This is a lecture given at UC Berkeley on startup strategy on September 23 2013 at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. Building insanely great apps and companies takes 4 things: 1. Accept that nobody cares about your product 2. Find a simple solution to a big problem 3. Respond to what the market tells you 4. Build a killer team This presentation covers the above with specific tips and techniques you can implement to build a great company and killer products. Intro to Entrepreneurship L&S 5 (UGBA 96) Monday September 23, 2013

1. Opportunity Refinement
Building Insanely Great Products & Startups
Lessons learned from 4 startups, 18 years and an
$80 million MBA
Eric Olden – Founder
Class of 1995 UC Berkeley
Intro to Entrepreneurship
L&S 5 (UGBA 96)
Monday September 23, 2013

2. A little about me
Graduated 1995 – Sociology (almost pre-law and business
too)
Startup #1 – The Web Years
• Started first security software company in 1995 senior
year on 4th street
• As CTO grew Securant to 300 employees and #2
market share
• Securant acquired for $140M
My venture capital years
• Angel investor
• Startup mentor – TechStars and Sky Deck
Startup #2 Cloud years
• Founded Symplified in 2006
• CEO for 7 years – now Chairman
Content Marketing & Big Data years
- Founded Launch Sciences and Deep Content in 2013
- McKinsey for startups
- Inbound marketing agency
- Stealth project in Big Data analytics
Worked deeply with more than 22 startups over 18 years
Product Guy:
• Designed and built 3 industry leading products
• Secure billions of ecommerce transactions
Technical Guy:
• Co-authored SAML which is world’s most widely used
standard for identity
Strategy Guy
• Invented Bought Not Sold strategy
Finance Guy:
• Built $225 million in equity value with 2 startups
• Raised $80 million in venture capital
My heroes:
Michelangelo, da Vinci, Machiavelli and Sun Tzu

3. Four Rules For Opportunity Refinement (aka Building
Insanely Great Products)
1.Nobody cares about your product
2.Find a simple solution to a big problem
3.Respond to what the market tells you
4.Build a killer team

4. THE PHYSICS OF EGO IN MARKETING
ME – ME – ME
Notice that your product
isn’t anywhere.
Most people only focus on
Top 3 things to solve.
The way to succeed is to get
inside the head of your
buyer and understand what
her needs are and solve
those problems.

5. Nobody cares about your product
• Field of Dreams – Build It And They Will Come  This just doesn’t work today because
there are far too many choices for buyers today.
• Good work on Innovation Accounting by Steve Blank and also Eric Ries / Lean Startup
– Be deliberate about how you profile your customers’ pains and needs
• Focus on and talk about problems and not about your product.
– Customers need to know how working with you solves their problems.
– Investors first need to understand how big your market is and that’s defined by the
problem.
“There are 200 million cats in USA and
each one has a smelly litter box. We
make smells go away organically for $10
a year.”
“Our cat litter is made of sodium
bicarbonate that has been specially treated
with polymers and can absorb 1 milliliter of
airborne carbon every 24 hours.”

6. Find a simple solution to complex problems
In 1965 NASA needed to
write in space….
Zero gravity prevents
normal pens from
working…
So they spent $12 million
dollars and….
Years of research…
To build the Space Pen!!
Russians
used a pencil!

7. Find a simple solution to complex problems
1. Complexity is the enemy of scale. More things to isolate and test.
2. Complexity is expensive. More things to isolate and test.
3. Simplest solution that solves the problem will be most likely to win.
4. As you get traction you know where to invest because your customers
are telling you what they care about.
5. You should be able to boil your value add into a single sentence. Think
Twitter.

8. Solve the maze fastest by
working back from the solution

9. The Double Diamond Design Model
Outside In – The Power Of Putting Your Customer At The Center Of Your Business.” H. Manning

10. Skills For Getting To The Truth
1. Use Personas  not just for product but for sales, marketing and support
2. Read “Outside In – The Power Of Putting Your Customer At The Center Of
Your Business.” H. Manning
3. Learn how to do great interviews
4. Use tools like Google Analytics (free) and Mix Panel ($)
5. Be systematic – Qualitative and Quantitative  I like checklists
6. Encourage intellectual honesty  great ideas hold up under scrutiny and
weak ones don’t

11. “Everyone has a plan till you
get punched in the mouth”
- Mike Tyson

12. Respond to what your customers tell you and how
they behave
1. You are probably not the Steve Jobs of _______  People know what they like they
may not know how to ask for it. You need to be great at empathy and understanding.
2. Henry Ford’s famous quip “If I asked people what they wanted they would have asked
for a faster horse”  He asked the wrong question. How would people respond if
asked what their needs were for specific things?
3. Beware of human nature because people often tell you what you want to hear. 
Measure actions not words (analytics) and use rough prototypes to get functional
feedback.
4. Beware of chasing your competitors  They are probably just as clueless as you are.
Instead chase your buyers’ needs.
5. Do not be stubborn or overly proud. I think of being a coin-operated product cook.

13. It comes down to the
team. One person can’t
do it all.

14. Building A Great Team
1. Specialized skills  minimum tech and marketing and operations. Focus on
what is totally unique and not outsource-able
2. Support each other  you’ll need to make it through some dark times
3. Slow to hire and quick to fire  must focus constantly on solving the maze
4. Culture really really matters  be deliberate here. Not an inspirational poster
5. Be careful to hire the right attitude  you can learn skills but not passion
6. Sometimes experience can be a limiting factor  Big Co vs. startup

15. Startup Founder Reading List
Founder Dilemmas Do More Faster Made To Stick
Sales Learning Curve
Mark Leslie
Revenue Disruption Founders at Work

16. 3 Take Aways
1. Know Thy Problem
2. Always focus on your customer. Always and everywhere.
3. The simplest solution (almost) always wins

17. Questions?
This presentation will be available on SlideShare – please follow me!
You can find me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/boughtnotsold