STARTUPTHINGS I WISH I KNEW

STARTUPTHINGS I WISH I KNEW

FROM ZERO TO HERO IN 15 MINUTES

Saturday, November 17, 12

ACTION BEATS THEORYEVERY TIME

What do all these phrases REALLY mean and what can I SPECIFICALLY do?

“differentiate from competition”

“know your target market”

“deliver measurable results”

“solve a real problem”

“satisfy real people’s needs”

Saturday, November 17, 12

IDEASHARPENING EXERCISE (1 TO 10) A.K.A. EXTREME PIVOTING

How well does your idea turn...

• hard into easy or slow into fast (twitter.com)

• doubt into trust (yelp.com)

• boring into fun (facebook.com)

• impossible into possible (ebay.com)

• dispensable into indispensable (toilet paper story) (amazon.com)

Does your idea:

• have the ability to grow quickly

• match your skills and passion

• make you proud

• make you want to use it yourself

• have so much potential it scares you

Saturday, November 17, 12

Cover the basics first

• Skills that a startup team must have: technology, designer and business

Recruit your weaknesses

• find absolutely the BEST people for the job that are amazing in things you don’t know anything about

Start right

• A teams will attract A players

• B team will attract C and D quality

A-TEAMONLY THE BEST

Saturday, November 17, 12

SAY HI TO JANE#1 INSIGHT TOOL TO HELP YOUR MARKETING, MESSAGING, PRODUCT

Create your customer avatar story Their name, age, gender, relationship status, family. Where do they live, work, socialize. Secrets, dreams and desires...

• “Step into her shoes” and define pains and problems related to your specific solution• Now you can ask any question you need

the answer to:

Price: How much is that worth to Jane?

Market size: How many Janes are out there and will use my product?

Product design: How would Jane react to this feature? What can I add or remove to keep her engaged....

JANEJane is a single 28-year-old lawyer who lives in downtown Sarajevo. She earns 1500 KM per month and lives with the help of a credit card and, occasionally, her parents. She enjoys going out to clubs and concerts. She cooks for her

friends and hosts mini-parties whenever she can. She is fashion-conscious and easily spends a quarter of her paycheck on clothing and beauty products. She is obsessed with Facebook and Pinterest. She dreams of a trip to ..... you get the picture.

Saturday, November 17, 12

EVERY $1000HOW TO MAKE MONEY

WEBAds (adsense, admeld, etc)• $ .50 eCPM = 2 million impressions

Selling digital goods (ebooks, access to tutorial videos)• @ $5 = 200 sales

Monthly Subscriptions (quality content = video)• $25 = 40 subscribers• e.g. https://teamtreehouse.com

SaaS (software as a service) • $100+ = <10• e.g. http://seomoz.org

Lifetime access• http://rouxbe.com/ (pronounced ruby)• @ $399 = 2.5 customers

Facebook Web AppsFacebook game tokens• @$5 to save 1 hour of game play - 200 players =

200,000 players (one in 1000 will pay)Ads - similar to web

Mobile AppsApp sales• @ $.99 = 1000 sales

In-app purchases - similar to FacebookMagazine subscriptions - hard to penetrate• @ $2.99 = 300 sales

In-app ads (a growing trend) • $1.64 eCPM iOS• $.88 eCPM Android

Make your ads meaningful• internal mobile facebook $9.86 eCPM• Sponsorships (requires sales people or self-serving)

$1000+ - for one sale

Saturday, November 17, 12

BRAVE NEW WORLDTO UNDERSTAND

Kick-start site with external data - APIs for social graph, login, geo data, etc.

e.g. foursquare.com - launched on top of citysearch.com data (citysearch who?)

Mix mobile and user location (GPS data) to give a whole new life to existing data

e.g. yelp.com’s “what’s nearby” search

Deeply understand live social streams

stream is sharing, not log (Facebook vs LinkedIn)

Motivate using gamification

use game principals on non-game software

Crowd-source curation of content to stay up to date & unique

e.g. yelp.com, twitter, wikipedia, etc

Saturday, November 17, 12

MONEY TO STARTPRODUCT BEFORE COMPANY, NOT OTHER WAY AROUND

Web and Facebook Apps

• Servers AWS free tier http://aws.amazon.com/free/

• Use open source http://github.com

iPhone and iPad

• XCode: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

• iOS Developer program: $99 https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/

Android

• One time $25 fee:

• Android SDK free: http://developer.android.com/sdk/

Saturday, November 17, 12

MEASURING SUCCESSNUMBERS ARE YOUR FRIENDS

Web and Facebook Apps• daily users on weekly basis

• Google Analytics & Facebook Insights

Mobile• Daily downloads and in-app purchases

Cash-flow • weekly estimates, monthly deep-check

• Paypal with Mint or Xero

Saturday, November 17, 12

STARTUP = GROWTHA STARTUP IS A COMPANY DESIGNED TO GROW FAST

Weekly Yearly

1% 1.7 x

2% 2.8 x

5% 12.6 x

7% 33.7 x

10% 142 x

Example of a company making $1000/month

• 1% a week will 4 years later be making $7900

• 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month

• Do you dare to do the math for 10% weekly growth???

Three phases of growth

• Slow initial period - figuring things out

• Rapid growth - made something lots of people want and know how to reach those people

• Big company slow growth - bumping against the limits of the market

Saturday, November 17, 12

INVESTMENTBE THE ONE THAT MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN AWAY

Take investment as late as possible• You will optimize your cash-flow early and know exactly

how to smartly invest money once you do have it• You will have easier time finding investor and have upper

hand in negotiation

Look for mentors and advisors that can help beyond money

Validation of your business model• Users’ growth or Cash-flow projections• Executive team (success track means less risk)• Expecting 10x return on investment

When it comes to choosing between higher valuation and keeping control always, always, always keep as much of control of the company as possible

Don’t blow the money - it is not yours

Saturday, November 17, 12

SET UP A CLOUD COMPANY

Google apps (free tier) for mailhttp://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/

Paypal for bankhttp://paypal.com/

Mailing services for virtual addresshttp://www.earthclassmail.com/

Support: Zendesk and Twitterhttp://www.zendesk.com/http://twitter.com/

Saturday, November 17, 12

LEARNINGTHE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE STILL FREE

Stanford Ecorner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/

Startup school: http://startupschool.org/2012/

Google Tech talks: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks

• Gamification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g

iTunes U: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

• iPhone Stanford Classes: http://itunes.stanford.edu/

Rework: http://37signals.com/rework

Virtual goods: http://www.dubitplatform.com/blog/2010/12/31/design-a-social-game-economy-how-much-should-a-virtual-t-shi.html/

Google everything else yourself

Saturday, November 17, 12