“Once we tweak the UI color pallet to match our business cards, we’ll ship.” said the self-titled CEO. It was an unusually warm autumn day as Startup Employee X couldn’t believe the words coming out of the CEO’s mouth. This was the fourth delay on a project that was over budget, behind schedule, and they were losing market share to their competitors.
Startup Employee X began to notice a pattern. Every time the product was ready to go the CEO got cold feet and found an arbitrary problem. Employee X worked tirelessly to convince the CEO they were ready to ship, but he refused to listen. The Employee could see the writing on the wall and decided to resign his position.
By the time spring rolled around, the company still hadn’t shipped their product and their bank account was quickly dwindling. The company laid off the majority of it’s staff. The CEO still refused to ship. Three months after that, the company shut down. They never shipped anything.
You could (rightfully) blame the ineptitude of the CEO for the companies failure but I believe the heart of the problem lies in the CEO’s fear of shipping. Unfortunately I’ve seen many founders exhibit some of these same characteristics (thankfully not to the same degree). Things change substantially when you have some skin in the game. It’s far worse to never ship anything then to ship and fail.
Be brave, focus on what’s important, and get some skin in the game. Ship.
For more startup news, follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.
My goal with TSF is to help entrepreneurs and founders grow. I’ve been doing this by hosting interviews, writing articles, and covering brand new startups. The communities response has been fantastic and I’ve been looking for ways to improve my content and go even deeper in subject matter.
I talked with Andrew Warner about my aspirations for TSF and we have decided to run an experiment. Andrew and I have teamed up to provide hour long courses for entrepreneurs that get results. We will bring in an expert and have them teach actionable steps for entrepreneurs to implement in their startups.
We are looking for feedback on this course. If you love or hate this idea, I want to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment on this article or email me at tipbox@thestartupfoundry.com. If you’re on the fence for this course, buy it. If you’re unhappy with it, let me know and I’ll refund your money and you can keep the course for free.
Note: This course has already been recorded so the audience won’t be able to ask questions live.
The Course:
Andrew’s story:
A few weeks ago, while getting ready to sell the first product on my site, I had a painful realization.
I realized that it didn’t matter that I worked hard for weeks to create my product. It didn’t matter that I paid extra for the best software to deliver it. It didn’t matter that I tested my online shopping cart over and over using every family member’s credit card to be sure it worked well.
None of it mattered.
The only thing that mattered — the only thing that determined whether my product was a hit or flop — was the text I wrote to sell it. (Haven’t you found that in your work?)
The realization freaked me out because I spent hundreds of hours getting everything right and now it all came down to this one sales page.
So I sat at my computer and started to write. Well I tried to write. What I ended up doing was futzing with the design of the page and the size of the font. Then I made myself endless cups of coffee and … well, you get the idea. (Have you ever done that?)
Around that time, I interviewed Dane Maxwell on Mixergy (my site). I asked him, in essence, “Dane, you’re not a professional copywriter. You create web apps. So how do you create sales pages that sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of web-based solutions to real estate professionals who are notoriously reluctant to buy online?”
What I discovered is that he has a mindset and a framework that help him write irresistible copy and gets people to buy. To him, copywriting is actually fun because he knows the fundamentals of how to do it right. (Haven’t you found that in your life? The better you become at something the more fun you have with it, right?)
Sign me up!
What are other people saying about it?
He opened my eyes to a new way of doing things, and he did the same for my audience. Check out the comments from people who heard the interview:
“Have Dane come back EVERY WEEK!!” — Michael Weiss
“Excellent. Love to hear more on sales strategies from Dane.” — Reedge
“Just awesome” — Bob Hiler
“Andrew, I’m a techie dude.. and turned off from lead generation. But this guy is on the money!” — Amul Patel
You can understand why they’d get excited, right? I mean, how much are good copywriting skills worth to a company? $5,000? $100,000? More?
Alexis Ohanian came on TSF to talk about marketing HipMunk with hustle. HipMunk is a travel search site that focuses on what travelers actually care about. Before Alexis joined the HipMunk team, he cofounded Reddit and created BreadPig. There are some fantastic lessons in here for startups looking to give their marketing a boost. I’ve included a summary of the interview below the video.
What is HipMunk?
HipMunk is an online travel site that filters trips by agony instead of just price.
There aren’t any ads on HipMunk. How do you make money?
Our profits come from referrals. Our goal is to help you find a great flight as fast as possible, not sit around on the site and click on ads.
When did you have your first “ah ha” moment with HipMunk?
The user interface came together a few weeks before launch. When I saw it I knew HipMunk was going to be special. It was incredibly easy to use and focused on what travelers actually care about, “agony”.
Fun Fact:
Before HipMunk launched they were using the word “Suckage” instead of “Agony”. They decided to change it because it “might not fly in some parts of the country”.
What makes the User Interface so compelling?
For most people it’s worth $25 to avoid a 4 hour layover in Chicago. Our user interface recognizes this and tries to find the balance between price and comfort.
Some startups have fantastic tech, but they still struggle to get traction. Do you have any tips?
Generate the “Ah ha!” moment. If you have something that is 10x better than the competition and you’re struggling to gain traction, you might need to make the benefits more obvious. Be relentless that people have a good experience with your brand. Make things simple.
What does a non technical co-founder do?
Grunt work. A non technical co-founder needs to hustle all the time. It’s time consuming, not glamorous, and incredibly necessary for your startup to succeed.
Marketing:
First you need to have an awesome product. It’s much easier to hustle for something that kicks ass. Second, you want to focus on making things personal. Be as genuine and as cheap as possible.
Find a few people outside of your company that love your product. They will be your best salesman.
Thanks to Alexis for coming on TSF. Be sure to checkout HipMunk!
Last month I built the Startup Death Clock as a mini promo piece for The Startup Foundry. Six hours after launch, the startup death clock received over 10,000 unique hits, hundreds of tweets, and significantly increased traffic to TSF. In this article I’m going to break down things that I learned while building death clock and I will also share a few mistakes I made along the way that you should avoid.
Simple, simple, simple
Design is an exercise in restraint. Make things as simple as possible. Your goal is to have your users share the site with their friends. You’re going to want to make sharing the page as simple as possible. It’s better for a viral page to gain traction than to be absolutely perfect at launch. Iterate quickly and capture eyeballs.
Pick a time to strike (and get lucky)
Color, the photo sharing company that raised $41 million, launched on March 23rd. I released The Death Clock on March 24. Topical events are a fantastic way to learn about your users. Leverage well known events in your community to your advantage.
Things that I screwed up: (abridged version)
• I should have made an option to Tweet out your score. I believe more people would have shared the link if it was personalized.
• It would have been fun to incorporate different levels of success (Ramen profitable, Quit your day job, etc. instead of just “37signals”).
• Don’t take things too seriously. After I launched the death clock I had one user absolutely pissed at me (perhaps he didn’t like to know ). I let one user out of 10,000 spoil my mood for a few hours. This was incredibly stupid of me. Grow thick skin and don’t take things too seriously.
What have you learned?
I’m very interested to hear about what you’ve learned with your experiences. Feel free to share what you’ve learned in the comments!
Build a startup incubator that runs online. This incubator could leverage expert mentors all over the world while lowering the barrier of entry for founders and entrepreneurs (who would no longer need to move). Your talent pool wouldn’t be constrained geographically. Theoretically this gives you a huge talent advantage.
What makes an incubator great?
Nobody runs an incubator better than Paul Graham. Paul launched YCombinator in 2005, and many (myself included) would consider YC to be the best incubator worldwide. They aren’t perfect, but they get a lot of things right. After interviewing several YC alum I can confidently say YC’s biggest strength is their people network. Anyone can offer money to a startup but the connections that Paul Graham and company provide are simply unrivaled.
I asked Paul Graham (Founder of YCombinator) about an online incubator and he said: “It would not work, at least not with current technology
for doing things remotely. The kind of interactions the
startups have with us and with the other startups need
to happen face to face.”
Fair enough. Paul doesn’t think you could put a YC style incubator online and maintain the same quality experience. I would agree with his initial assessment, but I believe an online incubator that challenged our preconceived notions of how an incubator functions could flourish online.
Barriers to entry:
I asked Sanjay Parekh (from Shotput Ventures) his thoughts on an online incubator and he said: “Personally I have a hard time seeing how this works – successfully. There
are just some aspects to early stage startup formation that you lose when
doing things online.
I think that a lot can be said about the real world
interaction. I know the startups that we (Shotput Ventures) have funded
have generally done a great job communicating over email but I also see
them regularly at either meetings they setup or randomly at events in town.
When that happens, I feel like I can brainstorm and help them a lot
faster than if I’m limited by the bandwidth between my brain, my hands, the
keyboard, and the Internet. The bandwidth between my brain, eyes, ears,
and mouth is tremendously more capable for these interactions.”
Conclusion:
I’m stuck on the fence if an online incubator would work. I can’t shake the feeling that with the right people it could be wildly successful. I’m very interested in this concept and have been thinking about it for a long time. I’m eager to hear what you think in the comments.
Does anyone feel like blowing $20k on an experiment?
TSF readers have been working on some fantastic startups. I would love to feature more reader created startups on the site so I came up with the 5 Slide Startup Challenge.
Here’s the deal:
1. Build a slide deck with a maximum of 5 slides. Don’t include any animations in your deck. 2. Record your elevator pitch. This should be no longer than 2 minutes. Video quality isn’t a big deal (just use your built in webcam), but really polish your pitch. 3. Send us an email at tipbox@thestartupfoundry.com with “5 slide challenge” in the subject line and your slide deck and video attached (or a link to them).
I’ll feature the best startup pitches on TSF. I’d really appreciate it if you helped to spread the word (on Twitter, Facebook, etc.). I’m very interested in what TSF readers are building, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you! Good luck!
Recently on TSF we’ve been talking a lot about “Minimum Viable Products” (MVP) and I’ve had several readers write in asking me why I was so high on the concept. My reasoning behind it is threefold. If I missed anything I would appreciate you sharing your experiences in the comments.
Gain traction:
The point of your MVP is to act as your “beater” vehicle. Remember that Ford Pinto you flipped burgers in high school to pay for? It’s purpose was to take you from point “A” to point “B”. You wouldn’t want to pick up a prom date in it, but it took care of your daily commute. You MVP is the same concept. It’s not your dream car, but it can still take you places.
It allows you to learn what features you should actually spend your time on.
Don’t try to build everything at once. Focus on a few features and see how the community responds. Never create in a vacuum.
It doesn’t matter how fast a Ferrari can go if it doesn’t have wheels
Theoretical performance means nothing if the rubber can’t meet the road. It’s much better to have something launched (even if it just has the core features) than something that is perpetually “just a few weeks away from launch”. As King said Let your community grow alongside you: Ship unfinished apps.
A Ford Pinto will take you much farther then a Ferrari without wheels.
[editors note: This was a guest post written by: King Sidharth. King Sidharth is a young entrepreneur and designer. He works at Besperk while helping startups any way he can find. You can read more of his stuff at 64 Notes or say hi: king@kingsidharth.com]
Do you remember Google Wave? It was a social app that shipped in (nearly) complete form. It had all sorts of bells and whistles. It also was very confusing and much of the UI focused on solving problems that real life users weren’t experiencing. After a year or so Google canned the project for lack of user adoption.
Contrast that with Gmail. Gmail started as a barebones application that slowly grew with the communities needs. Take, for example, Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox came from users complaining that they were overwhelmed with emails. Features that grow organically from user requests make much more sense then features added because of a board meeting.
Another example of an application that grew with the community is Twitter. When Twitter first launched it was extremely simplistic. Users complained that there wasn’t a way to reply to users, so they started to use the “@” symbol to signify a response to a specific person. Twitter then adopted this practice for their official clients and made it a feature.
It’s not about adding every feature users ask for, it’s about solving problems, creating a better experience, and improving the little things. This is why the concept of MVP works so well. MVP allows you to ship the bare minimum and find out where the users pain points are located.
You cannot build a social startup in the dark corners of your room.
You need to ship it- raw, unfinished, and let your users have a taste. Then key in on finding their problems and fix them quickly.
Sitting in a dark room developing your social startup alone (or worse – having someone else work on every aspect of it while you’re the idea guy) makes it so easy to say, “add this – they might need it.” Doing that will keep you a step removed from your actual users.
Startups, like poetry, are never finished. They are always being abandoned or always growing.
For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.
I recently had the chance to do an interview with the founders of the YCombinator backed startup, WakeMate. WakeMake wants to help you sleep better by tracking your sleep. In this interview we talk about how they came up with the idea, how they gained traction, and their experience with YCombinator. I’ve also included a summary below the video.
WakeMate is a cellphone accessory that tracks your sleep cycle, and helps you improve your quality of sleep.
Where did the idea come from?
• Idea came from an experience 6 years ago when they realized they didn’t always feel refreshed in the morning when they woke up.
• They’ve done a ton thinking and research.
What helped to set you apart?
• Dedication.
• Research.
• We had already built a prototype.
• Proved that we were determined (both had dropped out of school at this point to work on WakeMate).
Biggest plus to being in YCombinator:
• The YCombinator Brand. This opened a lot of doors.
• Direct Access to Paul Graham. You have a lot of people giving you advice and it helps to have just one voice to focus on.
• Incredible almuni network.
Getting in to YCombinator:
• Don’t let not getting into YCombinator hurt you. There are many successful startups that have nothing to do with YC.
• Focus on building a business. Statistically you’re not going to get into YC, but that shouldn’t stop you from building an awesome startup.
• Advance your startup, and don’t worry about getting into YCombinator. Focus on building a business.
How did WakeMate gain traction?
• WakeMate solves a problem that is easily communicable. The best salesman you have is a customer who loves your product.
How do you move from early adopters into the mainstream?
• Target specific market segments where sleep is a major pain point (traveling businessman, medical students, etc.)
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs and founder that are just starting out
• Talk to everybody. You need to gather research.
• You need to be an expert in your field so keep learning.
• Focus on your elevator pitch. Figure out how to comunicate your business in 30 seconds.
For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post written by Jason Lorimer from CulturaHQ.
I was recently on a Southwest Airlines flight (not this one thankfully) from Philadelphia to Chicago, sitting next to a beautiful blond woman. Her being in the same general line of work and me being a nervous talker, we passed the time by talking shop. Specifically, how we were both amazed at how few innovative ideas seemed to be coming out the abundance of start up companies popping up all across the US.
How many task tracking and photo applications does the world really need?
With all the low hanging fruit out there waiting to be disrupted, why did everyone seem to be trying to build a better version of the same dozen or so things. My seat buddy, as adorable as she is smart, said:
“They build for the funding first and the customer second.”
Obvious and insightful — Marry me I thought.
On the return trip some days later, I sat in the back row having shown up late to the gate and was greeted with some of the worst turbulence I’d ever experienced. Not so bad in it’s depth as it was in it’s length. For several minutes at varying intervals, this 747 was being thrown around like a rag doll. Being in the back row and an avid people watcher, I noticed something that allowed me to refocus my brain away from the sheer terror that was creeping up my neck. The turbulence had gotten so bad that people were starting to be alarmed. They were slowly turning their heads to look at each other as if to say:
Should I be freaking out right now? If you are freaking out, I’ll freak out.
The flight soon after settled and once the attendants lined the aisle with over-priced booze, everyone seemed to go back to normal. The next day I was telling this tale to a friend back in Philly and I laughed to myself midway through as the parallels clicked: The start up scene is that airplane, the passengers entrepreneurs and the turbulence the investment capital. Everyone looking around at each other but not speaking up. Imagine the same mental monologue from an early stage entrepreneur:
“Is it me or is my start up pointless? I mean, if you don’t think yours is pointless, mine must not be pointless because if you thought yours was pointless, you would be freaking out about that 300K of investors money you are burning every month and you are not so I shouldn’t be worried that I have no customers or even a proof of concept, let alone revenue.
Anyway, Are you guys going to the Tumblr party at SXSW? I heard Jon Hamm is going to be there.”
For the record, anybody willing to put their neck on the line to build something instead of running their mouth about what they are going to do is good in my book, but is it possible
that start-up bubbles might just be caused by vanity as much as they are by an abundance of available capital?
Are revenue models not cool?
Maybe I am being naive but I just think if most entrepreneurs would put aside the idea of being crowned the Internet King on the Month and just focus on transforming pre-internet business models into post internet. ventures, everyone down the line would be better served.
For more startup articles, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry
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