Ben Hall is a hacker in residence at Cornershop and founder of previous startups. He discusses his approach to starting new ventures, which focuses on rapidly validating ideas by building minimum viable products and releasing early to test assumptions and learn from customers and metrics. Some of his key advice includes failing fast when ideas don't work, focusing on acquisition metrics over features, and prioritizing speed of delivery over perfect code in the early stages. The presentation emphasizes learning through quick iteration and putting products in front of customers as soon as possible.
4. Who am I?
• Hacker in Residence at Cornershop / #1seed
– Meerkatalyst / MaydayHQ (Co-founder)
– Swapit
– 7digital
– Red Gate Software
• Multiple open source and side projects
• @Ben_Hall or Ben@BenHall.me.uk
21. Ideas to avoid / be aware of?
• Market places / two sided markets
– They do lead to digital transaction businesses ==
most likely to hit $1b
– Winning once is hard. Here you need to win twice.
• Viral
– Generally all about luck
• Photo Sharing etc
– Yawn!!! Be original.
22. Business Assumption Exercise
Business Assumptions Exercise
I believe that my customers have a need to
_____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________.
This need can be solved with
_____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________.
My initial customers will be
_____________________________________________________________________
The #1 value a client wants to get out of my service is:
_____________________________________________________________________
The client can also get these additional benefits:
________________________________________________________ and
______________________________________________________
I will acquire the majority of my users/customers through
______________________________________________ and
________________________________________________
Business Assumptions Exercise
I believe that my customers have a need to discover the
best online services to solve their problems.
This need can be solved with recommending them new
services based on their existing tools and expressed
problems.
My initial customers will be early adopters working in the
London tech scene people who use 5-10 apps on a daily
basis and have signed up to over 100.
The #1 value a client wants to get out of my service is:
having a personalised recommendation service for apps.
The client can also get these additional benefits: visualise
all the apps their currently subscribed too and curated
pages by thoughtleaders and social connections.
I will acquire the majority of my users/customers through
external integrations with apps and word of month /
SEO
26. Speak to everyone!
• Influencers
• Users of competitor products
• Potential new users
• People in different verticals with similar business
models
• Understand industry, customer segments
• Test different value props, identify which
connects best
40. What is a MVP?
• Enhance Learning
• Enable you to ask new questions beyond what
you’ve asked before
41. Don’t turn into a developer!
• This isn’t an exercise in learning new
technologies.
• It’s an exercise in building businesses
• Don’t confuse the two.
43. Lesson learned from Mayday
Stopped the MVP, started scaling (technical
backend), didn’t have product/market fit.
Massive Fail
44. Avoid writing code if you can
• Email first startups are cool!!
• Sunrise (Just raised $2.2m, started as morning
email of your day’s schedule each day)
• Mattermark
45. Speed of delivery is key
• Beg, steal, borrow – just get it done!
• Ability to lean
• Should be based around your vision
• BOA took too long… aim wasn’t to learn,
missed a number of opportunities
46. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WRITE
BORING STUFF
Don’t reinvent the wheel
47. UI / Design
• Bootstrap
• Flat UI
• ThemeForest + Wordpress
• KISS!! Do you really need EmberJS, Backbone
etc etc etc?
54. Cult of the Software Craftsman
• Code Quality is not a feature!
• Do you really need 80% test coverage? What
value is that actually adding?
• Do you really need that abstraction? That IoC?
That level of separation? That ability to scale?
• Is that really going to change your world?
64. Identifying what’s required?
• MVP needs to be a product you can learn from
but generally everything can be dropped.
– If it doesn’t answer a question, does it need to be
there? If there is no question, then no.
– Need X feature to be Y is generally incorrect.
Other ways to solve the problem
• Releasing and iterating at least every day
81. Metrics became the tests
• Ensure the system is
working as expected
• Alerts when the system
stopped working outside
of normal bounds
82. Drive Traffic
• PR (Hacker News, Techcrunch, The Next Web)
• Newsletters (Own and others)
• SEO – Inbound links
• Blog (Own and others)
• Tweet (MailChirp)
• Email (MailChimp)
• Influencers in the sector
– Friends of Red Gate
– Microsoft MVP programme
83. Paid Advertisement
• 4 Hour Body tricks (Google Ad Words for title,
in store hack for cover)
84. Speak to people using the product
• Red Gate UX team
• Watch, Listen, Learn
• Introduce explicit touch points in the
application for reaching out
– Rate it Slate it inbox beta list
• Do people want the feature?
• Can we build a email list of people who are actively
engaging with the product
85. Quickly qualify a lead & call
• Rapportive
• Intercom
• Drop off time is around 90% a day after they
used your product
• Call them ASAP
88. A/B Tests?
• Waste of time at the early stage.
• Complex to configure, not enough traffic to
make them statistically significant.
– Mayday A/B tests
• Took ages to get data, could have just asked people
89. Be prepared to kill it!
• Referly
• Meerkatalyst
• Mayday
• Pivot.
92. Summary
• Stop playing with cool tech & start learning
• Have a vision & execute it
• Listen to customer over everyone else
• Watch your metrics
• Just get started!
93. To all the hackers, hustlers and
hipsters – Good Luck!
Ship stuff, change the world and have
fun!
Apparently it’s worth all the pain, stress
and sleep nights
http://www.flickr.com/photos/newyorkbaltimore/8010607852/sizes/k/in/photolist-dcSsCu/Taking everything you’ve heard this week and applying it to real businesses with the aim of making *money*
Stages of a startupBuild, measure, leanDon’t be scared to failDon’t be scared to kill it if it’s not workingBe public, be visible, talk to everyoneDon’t fail too early!
Meerkatalyst example Thought I understood customer problem. Problem I had personally while at 7digital, knew others had it, ran with it as a side project before joining Springboard startup accelerator
PoolTapsInternal / External
Ideas by themselves are worthless100% on executing the visionPrevious company tried to split attention across 4 company streams. It doesn’t work.Without a core desire, you’ve already lost the game
3 people max.Designer/UI, Backend, CustDev/Biz DevUnicorns!!