Smart Start for your Startup

On one hand, it’s never been easier to launch a startup. On the other hand, the chances of success seem to be ever decreasing. This post covers how to smart start your startup and maximize the chances of achieving product-market fit.


smart startup start for your prototype
The cost of launching a startup has dropped dramatically in the past decade. One does no longer need the permission of west coast VCs to innovate, and technology improvements like cloud infrastructure and open source reduce the barriers to entry for new entrepreneurs and make it easier to reach a global audience from day one. In many cases, entrepreneurs outsource the development to third parties, making it possible to launch a web or mobile app without a technical background. Arguably, there’s never been a better time to launch a company!

It all sounds very easy, but we all know what are the chances of survival for a typical startup… 10% would be a very generous estimate.  To succeed, startups need to achieve “Product-Market Fit“, which in simple terms, means “getting people to use/pay for your product and be strongly disappointed if it were to disappear”.

So, if you are thinking of launching a startup now, or are trying to take an idea to prototype in a short period  of time, follow the recommendations below to maximize my chances of success. I’ve included some ‘homework’ reading recommendations as well.

1) Spend time understanding the problem – I’ve seen many entrepreneurs who start by ‘looking for a problem’. As Paul Graham says on “How to get startup ideas“: “by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has”. So I’d spend a fair amount of time working on customer development – understanding the problem inside out by talking with users, understanding their pain and how they currently solve it. My friend Rob Fitzpatrick just wrote a book about this called the Mom Test – he says “You shouldn’t ask *anyone* whether your business is a good idea”. You’ll know if it’s a good idea or not by asking the right questions. Get as much feedback as possible, from as many people as you can. Find everything that’s negative with your idea and fix it. The bible on customer development is of course, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, but if you prefer the shorter version, read this instead: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany

2) Find my “EarlyVangelists” – as Steve Blank puts it, Earlyvangelists are a special breed of customers who are willing to take a risk on your startup’s product or service because they see the potential to solve a critical and immediate problem they are experiencing.  An “EarlyVangelist” is a combination of  Early Adopter and Internal Evangelist. To qualify, the Earlyvangelists need to have willingness to pay or tap into budget to use your service. They are buying the vision of your product, not just your first release, and their passionate usage of your product will provide golden feedback. They are almost part of your team! More about how to find and keep these customers is available on The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

3) Learn the psychology behind user behavior – with most new products, we are asking the user to change their habit in order to purchase, try, download, sign up etc to a new product. We then want them to share our product with their friends, rate it and give us feedback. For each of these actions, our users go through a subconscious decision making process. If you don’t take that into consideration, how can you optimize your product. There are many great books on the topic, so I thought I’d flag a few I’ve read or came highly recommended:

4) Traffic (SEO, SEM and Social) – how to get it, how to keep it and how to grow it. Eric Schmidt said that “Revenue solves all problems ” in business. I agree, and it all starts from having users (in consumer businesses) and clients (in B2B ventures). There’s no substitute to building a great product if you’re looking for sustainable traffic, but at least in the beginning, you need to make users aware of your service and there’s a few good tools out there for that purpose.

  • Landing pages – with tools like LaunchRock, Kickoff Labs, Launch Effect or Unbounce you should have a landing page that captures emails before you launch the product. Use the email list to let people know when the product has launched.
  • Create great content – it’s not only the “voice” of your new startup, it’s also great for SEO. People share content they perceive will have value to others, so quality posts that entertain and delight your audience will pay dividends in traffic and in social engagement on Twitter, Facebook and G+.
  • SEM – Adwords is a great way to drive traffic to your site and experiment with early users, especially when a transaction is involved (i.e. purchase, download, sign up etc). Google just released a MOOC on Adwords, a great free way to learn about the tools in online advertising. Sign up here: http://goo.gl/3aDYTV

Lean Analytics is a great primer on how to use data (traffic, engagement, retention, etc) to make decisions and build your product faster.

The presentation below from Andreas Klinger, is an excellent primer of startup metrics, A/B testing and how to make sense of it all:

5) Funding – most “wantapreneurs” think they are in business just because they bought a domain for $10 and paid for GoDaddy hosting. While it’s wise to bootstrap the earliest stages of the prototype, to build a scalable, sustainable product, you’ll need money and expertise, and money can buy you expertise (it’s called hiring). Accelerator programs offer early stage funding and mentorship, which could be extremely valuable for first-time entrepreneurs. Tools like AngelList, Gust and Funders Club have fundamentally democratized the access to capital and angel investment. In the UK, equity crowdfunding is regulated, enabling anyone (not just accredited investors like in the US) to invest as little as £10 and own equity in a startup in platforms like Seedrs, CrowdCube, CrwdBnk and others. For certain startups, platforms like Kickstarter or Viagogo can be hugely successful in attracting investment in the form of ‘pre-sales’, as the startups don’t give up equity for the funding (especially in fashion, gaming or hardware where physical products are changing hands).

I’ve detailed a lot of information sources for funding in my new year’s resolution post, here’s a recap:

This is just a partial list, but it captures the gist: there’s a lot to learn before launching a startup. Dave McLure says he invests in startups that can demonstrate an ‘unfair advantage’, proving they have a way to tap into the market or execute the idea like no-one else. So whether you are a current entrepreneur or thinking about jumping into the water, focus on learning to swim and getting that extra edge before you are fully submerged.

 

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Co Founder and Managing Partner at Remagine Ventures
Eze is managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund investing in ambitious founders at the intersection of tech, entertainment, gaming and commerce with a spotlight on Israel.

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.
Eze Vidra
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