Digested nougat of advice for anyone, specially engineers thinking about doing anything business wise.
A good app idea != A good business
A clever, fun idea is just that, an idea. A business is not about an idea, its about the people, the network, the proccesses and ultimately, your clients.
Your idea has no impact on success, only your research and execution does.
A good idea alone means nothing to sucess. A good idea will go no where without good execution,
a bad idea can still succeed with good execution.
Business practices and philosophies mean nothing without your first sale, you are not in business until you have a customer.
I spent the first few months of being self employed reading The Lean Startup, The Pumpkin Plan, Entreprenuer Toolkit.
All amazing in content but unapplicable because I had 0 sales and 0 adoption.
LEAN was useful to help me experiment but without sales I just wasnt in business
You can not avoid sales, and sales is not about YOU (the maker).
By far sales has been the hardest part for me to onboard.
I build many apps and projects because I cared about their mission, but selling their solutions was a problem.
Mine (and likely everyone else's) first assumption was once I build it, people will flock to it and adopt.
**My lesson learned nobody cares about what you built or who you are, they care about what impact does this
solution have to their lives. If you are talking about yourself in a sale rather than the impact to the customer
you are doing it wrong.**
There are no magic bulets, or series of steps to ensure success.
If you start off by asking someone how to be successful, you are already doing it wrong.
Almost all value a product/startup offers is about figuring out that part for themselves.
The hardest part of being a driver in business is that its up to you to decide what to do.
Maker stories, success or failure case studies are good insights, but ultimately you must
choose a path that has a uncertain future, but the opportunity is there to make that future
what you want it to be.
It is much more useful to try to ask better questions than to invent better solutions.
What value are you providing, really? What difference are you making in anyone's life with your product or service?
How can anyone tell you apart from a competitor?
Not all questions are created equal, some will help you more than others. Again there is no formula, but I've found
several concepts useful.
Product Market Fit - Marketing
Diminishing Return - Economics
Cost Per Acquisition - Marketing
Sunk Cost Fallacy - Economics
Customer Profile - Marketing
Consumer Decision Making Process - Marketing
Incentives, Scarcity, Opportunity Cost - Economics
Standard Deviation/Error - Statistics
#StartUp Process
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Find a genuine problem - Hardest part, no formula, cant be made up, must be discovered
You shouldnt base your idea based on "what you can do", that was my mistake.
Your business should be all about discovering, describing, understanding and solving a specific problem.
More often, engineers comes up with solutions they need to then find problems for.
They are often driven by technology, whether to learn or showcase, and NOT a problem.
"I made an app that publishes my laundry list every week" - Cool, but does this solve a problem for someone?
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Validate your problem & solution - How big is this problem, does your solution solve it?
You must eliminate all guess work from your startup. Assumptions are OK if you identify and test them.
You cannot just assume a problem you have is universal, or a solution you created will be adopted.
Test your assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible.
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Find people willing to pay you for the solution - If you can't find anyone to give you money directly
or indirectly for your solution, its NOT a good business.
It is easy to assume people will love your idea. Your friends and family members may be supportive.
Asking strangers directly whether they like your idea or would use it is full of biases.
The best way to validate your idea is to get a genuine commitment from people. Financial is best,
social (recommendation, testimonial) is next best.
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Think, breathe, dream, build LEAN - The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a must read & know.
LEAN is about eliminating guessing, and reducing wasted time/efforts in business.
But long story short, its about adopting a scientific approach to making decisions in your organization based
on gathering insights/data from experiments you design rather than relying on assumptions and intuition.
Learning & repeating are the only 2 formulas you can truly follow
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value." - Albert Einstein
"If you hate big companies so much, why are you trying to create one?" - Eric Ries
"Dont be in a rush to get big. Be in a rush to have a great product" - Eric Ries
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Willam Fifield
"You can invest solutions, but you cant invent problems" - Rulian Estivalletti
Book - The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Book - The Pumpkin Plan - Mike Michaelowicz
Book - A More Beautiful Question - Warren Berger
Audiobook - Thinking Like an Economist - The Great Courses
Video - Learned Helplessness - Veritasium - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPzDiraNnA
Video - Self Efficacy - Veritasium - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hRbwJp_szQ