1. How Pirates
build Products
Manuel Koelman
Balkan Venture Forum
February 2012

2. manuel koelman | dutch entrepreneur | living in
cologne | currently working on getcontext.de |
co-funder of talential.com | practical
philosopher | piratesummit.com | interested in
agile, lean and productivity | father | caotina
lover | traveler

3. PIRATES
WHY I DO WHAT I DO?

4. "Entrepreneurship is
throwing yourself off a cliff
and building a plane on the
way down."
Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

5. Are you a pirate?
That thrill of your first hire, when you’ve convinced some
other crazy soul to join you in your almost certainly
doomed project. The high from raising venture capital and
starting to see your name mentioned in the press. The
excitement of launch and…gulp…customers! and the
feeling of truly learning something useful, you’re just not
sure what it is, when the company almost inevitably
crashes and burns.
- Mike Arrington, Techcrunch

6. PIVOT
BUZZWORD ALERT

7. Lean Startup Gurus
Steve Blank Eric Ries
“The Four Steps to the “The Lean Startup”
Epiphany”
This talk has been inspired by these guys. Go read their books.

8. Startup
=
Experiment
Startups act in an environment of extreme uncertainty.

9. That’s why
most startups fail.

10. Why do startups fail?
Rarely because the product doesn’t work.
Usually because there are no customers.

11. Problem is unknown.
Solution is unknown.

12. Learn Fast. Fail Fast.
Adapt.

13. Resources
€
Time
The time you have to find a business
model / product market fit

14. Possible Experiment Possible
viable problem
solution 1 area A
Experiment
Possible
viable
solution 2

15. Possible
viable
solution 3
Experiment
Possible Possible
problem viable
area B Experiment solution 4
Possible Experiment Possible
viable problem
solution 1 area A
Experiment
Possible
viable
solution 2

16. Speed wins.
Reduce the time between pivots.
Increase the odds of success.
Before you run out of money.

17. Are you advancing a
plan or are you making
progress?
Progress ≠ # of features

18. Don’t build something
nobody wants.

19. PRODUCT

20. Build a product for
your customer.
Is often easier than finding a
customer for your product.
Remember: Most of the time your best friend isn’t your best customer.

21. Most important advice!!!
Get out of the house.
Before you start coding.
This is the only slide with red text, that’s how important this is.

22. Customer Development
“Validating the Problem”
Customer Customer Customer Scale
Development Validation Creation Company

23. Agile Development
“Building the solution”
Release in small iterations.
Continuous deployment.
Continuously analyze (gather data and insights).

24. Redefine problem / business, „Pivot“
Problem
statement
Build Test Viable?
Iterations, Adjust solution
Launch /
Scale

25. Build what the customer needs.
Beware: What they need is not necessarily what they want.
Therefore, the most important skills are:
Build, Measure, Learn!

26. Step 1:
Build a Minimum Viable
Product
What are the minimum features?
Probably much more minimum than you think.

27. Step 2:
Tune the engine
Smoke testing with landing pages
SEA (five dollars a day)
In-product split testing
Paper prototypes
Removing features

28. Step 3:
Adjust, pivot or persevere
…and repeat

29. One remark about measurement:
Test the small, but
measure the large.

30. 80% tweaking features.
20% building new features.
Consider taking an existing feature out when
implementing a new one.

31. One remark about technology:
Use commodity (e.g. open
source) technology wherever
possible.
Remember, (initially) it is not about the beauty of the code
or the solution, but whether you solve a real problem.

32. Lean Startup is primarily about
speed, not about costs.
However, focusing on fast customer
development should keep your burn rate low.

33. Not only for technology companies.
Lean Startup is for all
companies that face
uncertainty about what
customers will want.

34. Lean Startup is not about the
method of funding.
They can be bootstrapped as well as be largely VC funded.

36. ?
Any questions

37. Find me around the net Websites
@manuelkoelman www.getcontext.de
www.talential.com
fb.com/koelman
www.leanentrepreneur.com
de.linkedin.com/in/koelman www.23moments.com