FI: Product and Service Development

Founders Institute: Product & Service Development Paul Singh @paulsingh http://www.resultsjunkies.com

Startups are HARD • Your competitors are better off than you • Customers don't always know what they want • You have limited resources... Speed is your competitive

Hurdle #1 How do you decide what to build?

You're not the customer (surprise!)

Customer Development • Get out of the office • Adding features is not progress • Learn & iterate (linear execution is for suckers) Goal: build the minimum product to get early users (customers are even better)

Customer Development • The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steven Blank) • Checklists + tactical tips • Buy this ASAP (you can thank me later)

Hurdle #2 How do you actually build the damn thing?

Avoid Rocket Surgery • Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous (Blog) • Google Apps (Email, Calendar, Docs) • Ruby on Rails/PHP, MySQL, Github (Tech Stack) Pro tip: copy other startups

Hurdle #3 How do you avoid making noob mistakes?

Ghetto, but useful • Be cheap (but not too cheap) • Optimize later (manual processes FTW!) • Learn to love technology (or you will get burned) • Learn to love SEO & organic customer acquisition Pro tip: don't skimp on user experience (as far as your users are concerned, the interface is the product)

Hurdle #4 How do you navigate the competition?

You do have competition, right? ...I'd be scared if you don't.

Ignore the Competition ...but listen to their customers • Setup keyword searches via Google Alerts • Pay attention to their user/support forums • Don't compete on price or features - winning that battle is hard

Case Study Because I’m not (entirely) full of shit.

Paul Singh paul@resultsjunkies.com @paulsingh

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FI: Product and Service Development

by paulsingh on Oct 22, 2010

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