Habits of highly effective startups
Habits of highly effective startups
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Wichien Juthamongkol, Spa Director at The Royal Spa
9 months ago
CX3 Holdings, LLC at CX3 Holdings, LLC
1 year ago
leybold
1 year ago
Tim Heineke at Tim Heineke
2 years ago
Phạm Tuấn Anh, CEO & Founder at 5works
2 years ago
Lars Willner
2 years ago
Lim Kin, Senior Java Tech Lead at Zurich Technology Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd
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Amit Agrawal
2 years ago
ravirip, CEO & Founder at Authentica
3 years ago
Ed Lee, Architect at Kole Enterprise Consulting
3 years ago
Patterns Of Startup Success
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-in 99’ (when i was at biz school) every hand would have been up. Times have changed.
-I’m here with serial entrepreneur Michael Cerda to talk about ‘Patterns of Startup Success’
-Patterns of Startup Success is a bit of a misnomer, though, because most of these patterns were learned through lot’s of error.
-I think we have an interesting format today because we’ll talk about out generalized experiences over the last decade but we’ll relate them to Michael’s current company Cc:Betty which is hot off the funding press.
-Your perspective is built from a set of experiences and can have an enormous impact on your outcome. Take Yahoo! vs. Google for example. I worked for Yahoo! for 4 years and still can’t tell you what their vision is but Google’s vision, ’To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ is well known. The translation is Yahoo is valued at $20B and Google at $124B as of last week.
-Michael, how do you approach the vision question at the beginning and what were the most important takeaways going thru this part of the process?
-The challenge when you’re just an idea on a piece of paper is you’re only hypothesizing who your market will be. You’re only guessing that the market really sees your product as a need. You’re only hoping that they will pay for it when you ask them to take out their wallet.
-To compound the problem...if you’re building ‘experience’ based products like Twitter it’s difficult to determine the need upfront but ‘problem’ based products like Salesforce.com makes the task easier.
-Bottom line, discovering the needs, wants and passions of your audience is a never-ending process. Just like software development, audience development is never really done...audience development
-Michael, what were your most important take aways during this part of the process?
-The tough part is understanding the minimum set of features that the customer will accept.
-This means the initial product may be crappy.
-Michael, what were the biggest takeways in going thru this part of the process?
-It’s a matter of where you place focus. In developing your v1 focusing on frictionless first-time usage and instant gratification...this allows users to experience your product...and not discount you on things that are not core to the experience.
-Michael, you thought a lot about this with Cc:Betty? What were your insights?
-You can make spreadsheets say anything so don’t over-estimate
-Michael, any words of wisdom here?
-Chasing an audience is super difficult. Online there are only a few ways to grow an audience...SEO, SEM, viral features or integrations with products that have the audience.
-Michael...you’re an expert in finding audience...how did you think about the problem with Cc:Betty?
-The question is which ones do you listen to?
-Bottom line...listen to the customers who use your product the most...and develop based on their needs...not everyone else.
-Michael...any words of advice?
-Buzz marketing is key and the biggest bang for your buck will come from the bloggers.
-A happy customer is the greatest endorsement so don’t forget the heavy users either.
-Michael, can you provide a few early launch strategies?
-A great hire can move you light years ahead...a bad one can sometimes set you back irreparably.
-You want to hire rock stars but can’t always afford them...in these cases replace passion for experience.
-Michael?
-Instead, put together a deck with 10 slides that tells your story.
-Michael, you’re a master at this, tell us how you think about the ‘pitch’
-Michael, you’re just coming out of the experience...what lessons have you learned?