Create a company in 4 weeks
These are my notes on listening to Dan Sullivan of Crowdly. His talk on youtube in Harvard Innovation Labs is called “Fake it Till you Make it” and is really great since he is giving practical advice and guidelines learned from his experience.
Quoting his words here to get a better idea:
I will focus on the very short term nuts and bolts. We’ll talk through what exactly can you do in the next four weeks to substantially move your idea forward. In our conversation, I’ll answer questions, share my ideology and process, tips, tools, and talk plainly about the ups and downs of my own experience. How to scope your prototype, what to measure, what it is, and importantly, what it isn’t (hint: a first version of your eventual product) How I hack process to get real milestones really quickly that can gut check your assumptions, or make it more attractive to potential technical talent, partners, or investors. Removing false positives from your prototypes, and determine true intention. (Don’t ask people to say nice things about you and then take it as evidence). Cheat sheet on the free or cheap tools that will be your best friend. Startup frenemies. How to get good help from good people, and what offers you should refuse. Non-technical Founders can build great companies. So many fail by overestimating the first step. Think small, and start building something great.
How to scope your prototype?
Tell somebody your idea. Give them the short version. Stop then. Have them tell you what you said. You will really understand what resonates. It is not always what you think it is.
If you want somebody to say nice things about your idea, they will do it. Nobody wants to crush your dream. But this is useless. How can you get people to say bad things? Don’t sell. Be candid. Dig for obstacles. Talk. Stop talking, and ask them what you said. Force them to say bad things about you. Otherwise, they won’t.
Examples of good questions:
- Why wouldn’t you use it?
- What else are you using right now? Do you like it? How long did it take to choose that? How long would it take to switch?
- Can you pay us for it?
- What exactly would you do with us, and how would you measure it?
- Are we like anything else you are currently using, if so, what? Are we competitive or complementary to them?
- What would be the most painful part about switching from them to us?
- Would you replace us with them? How did you choose them in detail?
- Will you sign this piece of paper?
What to measure?
GFD: Green Fucking Dollars. the quicker you get them the better. This is a start differentiator.
LOI: Letter of Intent. Not as good as dollars but shows intention.
Signups/Pre-regs: How many users signed up or registered? If you get like 4000 people to pre-register on your landing page. It's just as impressive.
Fractional Commitments: At the beginning when you cannot pay any employee it would be nice if you get some people to commit and help you part time.
Turk it. Mechanical Turk You can prove your idea very quickly even if you fake and instead of having a real algorithm you use turk services to make it work.
Actions per user: Frequency of revisit, actions per session, convert to lead, funnel progress.
Cheap tools to use
I am adding to the list below:
Design the most important UI Page in Figma or Balsamiq
Some nice and wit food for thought.
“Do not defend your ugly baby”
“ask for advice when you want money, ask for money when you want advice”