Slides from the talk Changing The Odds, given at the M3 Conference in Columbus, Ohio on 21NOV14. The talk focused on creating a Mobile (or any other) startup, while avoiding the main pitfalls I've seen in over 4 years of dealing with startup businesses.

1. Changing The Odds
Andrew Heaton | Revinity

3. Hi, I’m Andrew
I’m a Designer.

4. Big Design, Small Screen
I Also Write
Conceptual Design for Mobile Devices
(Usually far slower than I want).
Andrew Heaton
Purposely Irregular
Zen, Punk Rock and Ruthlessness in Experience Design
Andrew Heaton

5. Tweet and Take Photos
@tigerstripe | #M3Conf

6. Startups are Fatal.

7. If you’re in a startup, chances are, you’ll
be dead in a year.
You get to watch the people you hired
leave when it gets tough, while you try
to salvage what’s left of what your build.
You will be heartbroken by the lack of
customers, regret not having any
manner of pay model and watch as any
money you committed rapidly
disappears.
If you’re tough, you might launch a
product that will die withering in an app
store as you lose your house and car.
If you convince your family to buy in to
your great idea, you can watch them
lose their future along with yours.

8. My Only Advice:

9. My Only Advice:
LET’S DO A STARTUP!
(It will be awesome)

10. But, Let’s Change the Odds and Beat the House.

11. What Do We All Want to Do?
• Build a Great Product
• Get People to Use It
• Make Money
• Repeat Until Rich or Dead

12. if/then:
• Don't Build a Stupid App
• Learn to Fight with Your Partners
• Don't Spend Money on Stupid Shit
• Plan for Day Two
• Be Realistic About Success
• Grab Some Fucking Magic

13. The Only Rule:
There's no fucking rules, dude.
Photo by unknown, but it’s not by me.

14. Don’t Build a Stupid App

15. A stupid app isn’t just a bad idea,
it’s a series of bad decisions over time.
Let’s start with an idea.

16. I’d love to tell you my idea,
but I need you all to sign an NDA.

17. Don't Hoard Ideas
You need to expose yourself to get some feedback
to the validity of your idea.

18. Why Are We Scared to Share?
The expectation being someone else is smarter faster better
and will get it done before you with more success.

19. We All Need to Practice
Explain and sell your ideas as early as possible.
There's no shortage of people who start businesses
that can't explain what they do, what the value to the
user is, or why anyone should give them money.
Being smooth is simply a matter of practice, and you
can't practice behind an NDA.

20. Let’s start with an idea.

21. Signal is an app that allows
users to drop notes in
specific locations for other
members to discover.
Signal

22. Signal is an app that allows
users to drop notes in
specific locations for other
members to discover.
There is surely nothing other than the single pur-pose
of the present moment. A man's whole life is
a succession of moment after moment. There will
be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.
Live being true to the single purpose of the
moment.
Firstname Lastname
0000.0000 - 0000.0000
00/00/0000 - 00:00PM

23. Signal is an app that allows
users to drop notes in
specific locations for other
members to discover.
Write
Tell me something good.

24. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate notes
with specific locations.
Signal

25. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate notes
with specific locations.
There is surely nothing other than the single pur-pose
of the present moment. A man's whole life is
a succession of moment after moment. There will
be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.
Live being true to the single purpose of the
moment.
Firstname Lastname
0000.0000 - 0000.0000
00/00/0000 - 00:00PM
Inappropriate Content

26. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate notes
with specific locations and
allow others to view, gather
and share.
There is surely nothing other than the single pur-pose
of the present moment. A man's whole life is
a succession of moment after moment. There will
be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.
Live being true to the single purpose of the
moment.
Firstname Lastname
0000.0000 - 0000.0000
00/00/0000 - 00:00PM
Inappropriate Content

27. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate any sort
of content with specific
locations and allow others
to view, gather and share.
There is surely nothing other than the single pur-pose
of the present moment. A man's whole life is
a succession of moment after moment. There will
be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.
Live being true to the single purpose of the
moment.
Firstname Lastname
0000.0000 - 0000.0000
00/00/0000 - 00:00PM
Inappropriate Content

28. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate any sort
of content with specific
locations and allow others
to view, gather and share.
Write
Tell me something good.
B i U abc

29. Signal is an app that allows
users to associate any sort
of content with specific
locations and allow others
to view, gather and share.
Write
Tell me something good.
B i U abc
Card will post on 11/15/2014, 6:02 pm Set for Specific Time

30. Is This MVP?
MVP is pure bullshit.
In theory it was a good idea, but it's really a way to
strip the expensive and hard things out of an app.
Expensive and hard things are usually what makes an
app worth using.

31. Maximum Value Product
What are the key items that will provoke usage and
adoption? Strip the rest away.
How Little Can We Do?
vs.
What’s the Maximum we can fit?

32. Good Chart with a Bad Label

33. Ask Yourself This:
How little do you want to succeed?
Aiming for the minimum viable, leads to a minimally
viable chance of an audience.

34. Learn to Fight With Your Partners

35. Three is a Magic Number
There’s three skill groups needed to make a startup successful
• Design
• Technology
• Business

36. Three is a Magic Number
There’s three skill groups needed to make a startup successful
• Design
• Technology
• Business
If you don’t have the skills, find them.

37. Who Does What?
In all startups, you need to make agreements of
responsibility early.
Who is the Face? Who Makes the Decisions?
Who Counts the Money? Who Says No?

38. If you don't know how to fight,
you will have problems.
A good argument is needed to resolve things.
I've seen tiny cracks become the rift that kills a startup.
If you have issues communicating, start this way:
"I feel"
Express your thoughts or swallow them forever.

39. Why is This Important?
This is the beginning of your brand.
The way you treat each other is the way you’ll treat
your customers.

40. Don’t Spend Money on Stupid Shit.

41. Be Ruthless.
You need one sheet of paper until it’s filled up.
You need one pen until it runs out of ink.

42. Spend Nothing Unless...
It’s highly unlikely you need new computers or phones
or co-working space or a pro account on Slack.
If you spend money, spend the lowest amount possible.
If you get funding, double down on the ruthless. Spend
none of that money til you have to.
When you do have to spend money, spend it knowing
you are moving forward to something amazing.

43. A Handy List of Things You Don’t Need
Office space
Beer Fridays
A new computer or monitors
Fancy-assed furniture
A new phone for “testing”
Groupware
Anything you think equals "corporate culture"
Anything you believe is needed to make people
take you seriously

44. Plan for Day Two

45. Audience Generation
In the past, there were easy word-of-mouth ways to get a
new product noticed.
The interwebs were less crowded and the app market
didn't have a dozen apps that looked exactly like yours.

47. Audience Gen is a Rough Business
If you wait til launch, you are further behind.
I know they're hokey, but preview users are a great
thing to have.

48. A Good Warning
If you are not using your own product internally,
it's not worth anyone else using

49. Launch Day is Day One of Real Work
The day you launch is day one. All the work you just did
is to give you the ability to start with a launched product.
If your plans don’t include what happens on day two,
you’re doomed.

50. I had a team finish their product, launch it, have a party
and then all took a two week vacation to congratulate
themselves for a job well done.
I had another team finish their product, launch it, have a
party and then had a planning meeting for the first app
update they planned to ship in the next three weeks.
Guess Who’s Still Around?

51. You Must Know More than “BUILD”
Day one is the day you have to figure out how you work
as a business, not as a scrambling startup team trying to
get a product built.

52. Be Realistic About Success

53. What Does Success Look Like?
Are you going to make enough money to pay
off what you owe and keep your life open?
What metrics do you have measuring use and
are they staged or gated?
Can you still work with the people you started
with? Is this the team you need going forward?

54. If you don't know what you want to do,
you'll likely never do it.

55. Grab Some Fucking Magic

56. There Are 6 Letters You Need to Know
None of them are technology acronyms.

57. PMA
Positive Mental Attitude
DIY
Do It Yourself

58. The Dirty Secrets of Startups
There are no barriers to doing this.
There is no one who can train you.
There is nothing you can’t do yourself.

59. Every Day I Strive to Do One Thing:
CREATE SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

60. If you create anything you are better than most
of the other monkeys walking on this rock.
If you don’t have a developer, hack it together yourself.
Don’t have design skills, start asking around, we’re an
open community.
Don’t have any cash? Don’t spend any.

61. Every day you wake up is a day you
get to kick some ass and every day
under the sun is a good one.

62. “When life hands you a lemon, say,
'Oh yeah, I like lemons! What else ya got?”
― Henry Rollins

63. Wrap it up, Heaton.
What the heck have you been talking about?

64. Decide What You Want to Do and Why.
Make it Happen.
Don’t do the Dumb.

65. Thanks.
Andrew Heaton | Revinity
www.revinity.com | @tigerstripe