My colleague and fellow Seedcamp mentor Jalin Somaiya and myself (Eze Vidra) gave the below presentation to a group of 20 entrepreneurs who participated in Launchpad, a London-based accelerator organized by Launch48 a few months ago,
Our goal was simple: help early stage startups focus on what is their most immediate goal (i.e. website registrations, user ratings, downloads, etc) and optimize for it through testing and iteration, while leveraging the basics of online marketing. It’s amazing how many startups skip the MVP (minimum viable product) stage, spend months building a full fledged product with no feedback from users, and focus their energy on building features they “think” are cool or needed, without actually checking their customers reaction or demand. You should not waste time and money on building features no one wants.
The deck is self explanatory and compliments well the Lean Startup methodology and customer development – validate, test and iterate. You can find some additional resources in VC Cafe’s startup tools and in Steve Blank’s excellent startup resource list. Remember – if you build it, they won’t necessarily come!
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
