How to create a startup? Experience in applying Customer Development and Lean Startup methods in Silicon Valley
Presentation from the presentation at the True_Conf conference on SlideShare .
http://www.slideshare.net/DaniilBrodovich/true-conf-63452518
After graduating from an international business school in San Francisco, I had a tempting job offer. But before agreeing, I decided to get rid of my obsessive startup idea and express it at the Startup Weekend competition - a start-up competition where participants on Friday evening and weekends test their main hypotheses, personally communicating with potential customers, and make the first prototype.
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Then I was carrying a huge community idea, where strangers could give each other useful advice through instant video calls. The idea was so big and vague that I didn’t even know where to start. I noticed that recently in California there has been quite a strong interest in cooking healthy food and more than 100 million Americans watch cooking shows every day. This fact prompted me to the idea that cooking could be an interesting niche. Having shared our dream with a friend from the university, we decided to try to start with cooking. This was the idea of ​​Cooxtream, which later became Cookstream, and now, after many pivots, the company is better known in the USA as TalkToChef . TalkToChef is an international community of over 2,000 chefs who are ready to advise on culinary issues at any time through video chat. Gourmets and young mothers usually consult with their chefs who want to learn how to cook healthy food for their families and want to consult with an expert. In addition, questions often go to chefs specializing in certain diets, so people can make for themselves and their loved ones full menus without the content of the products that they want to exclude. Immediately I can say that the service, perhaps, solves the problem of non-developing countries, and even in the USA the niche is rather narrow.
It’s scary to give your expensive idea to the court of hundreds of participants and guests, and if we hadn’t won, then, perhaps, I would now work in peace in the office of an American company ... But we won by chance. Since then, I personally talked with more than 1,000 start-up founders after going through several accelerators in Silicon Valley and co-organizing monthly meetings of start-up entrepreneurs, some of whom are already several times more successful than me. I noticed that the secret of a good startup idea does not depend at all on how smart or talented you are, but on completely different reasons:
1. Solving a problem that turns on — and really turns on so much that you are willing to devote yourself to finding the right solution — not a year, not two, not even five, but ten, and, perhaps, a lifetime!
2. The world is waiting for a decision - the people around you are constantly faced with this problem and they are waiting for someone to solve it.
But I realized this a bit later, at Startup Weekend we won on enthusiasm, and the reward was not money, but wisdom ... We got into Startup Next, where the course on Customer Development , the founding father of this methodology, Steve Blank, led the course on Customer Development . And only there we really started looking for a problem that needs to be solved. Each member of our team interviewed dozens of Americans, standing at the stores, running from the guards. We simultaneously received answers from several thousand online questionnaires, trying to understand what ordinary people really need and how our technology can help them.
Perhaps the essence of the Customer Development method is the search for "pain." The fact is that there is a huge difference for clients between “necessity” and “good to”. This is the same difference, when your head aches because of something, you run to drink vitamins or still painkillers. Although we all understand that vitamins are good. Well, we often don’t have enough time, just like we did jogging in the mornings, which we also know would be good to do. And in a crisis, all the “vitamins” products die as never before, while all the “painkillers” are strengthened.
The basic principle that I learned from learning from Steve Blanca is that people's need is always more of an idea, and you need to devote yourself to solving their problems, rather than re-educating them.
1. It is impossible to change people if no one understands your idea, no need to blame them for this and say that everyone is “stupid”, you just need to change your idea.
2. If the idea does not work, you do not need to dismiss the ideological leader of the company, you need to fire or change the idea.
3. The difference between big companies and successful startups is that companies know everything about their product, and a startup knows everything about its customers.
Brent Cooper, who actively promotes Customer Development, has made an excellent step-by-step guide for startups in his book, Startup Around Customers . I strongly advise for those who want to create a claimed product.
Steve Hoffman is the founder of the best international accelerator in Silicon Valley, according to a Forbes article. In its accelerator Founders Space, we also went through acceleration. When we first met him, I asked him 3 basic things that a successful startup should have. He said: “ Product, market size, team. ” Using his advice, we not only won the next start-up competition, but also attracted $ 110,000 investment using only these 3 slides!
As you can see from the examples above, not a word has been said about the idea. As a rule, no one gives money to ideas in Silicon Valley, since it is only a spark to create a successful product.
While working on the product, I would like to emphasize the importance of the focus:
Remember, if you work a lot on unnecessary things that are of interest only to you, the world will judge your product not by the time and effort spent, but by what the product is really useful.
In this context, the work of the CEO or ideological leader of a startup is very important. His immediate responsibility includes:
1. Vision / mission.
2. Financing.
3. Team building.
As for the growth and retention of the moment - this is the main task of the whole team! If a team is doing something that is not related to the growth of sales or users, then it has lost focus. Hold moment is a keyword. It's like surfing, you need to catch a wave and hold on. The more success you have, the more productive and confident the team becomes and vice versa.
If, however, the team has lost motivation, and there are disagreements, then return to those for whom you make your product - listen to what your customers say. You need to be a fanatic, not your idea, but a fanatic of creating a product that people need. You need to constantly listen to your customers and observe how users use your product (Put your product in your hands and do not say anything, but see how they use it).
We all talked about the importance of studying and understanding our client, and the question was already ripe: “When was it finally running?” Everything we talked about before was connected with the importance of understanding our client and making the product solves his problem. This does not mean that you should not start until you find your product perfect. On the contrary, you start as early as possible, because only then will you really begin to learn from your customers. The best startups quickly do small tasks that lead to great success.
You need to constantly communicate with your customers, even when everything is fine. They use the product and recommend it to friends. It is imperative that you do sales and customer support yourself in order to understand the client's psychology.
I still often respond to customer requests, make test calls and often contact top customers to write about their experiences or even get in touch. I also periodically go to social networks and communicate with our customers to understand their psychology. Word of mouth is a great way to understand whether your product loves it or not. You can spend money on marketing only after you have made sure that someone really needs your product.
In order to learn more about the principles of building a startup and really see how they work in practice, I recommend reading the excellent book by Eric Rees and his methodology Lean Startup (a lean start-up) in his book Business from scratch . This method is actively used not only for startups, but also for creating new products in corporations such as General Electric, Microsoft, Siemens. And most importantly, never stop improving the product!
To be honest, when we focused only on cooking and solving one problem of all, I was afraid that this would never work out. Later, it came to the realization that nothing is scary if the idea is initially not very big and it solves a specific problem for a small group, but you need to imagine how you can then make it really interesting. It is much easier to make a product that a small group of people will be delighted with, than a product that everyone likes, at least a small group of people really began to enjoy. That is why now we are launching new directions for micro-consultation services around the world with partners. If your mission is to solve a significant problem, there will definitely be people who will want to be involved in it!
Living in the valley, I also helped to organize the Lean Startup Circle — monthly anti-conferences for startups who practice the Lean Startup methodology, where I spoke with hundreds of entrepreneurs from around the world. Most often, it was those who had a high target who fired. It is necessary in order to keep both yourself and the team, working on the product in the most difficult times. Very often really successful startups need 10 years to become such in reality. Therefore, it is important to ask yourself 3 main questions:
1. Does this idea inspire?
2. How ambitious is the mission?
3. How much are you willing to do this?
Harold Fiel - my friend, the champion of Latin America in rowing. He was very worried about corruption and dishonest elections in Latin America, which led to the victory of unworthy and unpopular candidates. Both himself and all those whom he knew, were very upset that their voices meant nothing, since they would still calculate in their own way. When he practiced rowing 18 hours a day, seven days a week, he thought about solving this problem all the time. So he himself, on his knees, unable to program, created his own website, where people can vote for different politicians and see how real they are. Within a few months of operation, hundreds of thousands of people started using this site, and representatives of politicians began to call him, offering 50-100 thousand dollars each, so that he would tweak their ratings. But he did not create a website in order to solve the problem of personal enrichment, therefore, without hesitation, he says that he does not need their money and continues to solve the urgent problem of his people.
He has answers to three questions:
Everyone who created a startup says that they could not imagine how hard it would be and sometimes emotionally painful ... Therefore, if you decide to create a startup, be sure to choose what you really love and then, no matter how hard it is, you have everything Equally there will be an unforgettable adventure or as they say in “Silicon Valley“ Enjoy The Ride ”!
PS: You can see the full performance in the attached video below.
Subscribe to the Startup & Travel channel on YouTube to keep track of new videos about startups, accelerators and successful entrepreneurs from around the world!
http://www.slideshare.net/DaniilBrodovich/true-conf-63452518
After graduating from an international business school in San Francisco, I had a tempting job offer. But before agreeing, I decided to get rid of my obsessive startup idea and express it at the Startup Weekend competition - a start-up competition where participants on Friday evening and weekends test their main hypotheses, personally communicating with potential customers, and make the first prototype.
')
Then I was carrying a huge community idea, where strangers could give each other useful advice through instant video calls. The idea was so big and vague that I didn’t even know where to start. I noticed that recently in California there has been quite a strong interest in cooking healthy food and more than 100 million Americans watch cooking shows every day. This fact prompted me to the idea that cooking could be an interesting niche. Having shared our dream with a friend from the university, we decided to try to start with cooking. This was the idea of ​​Cooxtream, which later became Cookstream, and now, after many pivots, the company is better known in the USA as TalkToChef . TalkToChef is an international community of over 2,000 chefs who are ready to advise on culinary issues at any time through video chat. Gourmets and young mothers usually consult with their chefs who want to learn how to cook healthy food for their families and want to consult with an expert. In addition, questions often go to chefs specializing in certain diets, so people can make for themselves and their loved ones full menus without the content of the products that they want to exclude. Immediately I can say that the service, perhaps, solves the problem of non-developing countries, and even in the USA the niche is rather narrow.
It’s scary to give your expensive idea to the court of hundreds of participants and guests, and if we hadn’t won, then, perhaps, I would now work in peace in the office of an American company ... But we won by chance. Since then, I personally talked with more than 1,000 start-up founders after going through several accelerators in Silicon Valley and co-organizing monthly meetings of start-up entrepreneurs, some of whom are already several times more successful than me. I noticed that the secret of a good startup idea does not depend at all on how smart or talented you are, but on completely different reasons:
1. Solving a problem that turns on — and really turns on so much that you are willing to devote yourself to finding the right solution — not a year, not two, not even five, but ten, and, perhaps, a lifetime!
2. The world is waiting for a decision - the people around you are constantly faced with this problem and they are waiting for someone to solve it.
But I realized this a bit later, at Startup Weekend we won on enthusiasm, and the reward was not money, but wisdom ... We got into Startup Next, where the course on Customer Development , the founding father of this methodology, Steve Blank, led the course on Customer Development . And only there we really started looking for a problem that needs to be solved. Each member of our team interviewed dozens of Americans, standing at the stores, running from the guards. We simultaneously received answers from several thousand online questionnaires, trying to understand what ordinary people really need and how our technology can help them.
Perhaps the essence of the Customer Development method is the search for "pain." The fact is that there is a huge difference for clients between “necessity” and “good to”. This is the same difference, when your head aches because of something, you run to drink vitamins or still painkillers. Although we all understand that vitamins are good. Well, we often don’t have enough time, just like we did jogging in the mornings, which we also know would be good to do. And in a crisis, all the “vitamins” products die as never before, while all the “painkillers” are strengthened.
The basic principle that I learned from learning from Steve Blanca is that people's need is always more of an idea, and you need to devote yourself to solving their problems, rather than re-educating them.
1. It is impossible to change people if no one understands your idea, no need to blame them for this and say that everyone is “stupid”, you just need to change your idea.
2. If the idea does not work, you do not need to dismiss the ideological leader of the company, you need to fire or change the idea.
3. The difference between big companies and successful startups is that companies know everything about their product, and a startup knows everything about its customers.
Brent Cooper, who actively promotes Customer Development, has made an excellent step-by-step guide for startups in his book, Startup Around Customers . I strongly advise for those who want to create a claimed product.
Steve Hoffman is the founder of the best international accelerator in Silicon Valley, according to a Forbes article. In its accelerator Founders Space, we also went through acceleration. When we first met him, I asked him 3 basic things that a successful startup should have. He said: “ Product, market size, team. ” Using his advice, we not only won the next start-up competition, but also attracted $ 110,000 investment using only these 3 slides!
As you can see from the examples above, not a word has been said about the idea. As a rule, no one gives money to ideas in Silicon Valley, since it is only a spark to create a successful product.
While working on the product, I would like to emphasize the importance of the focus:
- Focus on a specific group of people.
- Focus on one problem and try to solve it not just well, but best of all.
- Focus on completing tasks that cannot be more than 2-3 per day.
Remember, if you work a lot on unnecessary things that are of interest only to you, the world will judge your product not by the time and effort spent, but by what the product is really useful.
In this context, the work of the CEO or ideological leader of a startup is very important. His immediate responsibility includes:
1. Vision / mission.
2. Financing.
3. Team building.
As for the growth and retention of the moment - this is the main task of the whole team! If a team is doing something that is not related to the growth of sales or users, then it has lost focus. Hold moment is a keyword. It's like surfing, you need to catch a wave and hold on. The more success you have, the more productive and confident the team becomes and vice versa.
If, however, the team has lost motivation, and there are disagreements, then return to those for whom you make your product - listen to what your customers say. You need to be a fanatic, not your idea, but a fanatic of creating a product that people need. You need to constantly listen to your customers and observe how users use your product (Put your product in your hands and do not say anything, but see how they use it).
We all talked about the importance of studying and understanding our client, and the question was already ripe: “When was it finally running?” Everything we talked about before was connected with the importance of understanding our client and making the product solves his problem. This does not mean that you should not start until you find your product perfect. On the contrary, you start as early as possible, because only then will you really begin to learn from your customers. The best startups quickly do small tasks that lead to great success.
You need to constantly communicate with your customers, even when everything is fine. They use the product and recommend it to friends. It is imperative that you do sales and customer support yourself in order to understand the client's psychology.
I still often respond to customer requests, make test calls and often contact top customers to write about their experiences or even get in touch. I also periodically go to social networks and communicate with our customers to understand their psychology. Word of mouth is a great way to understand whether your product loves it or not. You can spend money on marketing only after you have made sure that someone really needs your product.
In order to learn more about the principles of building a startup and really see how they work in practice, I recommend reading the excellent book by Eric Rees and his methodology Lean Startup (a lean start-up) in his book Business from scratch . This method is actively used not only for startups, but also for creating new products in corporations such as General Electric, Microsoft, Siemens. And most importantly, never stop improving the product!
To be honest, when we focused only on cooking and solving one problem of all, I was afraid that this would never work out. Later, it came to the realization that nothing is scary if the idea is initially not very big and it solves a specific problem for a small group, but you need to imagine how you can then make it really interesting. It is much easier to make a product that a small group of people will be delighted with, than a product that everyone likes, at least a small group of people really began to enjoy. That is why now we are launching new directions for micro-consultation services around the world with partners. If your mission is to solve a significant problem, there will definitely be people who will want to be involved in it!
Living in the valley, I also helped to organize the Lean Startup Circle — monthly anti-conferences for startups who practice the Lean Startup methodology, where I spoke with hundreds of entrepreneurs from around the world. Most often, it was those who had a high target who fired. It is necessary in order to keep both yourself and the team, working on the product in the most difficult times. Very often really successful startups need 10 years to become such in reality. Therefore, it is important to ask yourself 3 main questions:
1. Does this idea inspire?
2. How ambitious is the mission?
3. How much are you willing to do this?
Harold Fiel - my friend, the champion of Latin America in rowing. He was very worried about corruption and dishonest elections in Latin America, which led to the victory of unworthy and unpopular candidates. Both himself and all those whom he knew, were very upset that their voices meant nothing, since they would still calculate in their own way. When he practiced rowing 18 hours a day, seven days a week, he thought about solving this problem all the time. So he himself, on his knees, unable to program, created his own website, where people can vote for different politicians and see how real they are. Within a few months of operation, hundreds of thousands of people started using this site, and representatives of politicians began to call him, offering 50-100 thousand dollars each, so that he would tweak their ratings. But he did not create a website in order to solve the problem of personal enrichment, therefore, without hesitation, he says that he does not need their money and continues to solve the urgent problem of his people.
He has answers to three questions:
- Inspiring idea of ​​fair elections.
- Mission - to save Latin America from corruption
- Ready to do all my life.
Everyone who created a startup says that they could not imagine how hard it would be and sometimes emotionally painful ... Therefore, if you decide to create a startup, be sure to choose what you really love and then, no matter how hard it is, you have everything Equally there will be an unforgettable adventure or as they say in “Silicon Valley“ Enjoy The Ride ”!
PS: You can see the full performance in the attached video below.
Subscribe to the Startup & Travel channel on YouTube to keep track of new videos about startups, accelerators and successful entrepreneurs from around the world!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/304158/
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