Ryan Junee has experience starting and investing in startups. He co-founded Omnisio in 2007 which was funded by Y Combinator, and later founded Inporia in 2011 which raised $1.3M from investors. Some of his advice for startups includes focusing your idea using surveys, minimizing cycle time between iterations, talking to customers early, and pitching with a compelling problem/solution narrative and demonstration of your product. Acqui-hires, where larger companies acquire startups primarily for their engineering talent, are also discussed as a potential exit.

1. Startups
Ryan Junee
ryan@junee.org
http://ryanjunee.com

2. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

3. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

4. Learned
a Lot

5. 2007: Started Omnisio

6. Funded by Y Combinator (Winter 2008)

7. 9 months later...

9. 1 year later...

10. 2010: Quit YouTube, brainstorming (w/ Max Skibinsky)

11. 2011: Founded Inporia

12. Raised $1.3M from top silicon valley investors

13. Epic Fails Pivots
12 months 3 months 2 months
11 months

14. We are still going (currently 200k users)

15. Mentoring:
Investing:

16. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

17. Your Idea:
credit: Peter Thiel

18. What is
your
passion?

19. Consumer distribution,
distribution,
Internet distribution
Enterprise Build and manage
Software a sales team
Energy, Biotech, Solve hard
AI, ... technical problems

20. Choose your
co-founder(s) carefully

21. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

22. FOCUS

23. Use Surveys to Decide
• Google Docs Form + Amazon Mechanical Turk
• AYTM.com
Inporia v1.0

24. Landing Page / Smoke Test
•Value Proposition
•Sign Up
• Facebook
• Email
• ....
Drive traffic with Google Ads, Facebook Ads ...
• Wide variation in price
• Inporia $2.17/user (Google)
• Mobile dating app: $0.10/user (Facebook)

25. Launch, Press (Mobile example)
Goal: Increasing downloads over a week (= top ranked list)
1. Monday/Tuesday launch is best
2. Pre-brief all press (with embargoes)
3. Tech blogs break the news (night before launch)
4. Ask people to re-tweet news
5. Mainstream press articles (launch morning)
6. App review sites (1-2 days later)
7. Paid user acquisition (1-2 days later)

26. Kaleidoscope v1.0 - Not Bad

27. Kaleidoscope v2.0 - Much Better
Featured
by Apple

28. This Morning:
Featured
by Google

29. Integrate with Social Platforms
Pinterest
Organic
Press
Facebook

30. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

31. Minimize Cycle Time
credit: Eric Reis

32. AARRR!
credit: Dave McClure

33. Before Product-Market Fit:
• Retention (do they come back?)
• Engagement (time/actions on site)
• Mobile: reviews/ratings

34. Talk to customers!

35. Easiest
Simple questions: Qualaroo
• “What else would you like to see on this page?”
• “How likely are you to recommend this? (NPS)”
Video testing:
usertesting.com
In-person interviews
• Craigslist
• 45 mins / $20
Most Information

36. After Product-Market Fit:
• Growth in DAU
We are not quite
there yet!

37. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

38. Single
Sentence
Elevator Pitch 30 seconds
‘Demo Day’ 2 minutes
10-slide deck 20 minutes

39. Elements of a pitch
1. Single Sentence 6. Business Model
2. The Problem 7. Distribution
3. Your Solution 8. ‘Secret Sauce’
4. Product Demo 9. Team
5. Market Size 10. Milestones
more...

40. Fundraising in Silicon Valley
• Seed Stage: (200K - 2M): Convertible Note
• Series A (2M - 5M): Equity

41. Seed Valuations Going Up
Source: Fenwick & West
+ my estimate

42. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit?
Questions?

43. Who would you rather be?
“Companies are bought, not sold”

44. Acqui-hires in Silicon Valley
Seed Stage Funding
Supply of Engineers
Acqui-hires
• ‘Soft landing’ for failed startups
• $1M - $2M per engineer
• 2 - 4 years vesting
• Payback investors (sometimes)

45. My Background
Idea Launch Learn
Pitch Exit
Questions?

46. Questions?
Ryan Junee
ryan@junee.org
http://ryanjunee.com