Genna Elvin gives a presentation on starting a startup using the Lean methodology. She discusses how her company Tadaweb initially pursued many different markets and product ideas without finding product-market fit. Through iterative testing and pivoting, they discovered their technology was best suited for B2B and government users. She encourages entrepreneurs to test marketing ideas before building, develop an MVP to validate metrics with early adopters, measure the right metrics, and be willing to pivot quickly if those metrics don't look promising. The Lean methodology focuses on short development cycles, customer validation, and data-driven decision making to reduce risks and failures.

1. Lux University
Masters of Entrepreneurship
Presentation
2016

2. Hi! I’m Genna
Co-Founder of Tadaweb
@gennaelvin
gelvintw.tumblr.com

3. Luxembourg based, growth stage technology company
founded in 2011 and now made up of a team of 22 and
PIONEERING THE FIELD OF SMALL DATA

4. Firstly… I am no
Startup Queen,
Business legend
or social Impact
God…
Yet…

5. Rather, I want to use this lecture as a
guide on some of the things I wish I
had learnt when I was starting out.

6. Today I will discuss
• Starting a startup
• The Lean Methodology
• Product Market Fit
• Testing

7. Ok… So you want to start
something awesome?

8. You dreaming of how awesome it will be…

9. After all, you are already planning out
your office decor….

10. Reality can hit hard and fast in the
beginning..
Innovation
hub, startup HQ

11. I don’t wanna burst your bubble…

12. 90% of startups fail…

14. You could stop there, get a job, have
financial security, work 9-5 and
vacation time…

15. You could stop there, get a job, have
financial security, work 9-5 and
vacation time…
and spend the rest of
your life regret never
trying…

16. Or you could say to
those stats - stick ‘em

17. But words aren’t actions… So how can
you be the startup in the 10%?

18. Let me introduce you to this guy…
(you may know him, and if you do, great - 10
points)

19. Eric Ries - God behind the
Lean Startup Model

20. But what is the lean startup and why is
this approach so fricken awesome?

21. The Lean model is methodology that aims to shorten
product development cycles by adopting a combination
of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation,
iterative product releases, and validated learning.
The central hypothesis of the lean startup
methodology is that if startup companies invest their
time into iteratively building products or services to
meet the needs of early customers, they can reduce
the market risks and sidestep the need for large
amounts of initial project funding and expensive
product launches and failures

22. AKA

23. LEARN
AKA

24. LEARN
BUILDAKA

25. LEARN
BUILD
MEASURE
AKA

26. LEARN
BUILD
MEASURE
AKA
REPEAT

27. Before you go thinking that this can
only happen once you have built your
product, you would be mistaken…

28. The Lean methodology can be used
early on even in the first critical step
for any company.

29. PRODUCT

30. PRODUCT MARKET

31. PRODUCT MARKET FIT

32. Is there a sufficient demand in a clearly defined
marketplace for my product that can also ensure
scalability?
AKA

33. Let me take you on a personal journey with the
lean approach and product market fit my company

34. Before we even incorporated we showed our
technology to a lot of people… friends, investors,
colleagues…

35. They were all pretty impressed and excited…

36. BUT

37. Almost every single person had a different (and
supposedly amazing) view on what our
technology could be used for… Including…

38. Global Regulatory Tracking

39. Sports News Curation

40. Global Media Source Flow Analytics

41. Web Data Usage Analytics

42. The Pinterest of Web Data

43. Stock Flow Sentiment Detection

44. App Data Providers

45. FOR

46. B2B

47. B2C

48. B2G

49. B2B2C

50. B2B2B

52. So we developed
this…

54. What Happened?

55. 5000 users…

56. 5000 users…
Seed Investment…

57. 5000 users…
Seed Investment…
AND - an article in TechCrunch

58. 5000 users…
Seed Investment…
AND - an article in TechCrunch

59. Awesome,
huh?

60. Introducing Vanity Metrics

61. “Vanity metrics make you feel good, but they don’t
offer clear guidance for what to do”
- Eric Ries

62. The 5000 users were from multiple different
segments, all using the technology in different ways
with no clear pattern or insight….

63. And the article was amazing validation for our
technology, not to mention great publicity, but it
caused yet another saw in users that caused even
more confusion and even more artificial growth…

65. So what did we do?

66. We stopped firing a machine gun into a
bunch of pigeons and decided we needed
to tighten up our product market fit…

67. We need to break things down into
smaller pieces and think like a sniper

68. We selected on key market, with one key user case
and we tested, tested, tested…

69. When we didn’t see true progress based on real
metrics (aka, not vanity metrics) we PIVOTED

70. A pivot is a "structured course correction designed to
test a new fundamental hypothesis about the
product, strategy, and engine of growth."

71. Steve Blank states that it’s about changing the plan,
not the execution.

73. After lot’s and lot’s of testing, we discovered that our
technology was too complicated for typical B2C
consumers. The learning curve required extensive
training and suited the demands of B2B and B2G.

74. So this is great…
but how does it
effect you guys?

75. 1. You have a
great idea

77. 2. Before building,
you test the
market

78. Google Adwords, or Facebook ads are great for this.
You can test ads across multiple different profiles
before building anything, in order to measure the
best results

79. 2. You build an
MVP

80. There needs to be strong emphasis on the
“minimum.” There is no point building something
people won’t use, even if it has bugs, ship it to early
adopters.

81. 2. Measure (the
metrics that really
matter)

82. For example, at Tadaweb we found the rate of new
users was actually a VANITY METRIC. What really
mattered was their return rate and interaction with
our SDK

83. Make sure your metrics measure what is truly
valuable to finding your product market fit

84. 2. Build / React

85. If you are noticing that the key, real metrics are not
good…

86. DON’T

87. DON’T WAIT

88. DON’T WAIT TOO

89. DON’T WAIT TOO LONG!

90. Another key to the unleashing the power of the lean
model is “speed”

91. It can be easy as the founder to DENY EVERYTHING

92. But this denial often only puts off the inevitable

93. So go, find an amazing idea. Before even building,
test, test, test the market. Once validation of real
metrics (NOT VANITY METRICS) starts to go well,
build an MVP and get early adopters on board.
Measure, measure, measure. Are they key metrics still
performing? Yes? Awesome! No? Maybe you need to
pivot? AND FAST

94. THANKS