25. “The most common unscalable thing founders
have to do at the start is to recruit users
manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can't
wait for users to come to you. You have to go out
and get them.”
Paul Graham
26. Startup activities
Minuses
Plusses
Talking to each prospect.
Takes time.
People love attention!
Responding to every email.
Doesn’t scale.
Getting out of the office.
Feels repetitive.
People see you and
start rooting for you.
Iterating 469 times.
Throwing out that
amazing idea you had.
Starting over and over.
Isn’t directly
building product.
Isn’t impressive
to outsiders.
You learn what the
real problems are.
You learn what
people will pay for.
You are building
your brand.
27.
28. Takeaways: 1. Build your brand in 1:1 relationships as
you work toward your MVP.
2. The painful, manual steps of researching
and hand-holding your first customers is
how you’ll also learn how to scale your
business going forward.
3. Everyone you come into contact with is
being branded. You are your brand.
46. Takeaways: 1. Minimum Viable Brand is about owning
a unique shape in the minds of
customers that becomes memorable
and elicits memories of real experiences.
2. Find a shape and be consistent with it.
3. When you reach MVP or are ready to
invest in marketing, then invest in a
professional logo using the same shape!
47. MVP?
Pre MVP
Goal: Repeatable value
Post MVP
Growth
Activities: Research
Conceptual Design
Prototyping
Marketing
Sales
Scaling technology
Branding: 1:1 relationships
1:many relationships
49. "Learning adds resolution to what you offer. And
the change happens not within the product, but
between the user's ears. The more you help your
users learn and improve, the greater the chance
that they'll become passionate."
Kathy Sierra
53. Takeaways: 1. After MVP, strengthen your brand with
content and education.
2. You’ll find your next set of passionate
customers this way.
3. Learn the patterns in how they read your
educational content to learn who to
target and sell to.
54. Takeaways: 1. Branding is not what you say to people, it’s
what they actually experience and expect
of you.
2. Pre-MVP, spend 99% of your time on
making people successful. One by one. By
hand if necessary.
3. Spend the other 1% of your time on an
MVB, which means to own a shape in your
customer’s minds.
4. Post-MVP, strengthen your brand and bring
in leads with education. Level up your
customers by increasing their resolution in
the field they want to learn in.