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it full time for 1.5 years so far. A couple things I've realized while doing this: 1. Business is a competition. Much like in sports, skills are only built up through practice. For an entrepreneur this means actually selling something. You will start at level 0. There is no substitution for actually doing the work. 2. The bigger you grow, the easier it gets. A year ago we were running around like headless chickens not knowing what to focus on. Now that we've got a core group of customers, and it's much easier to decide where to go. We can start to plan a month or two months out now. Opportunities such as partnerships also present themselves as your business grows larger.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Unrelated but I found your portfolio site to be really funny with the pointer clicks and portrait changes Business looks interesting but Im not the target demographic
  - itsbenlee 8y ago
    Appreciate your perspective. Which portfolio site are you referring to?
    - Kagerjay 8y ago
      https://csytan.com https://csytan.com
      - itsbenlee 8y ago
        Never heard of him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        kornish 8y ago
        Kagerjay's comment is responding to csytan's comment, not your post.
MuffinFlavored 8y ago
I have an interesting question. Say there is an already established business that has more than proven the idea is viable. What does it take to... join the same market space? Can you offer the same features at the same price? Can you offer the same features at a lower price? Can you offer less features at a lower price? Are there cases where there is only room for one player and no matter what you do, you will not be able to steal any sizable amount of market share from them?
- csytan 8y ago
  "What does it take to... join the same market space?" Speaking on the SAAS space. IMO the bar for entry is getting higher every year. It's getting easier and easier to build apps, and the number of developers keeps growing. What does it take to join the same market space? Here's some strategies: 1. Find a niche that is being ignored and really needs your specific product. This is getting harder to do. 2. Raise money. One way to build a good product is to throw good developers at it. 3. Give yourself a longer runway. Think years instead of months. 4. Buy an existing business, and run it yourself. "Are there cases where there is only room for one player and no matter what you do, you will not be able to steal any sizeable amount of market share from them?" Definitely. If you go very niche, you'll find areas where there is a strong competitor dominating small a space. It might not be worth entering the space because the market is so small.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    >>Speaking on the SAAS space. IMO the bar for entry is getting higher every year. It's getting easier and easier to build apps, and the number of developers keeps growing. The flip side of the coin is that demand for software is increasing, as software is "eating the world". This is why average salaries for software developers have been increasing: growth demand is outpacing growth in supply.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- 8y ago
georgiebest 8y ago
Great guide, very well detailed! Just what I needed, thanks!
- itsbenlee 8y ago
  Awesome!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
alwaysreading 8y ago
Thanks for sharing! If you’re looking for more ways to bootstrap your business I highly recommend The $100 Startup - https://amzn.to/2KkP25a https://amzn.to/2KkP25a
rolleiflex 8y ago
This is super timely — looking forward to take a look at this in the evening. Wish this was in an ebook format so I could stick it into my Kindle and read it that way though. You might want to check out Calibre, it's an app that automatically converts to more ebook-friendly formats. Might be worth a shot. BTW - you might want to just host the PDF on your website behind an email wall and put it behind Cloudflare. I just spent 10 minutes trying to get the PDF, it's that busy on Google Docs. Edit: I just tried to convert it, it works okay, not super great, since the source is PDF. I'm sure you have the raw text document, you can flawlessly convert from that to EPUB/MOBI if you want.
- itsbenlee 8y ago
  Will check out Calibre. Appreciate the feedback! You can get the PDF downloadable link here: first100.yobenlee.com. Will work on EPUB/MOBI formats!
  - asadlionpk 8y ago
    Please do those formats. Many read on iBooks and pdf is hard to work with. I also tried calibre on the PDF, but that doesn't produce a good output. Thanks for this.
    - itsbenlee 8y ago
      Already pinged my designer. If you want to opt-in on my page, I’ll make sure we push these formats before the holidays! Thanks for the feedback.
      - asadlionpk 8y ago
        Awesome
        itsbenlee 8y ago
        EPUB formats have been pushed live on my page!
abraae 8y ago
I do like your agency brand (Rootstrap) but as you may have found, its one of those words that has unexpected meanings in other cultures :)
exodust 8y ago
Presentation is not good. Endless headings followed by double space followed by short paragraph or bullet points. Hard to read, annoying to scan. I can see a lot of generic fluff. There may be pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance.
- yetihehe 8y ago
  > There may be pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance. I've read 1/4 but carefully and already found several pearls. Mind you, some people will already know 80% of knowledge in this book, but it's not the same 80% for anyone. I won't tell you what is usable because this book is very general and different parts are usable to different people.
defenestration 8y ago
Very insightful. While reading the article, I realised that having freedom is my core motivation. And that (a bit of extra) freedom is the biggest thing my company can give people. We enable people who are diagnosed with cancer to be in charge. To not feel defeated, to make decisions and set their path. Will use this to update our messaging. Thanks for the article!
funkaster 8y ago
> Helped launch more than 500 mobile apps I don't want to discredit the author... but that number seems way too high. 500 apps for a period of "more than 10 years" (which usually means prob is just 10 years or really close to it) implies that you would've had to release (on average) 4 apps per month non-stop during 10 years. How can you have time to do anything else? I get you're not developing each app, but if you're helping them, then you must allocate some reasonable amount of time per app, otherwise your contribution would be close to zero (not relevant). Was that a typo? I could believe 50, but 500?
- fyfy18 8y ago
  My understanding was OP has been a consultant for startups, in the traditional sense of advising what works and what doesn't. Depending on how involved OP is and how high level they are working, that may only involve spending a few hours per week per client - I'd imagine even just joining a weekly retrospective and advising a team would be pretty valuable.
encoderer 8y ago
I will circle back and read this over the weekend but my advice is this: Get to 10 customers, and then double down on anything that worked. Some ideas for the first 10: - write an essay about something interesting that you can weave your business idea into, submit to tech blogs like hackernoon - join a maker group that can help you in an informal quid pro quo with social media shares and upvotes - launch on hacker news, product hunt and indie hackers. All have their rituals. Spend a little time, not too much, to get it right. - contact all the people you talked to before/during product development (bc you did talk to people, right?) - use an seo keyword research tool or just start searching for things and use the suggestions at the bottom of the google results. Write actual content on your website that is directed toward answering these questions. Seo compounds slowly so start early. - find places your customers are (questions on quora or stack overflow; Facebook groups; etc) and learn about them and interact without being spammy. These are the techniques we used to take Cronitor to 10 customers and then hundreds more.
- gamzer 8y ago
  > find places your customers are > we used to take Cronitor You clearly have skin in the game due to following your own advice.
throwaway6694 8y ago
Nicely formatted PDF version: http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-First.pdf http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-Fir...
- iKevinShah 8y ago
  Thanks :) Much better than "Print to PDF" option
  - jonathansorum 8y ago
    Which is infinitely better than me accidentally sending it to my home printer...
- checker659 8y ago
  Or, better yet, thank the author himself by downloading it straight from his own website : https://first100.yobenlee.com/ https://first100.yobenlee.com/
  - dgut 8y ago
    That's a nice looking sales page.
  - Kaveren 8y ago
    Why do I need to give my name and email so I can be added to a mailing list before I can even see the content? Obviously this isn't a problem because the submission has the content, as does the other commenter's direct link, but I just hate this sort of UX. Let me see the value of your content (not a sales page) and if I really like it I'll subscribe to a mailing list after.
    - quakenul 8y ago
      Why does the author have to write a book just to get your E-Mail? It's a transaction. Obviously as the consumer you would prefer having the upside without the downside. The same is true for the vendor. We usually meet somewhere in the middle and call it a day.
anongraddebt 8y ago
I took a startup course in the MBA program at one of HBS/GSB/Wharton/Kellogg that was taught by a (in my estimation) great VC. Arguably the most insightful class I've ever taken. I'll give two sets of insights: anecdotes and principles. (A1) The founders of a successful custom apparel startup didn't get even close to 100 customers until after they had tried two different distribution channels. First, they opened a store and that didn't work. Second, they tried to sell on-line and that didn't work. Finally, with implosion imminent, they tried a hybrid model where you get measured in the store, but every purchase is made on-line and then delivered. It worked. (A2) Co-founder of one of the publicly-traded food delivery companies told us how he started out. Was hungry, realized he couldn't order online, so he sits down and codes an initial web page (as well as an API). Asks a friend of a friend that runs a restaurant to let him list the restaurant on his new site. Guy gives him $140 for one month. Figures he'll just knock-on doors to add restaurants, but managers kick him out with no meeting. Realizes if he walks in the back door (alley) and pretends to have a meeting with a manager he might get somewhere. So, he walks through the kitchens of 100's of restaurants and they ask him who he is there to see, tells them he has a meeting with the manager. 50% of the time he gets kicked-out, the rest of the time he gets restaurants to agree to being listed. (A3) My VC professor's fourth business was a bridal gown website he purchased with his co-founder. They didn't use paid SEO. Rather, they came up with creative hacks to drive traffic to the site. One of the better ones: Pay writers in India to compose short articles about stuff happening in the bridal space. The writers read the first articles to be published that morning (UK time) in the BBC, etc., then write up the same stuff, and publish it on their bridal gown page right as (US time) the same stories were hitting presses at the NYT, etc. Using such hacks, they got their site to number two on google search results without paid SEO. ----- (P1) "Half of the difficulty is going from zero customers to one customer. Everything after that is the other half." (P2) Every startup is a science experiment. Come up with a hypothesis, test it, and see what worked and what didn't. Rinse, repeat. Following a structured, hypothesis-driven process is key. Literally, write in a journal what your hypothesis/assumption is, how you are going to test it, and what you hope to learn from the test. Next week, write-out what your hypothesis is, what you need to do this week to make further progress on validating/invalidating it, what progress you made the week before in validating/invalidating it, and what your plan for the following week is. Continue writing out these four things every single week to stay organized. (P3) If you feel extremely strapped for cash, view this as a blessing in disguise. There is some creative hack that will allow you to validate/invalidate your hypothesis or set of assumptions - you just haven't found it yet. Running solid, structured experiments (i.e. process) is most important. Love process. ----- Unless you have blown way past 100 customers, the sciency/experimental aspect of a startup doesn't change. And even inside unicorns, management is (hopefully) still ultimately just running a never ending series of experiments.
mikekchar 8y ago
This is a really interesting document. I literally cringe reading it. At first I thought that I'd really like something like this document but with less random quotes, less facile language, less cheer leading, less fill in the blanks, etc. But then I thought... I wonder if I am reacting this way because this is exactly what I need to be reading. What if the way of thinking espoused by this document is precisely why I never start a business? Maybe it's the fact that I roll my eyes and completely disregard what people are saying when they start talking in this fashion that I haven't actually done anything. Food for thought.
- earthscienceman 8y ago
  I feel like you're implying that in order to start a successful business you need to think/talk like this. I can't imagine any reason that would be true. However, if you want people to listen to your theories after you're successful, this type of language is exactly what you should use. He's maximizing his audience. It's proven that this type of speaking works well to build an audience (at least in the United States). In contrast, it's not clear that this way of thinking is required to start a successful business.
- icu 8y ago
  My encouragement for you to start a business is this, 'become unstoppable'. How you become unstoppable is finding your 'why' for doing it. I think this is the hardest part... and more important than finding 'a business opportunity' because I think you need the meaning of your 'why' to sustain you through the difficulties of new venture creation, especially as you iterate through to product market fit. I think once you have your why, you'll find yourself naturally doing whatever it takes to execute, which sharpens your focus away from noise like what you're describing (i.e. other people's communication styles) and allows you to 'take what you need' from resources, such as this book, and ignore everything else.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Is... Is this some kind of parody / troll comment?
cvaidya1986 8y ago
This is fantastic!
sscarduzio 8y ago
"Roadmapping: a pre-development product workshop that helps founders validate their app idea against the marketplace. [...] With more than 500 Roadmapping sessions under our belt, we can say definitively that it works: 18% of our alumni raise more than $250,000 in pre-product seed capital" How on earth is raising money a synonym of successful product market fit?
- CosmicShadow 8y ago
  Yeah, once I read that I couldn't stand to read on, it was like, oh, this is just BS then, that's not a signal of success or market fit, it's a sign of convincing investors there is.
goatherders 8y ago
This is nicely put together - thank you. My entire business is actually in helping people get customers and at least half of our clients are those seeking P/M fit who partner with us to get early demos of their product (or even pre-demo conversations) scheduled. I have a sketchbook full of cool SAAS ideas that I'm not savvy enough to build. But I'm good at getting customers so viola that's my business. I would offer these tips if you are trying to start a business - any business - and need a nudge to get your first few customers. 1. You don't need to be different. The world is HUGE. Most of your potential customers have never heard of your competitors. In fact, they may well be saying "I wish this-thing-that-solves-a-need existed" without knowing that 20 versions of that thing exist. We tech folks drastically overestimate the amount of time and energy people put into finding ways to solve problems they have. Most folks just live with the misery. 2. Your competition sucks. If you pick up the phone and start the process of selling than you already way ahead of most of your competitors. Why? Because most of them act like they sell but they really just sit and agonize over one more line of code or one more feature instead of getting out there in front of customers. Use this to your advantage! Your product is already good enough, so stop developing it and go find users. 3. Your network is a goldmine. We had a potential customer approach us to help set 20 demos a month for their SAAS product. So far they had scheduled zero demos even though all 3 founders had over 1000 LinkedIn connections. Instead of taking them on as a client I consulted with them for a couple of hours on how to reach out to people they already knew. (Side note: If you won't put your product/service in front of EVERYONE you know who is a potential customer than you are lacking confidence. This can be solved, but selling to people you know is MUCH easier than selling to strangers. Offer something you believe in and the conversations come easy). 4. People hate cold callers, spammers, and unsolicited messages. So make warm calls (after an introduction) and send relevant emails (how it is you know they have this problem and how you can help). Do not be fearful of reaching out! People ARE interested in real things that solve real problems and they will pay real money for that. 5. Charge more. Charging a low price doesn't motivate buying any more than a high price discourages it. Don't price your SAAS at $2 a month because you are afraid no one will pay $5. Don't price it at $10 because you are afraid no one will pay $50. Especially in B2B when purchasers aren't often spending their own money. Problems in the business world are worth more than $5, $10 or even hundreds of dollars to solve. Good luck to all of you. Finding new customers can and should be fun, not a source of stress. And seeing the first official sale or first dollar in the bank is a high that never gets old. C

704 points by itsbenlee 8y ago

h3ft 8y ago

most detailed guide drop I've seen in a while on here, thanks

itsbenlee 8y ago
Appreciate it! I'll be pushing some bonus material next week. Here's how to get on the list yobenlee.com -> Read My Book

daniel_iversen 8y ago

Looks very interesting, but the doc is very busy right now. If you want to download a PDF copy of the doc for reading on the go, here's the link (let it load for a while): https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uqt0neYHCPxu-aUl4CuSQ/export?format=pdf https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uq...

itsbenlee 8y ago
Thanks!
brogrammer2019 8y ago
Thanks
tugberkk 8y ago
I was also wondering putting a PDF version on a Github would be more efficient to everyone. Thanks.
jonathansorum 8y ago
As someone further up in the thread posted: give the guy some love and download it from his website AND get it nicely formatted with a proper layout. Go here https://first100.yobenlee.com https://first100.yobenlee.com

csytan 8y ago

My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers (92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it full time for 1.5 years so far. A couple things I've realized while doing this: 1. Business is a competition. Much like in sports, skills are only built up through practice. For an entrepreneur this means actually selling something. You will start at level 0. There is no substitution for actually doing the work. 2. The bigger you grow, the easier it gets. A year ago we were running around like headless chickens not knowing what to focus on. Now that we've got a core group of customers, and it's much easier to decide where to go. We can start to plan a month or two months out now. Opportunities such as partnerships also present themselves as your business grows larger.

Kagerjay 8y ago
Unrelated but I found your portfolio site to be really funny with the pointer clicks and portrait changes Business looks interesting but Im not the target demographic
- itsbenlee 8y ago
  Appreciate your perspective. Which portfolio site are you referring to?
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    https://csytan.com https://csytan.com
    - itsbenlee 8y ago
      Never heard of him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - kornish 8y ago
        Kagerjay's comment is responding to csytan's comment, not your post.

MuffinFlavored 8y ago

I have an interesting question. Say there is an already established business that has more than proven the idea is viable. What does it take to... join the same market space? Can you offer the same features at the same price? Can you offer the same features at a lower price? Can you offer less features at a lower price? Are there cases where there is only room for one player and no matter what you do, you will not be able to steal any sizable amount of market share from them?

csytan 8y ago
"What does it take to... join the same market space?" Speaking on the SAAS space. IMO the bar for entry is getting higher every year. It's getting easier and easier to build apps, and the number of developers keeps growing. What does it take to join the same market space? Here's some strategies: 1. Find a niche that is being ignored and really needs your specific product. This is getting harder to do. 2. Raise money. One way to build a good product is to throw good developers at it. 3. Give yourself a longer runway. Think years instead of months. 4. Buy an existing business, and run it yourself. "Are there cases where there is only room for one player and no matter what you do, you will not be able to steal any sizeable amount of market share from them?" Definitely. If you go very niche, you'll find areas where there is a strong competitor dominating small a space. It might not be worth entering the space because the market is so small.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  >>Speaking on the SAAS space. IMO the bar for entry is getting higher every year. It's getting easier and easier to build apps, and the number of developers keeps growing. The flip side of the coin is that demand for software is increasing, as software is "eating the world". This is why average salaries for software developers have been increasing: growth demand is outpacing growth in supply.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
8y ago

georgiebest 8y ago

Great guide, very well detailed! Just what I needed, thanks!

itsbenlee 8y ago
Awesome!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

alwaysreading 8y ago

Thanks for sharing! If you’re looking for more ways to bootstrap your business I highly recommend The $100 Startup - https://amzn.to/2KkP25a https://amzn.to/2KkP25a

rolleiflex 8y ago

This is super timely — looking forward to take a look at this in the evening. Wish this was in an ebook format so I could stick it into my Kindle and read it that way though. You might want to check out Calibre, it's an app that automatically converts to more ebook-friendly formats. Might be worth a shot. BTW - you might want to just host the PDF on your website behind an email wall and put it behind Cloudflare. I just spent 10 minutes trying to get the PDF, it's that busy on Google Docs. Edit: I just tried to convert it, it works okay, not super great, since the source is PDF. I'm sure you have the raw text document, you can flawlessly convert from that to EPUB/MOBI if you want.

itsbenlee 8y ago
Will check out Calibre. Appreciate the feedback! You can get the PDF downloadable link here: first100.yobenlee.com. Will work on EPUB/MOBI formats!
- asadlionpk 8y ago
  Please do those formats. Many read on iBooks and pdf is hard to work with. I also tried calibre on the PDF, but that doesn't produce a good output. Thanks for this.
  - itsbenlee 8y ago
    Already pinged my designer. If you want to opt-in on my page, I’ll make sure we push these formats before the holidays! Thanks for the feedback.
    - asadlionpk 8y ago
      Awesome
      - itsbenlee 8y ago
        EPUB formats have been pushed live on my page!

abraae 8y ago

I do like your agency brand (Rootstrap) but as you may have found, its one of those words that has unexpected meanings in other cultures :)

exodust 8y ago

Presentation is not good. Endless headings followed by double space followed by short paragraph or bullet points. Hard to read, annoying to scan. I can see a lot of generic fluff. There may be pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance.

yetihehe 8y ago
> There may be pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance. I've read 1/4 but carefully and already found several pearls. Mind you, some people will already know 80% of knowledge in this book, but it's not the same 80% for anyone. I won't tell you what is usable because this book is very general and different parts are usable to different people.

defenestration 8y ago

Very insightful. While reading the article, I realised that having freedom is my core motivation. And that (a bit of extra) freedom is the biggest thing my company can give people. We enable people who are diagnosed with cancer to be in charge. To not feel defeated, to make decisions and set their path. Will use this to update our messaging. Thanks for the article!

funkaster 8y ago

> Helped launch more than 500 mobile apps I don't want to discredit the author... but that number seems way too high. 500 apps for a period of "more than 10 years" (which usually means prob is just 10 years or really close to it) implies that you would've had to release (on average) 4 apps per month non-stop during 10 years. How can you have time to do anything else? I get you're not developing each app, but if you're helping them, then you must allocate some reasonable amount of time per app, otherwise your contribution would be close to zero (not relevant). Was that a typo? I could believe 50, but 500?

fyfy18 8y ago
My understanding was OP has been a consultant for startups, in the traditional sense of advising what works and what doesn't. Depending on how involved OP is and how high level they are working, that may only involve spending a few hours per week per client - I'd imagine even just joining a weekly retrospective and advising a team would be pretty valuable.

encoderer 8y ago

I will circle back and read this over the weekend but my advice is this: Get to 10 customers, and then double down on anything that worked. Some ideas for the first 10: - write an essay about something interesting that you can weave your business idea into, submit to tech blogs like hackernoon - join a maker group that can help you in an informal quid pro quo with social media shares and upvotes - launch on hacker news, product hunt and indie hackers. All have their rituals. Spend a little time, not too much, to get it right. - contact all the people you talked to before/during product development (bc you did talk to people, right?) - use an seo keyword research tool or just start searching for things and use the suggestions at the bottom of the google results. Write actual content on your website that is directed toward answering these questions. Seo compounds slowly so start early. - find places your customers are (questions on quora or stack overflow; Facebook groups; etc) and learn about them and interact without being spammy. These are the techniques we used to take Cronitor to 10 customers and then hundreds more.

gamzer 8y ago
> find places your customers are > we used to take Cronitor You clearly have skin in the game due to following your own advice.

throwaway6694 8y ago

Nicely formatted PDF version: http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-First.pdf http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-Fir...

iKevinShah 8y ago
Thanks :) Much better than "Print to PDF" option
- jonathansorum 8y ago
  Which is infinitely better than me accidentally sending it to my home printer...
checker659 8y ago
Or, better yet, thank the author himself by downloading it straight from his own website : https://first100.yobenlee.com/ https://first100.yobenlee.com/
- dgut 8y ago
  That's a nice looking sales page.
- Kaveren 8y ago
  Why do I need to give my name and email so I can be added to a mailing list before I can even see the content? Obviously this isn't a problem because the submission has the content, as does the other commenter's direct link, but I just hate this sort of UX. Let me see the value of your content (not a sales page) and if I really like it I'll subscribe to a mailing list after.
  - quakenul 8y ago
    Why does the author have to write a book just to get your E-Mail? It's a transaction. Obviously as the consumer you would prefer having the upside without the downside. The same is true for the vendor. We usually meet somewhere in the middle and call it a day.

anongraddebt 8y ago

I took a startup course in the MBA program at one of HBS/GSB/Wharton/Kellogg that was taught by a (in my estimation) great VC. Arguably the most insightful class I've ever taken. I'll give two sets of insights: anecdotes and principles. (A1) The founders of a successful custom apparel startup didn't get even close to 100 customers until after they had tried two different distribution channels. First, they opened a store and that didn't work. Second, they tried to sell on-line and that didn't work. Finally, with implosion imminent, they tried a hybrid model where you get measured in the store, but every purchase is made on-line and then delivered. It worked. (A2) Co-founder of one of the publicly-traded food delivery companies told us how he started out. Was hungry, realized he couldn't order online, so he sits down and codes an initial web page (as well as an API). Asks a friend of a friend that runs a restaurant to let him list the restaurant on his new site. Guy gives him $140 for one month. Figures he'll just knock-on doors to add restaurants, but managers kick him out with no meeting. Realizes if he walks in the back door (alley) and pretends to have a meeting with a manager he might get somewhere. So, he walks through the kitchens of 100's of restaurants and they ask him who he is there to see, tells them he has a meeting with the manager. 50% of the time he gets kicked-out, the rest of the time he gets restaurants to agree to being listed. (A3) My VC professor's fourth business was a bridal gown website he purchased with his co-founder. They didn't use paid SEO. Rather, they came up with creative hacks to drive traffic to the site. One of the better ones: Pay writers in India to compose short articles about stuff happening in the bridal space. The writers read the first articles to be published that morning (UK time) in the BBC, etc., then write up the same stuff, and publish it on their bridal gown page right as (US time) the same stories were hitting presses at the NYT, etc. Using such hacks, they got their site to number two on google search results without paid SEO. ----- (P1) "Half of the difficulty is going from zero customers to one customer. Everything after that is the other half." (P2) Every startup is a science experiment. Come up with a hypothesis, test it, and see what worked and what didn't. Rinse, repeat. Following a structured, hypothesis-driven process is key. Literally, write in a journal what your hypothesis/assumption is, how you are going to test it, and what you hope to learn from the test. Next week, write-out what your hypothesis is, what you need to do this week to make further progress on validating/invalidating it, what progress you made the week before in validating/invalidating it, and what your plan for the following week is. Continue writing out these four things every single week to stay organized. (P3) If you feel extremely strapped for cash, view this as a blessing in disguise. There is some creative hack that will allow you to validate/invalidate your hypothesis or set of assumptions - you just haven't found it yet. Running solid, structured experiments (i.e. process) is most important. Love process. ----- Unless you have blown way past 100 customers, the sciency/experimental aspect of a startup doesn't change. And even inside unicorns, management is (hopefully) still ultimately just running a never ending series of experiments.

mikekchar 8y ago

This is a really interesting document. I literally cringe reading it. At first I thought that I'd really like something like this document but with less random quotes, less facile language, less cheer leading, less fill in the blanks, etc. But then I thought... I wonder if I am reacting this way because this is exactly what I need to be reading. What if the way of thinking espoused by this document is precisely why I never start a business? Maybe it's the fact that I roll my eyes and completely disregard what people are saying when they start talking in this fashion that I haven't actually done anything. Food for thought.

earthscienceman 8y ago
I feel like you're implying that in order to start a successful business you need to think/talk like this. I can't imagine any reason that would be true. However, if you want people to listen to your theories after you're successful, this type of language is exactly what you should use. He's maximizing his audience. It's proven that this type of speaking works well to build an audience (at least in the United States). In contrast, it's not clear that this way of thinking is required to start a successful business.
icu 8y ago
My encouragement for you to start a business is this, 'become unstoppable'. How you become unstoppable is finding your 'why' for doing it. I think this is the hardest part... and more important than finding 'a business opportunity' because I think you need the meaning of your 'why' to sustain you through the difficulties of new venture creation, especially as you iterate through to product market fit. I think once you have your why, you'll find yourself naturally doing whatever it takes to execute, which sharpens your focus away from noise like what you're describing (i.e. other people's communication styles) and allows you to 'take what you need' from resources, such as this book, and ignore everything else.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Is... Is this some kind of parody / troll comment?

cvaidya1986 8y ago

This is fantastic!

sscarduzio 8y ago

"Roadmapping: a pre-development product workshop that helps founders validate their app idea against the marketplace. [...] With more than 500 Roadmapping sessions under our belt, we can say definitively that it works: 18% of our alumni raise more than $250,000 in pre-product seed capital" How on earth is raising money a synonym of successful product market fit?

CosmicShadow 8y ago
Yeah, once I read that I couldn't stand to read on, it was like, oh, this is just BS then, that's not a signal of success or market fit, it's a sign of convincing investors there is.

goatherders 8y ago

This is nicely put together - thank you. My entire business is actually in helping people get customers and at least half of our clients are those seeking P/M fit who partner with us to get early demos of their product (or even pre-demo conversations) scheduled. I have a sketchbook full of cool SAAS ideas that I'm not savvy enough to build. But I'm good at getting customers so viola that's my business. I would offer these tips if you are trying to start a business - any business - and need a nudge to get your first few customers. 1. You don't need to be different. The world is HUGE. Most of your potential customers have never heard of your competitors. In fact, they may well be saying "I wish this-thing-that-solves-a-need existed" without knowing that 20 versions of that thing exist. We tech folks drastically overestimate the amount of time and energy people put into finding ways to solve problems they have. Most folks just live with the misery. 2. Your competition sucks. If you pick up the phone and start the process of selling than you already way ahead of most of your competitors. Why? Because most of them act like they sell but they really just sit and agonize over one more line of code or one more feature instead of getting out there in front of customers. Use this to your advantage! Your product is already good enough, so stop developing it and go find users. 3. Your network is a goldmine. We had a potential customer approach us to help set 20 demos a month for their SAAS product. So far they had scheduled zero demos even though all 3 founders had over 1000 LinkedIn connections. Instead of taking them on as a client I consulted with them for a couple of hours on how to reach out to people they already knew. (Side note: If you won't put your product/service in front of EVERYONE you know who is a potential customer than you are lacking confidence. This can be solved, but selling to people you know is MUCH easier than selling to strangers. Offer something you believe in and the conversations come easy). 4. People hate cold callers, spammers, and unsolicited messages. So make warm calls (after an introduction) and send relevant emails (how it is you know they have this problem and how you can help). Do not be fearful of reaching out! People ARE interested in real things that solve real problems and they will pay real money for that. 5. Charge more. Charging a low price doesn't motivate buying any more than a high price discourages it. Don't price your SAAS at $2 a month because you are afraid no one will pay $5. Don't price it at $10 because you are afraid no one will pay $50. Especially in B2B when purchasers aren't often spending their own money. Problems in the business world are worth more than $5, $10 or even hundreds of dollars to solve. Good luck to all of you. Finding new customers can and should be fun, not a source of stress. And seeing the first official sale or first dollar in the bank is a high that never gets old. C