SUCCESSFUL STARTUP 101 MAGAZINE
Volume 1, Issue 8, Sep. 2014
Published by
Tabitha Jean Naylor
Copyright
Distributed & Published by
Tabitha Jean Naylor
www.successfulstartup101.com
Copyright 2014 by Tabitha Jean Naylor. All Rights Reserved.
Table of contents
* Letter From The Editor
* Busting the Lean Startup Myth, by Howard Tullman
* Tips from the Startup Fundraising Playbook, by Nathan Beckord
* 80 Ways to Find Your Next Big Startup Idea, by Thomas Oppong
* Entrepreneur, Fire Thyself - by Kerrie MacPherson
* 5 Podcasts Every Small Business Owner Should Consider Listening To, by Rob Marsh
* 2 Startup Expenses You Should Never Shortcut, by AJ Agrawal
* 5 Ways for Bootstrapped Startups to Get Through the First Year, by Zach Cutler
* Why Startups Sell For Millions with No Business Model, by Dev Aujla
* What Does It Mean To Lead With Trust? - by Randy Conley
* 9 Lessons From a 10-Time Startup Failure, by Eric T. Wagner
* The 14 Steps Needed to Recruit Your Early Startup Team, by Paul Ruderman
* 3 Ways to Use Social Media to Align Your Team, by Andre Lavoie
* Entrepreneurs! Take a Break: It Can Help Your Business - by Cristopher Ramirez
* The Three Bandits of Change Leadership, by Jim Haudan
* How Good Management Stifles Breakthrough Innovation, by Markus Lorenz
* Small Business Tips from a Successful Entrepreneur, by Lyve Alexis Pleshette
* Think You Know What Venture Capitalists Look For In New Start-Ups? Think Again - by Patrick Hanlon
* How to Make Your Product Look Sexy on Facebook, by Aaron Lee
* Why You Should Never Give Up On Your Dreams, by Adriana Langford
* The Quest for the “Easy” Startup, by Tabitha Jean Naylor
* Contact Successful Startup 101
Letter From The Editor
My name is Tabitha Jean Naylor. I am the publisher of Successful Startup 101 magazine, the founder of the Successful Startup Series and owner of TabithaNaylor.com. You likely wouldn't know me if we passed each other walking down the street, so I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself, as well as shed some light on the inspiration behind Successful Startup 101 Magazine.
To say that entrepreneurialism is in my blood is an understatement. I grew up around small business; my great granddad started a small hardware empire in the mountains of western Maryland and West Virginia back in 1864. It’s a family-run business that’s still in existence today. As a child, I witnessed firsthand the challenges that small business owners face, including the sacrifices that sometimes need to be made. I was also fortunate enough to see the rewards of the blood, sweat and tears of those same sacrifices. Commitment, dedication and hard work were all things that my parents taught me at a very young age.
After a successful sales career in the mortgage industry, I opened my first business – a mortgage company based in center city Philadelphia – in 2006. There were many highs and many lows, and quite frankly, no amount of planning in the world could’ve prepared me for the business lessons I learned along the way. In 2009, I closed the company on a high note to pursue other endeavors outside of the real estate industry. A little over a year later, I started TabithaNaylor.com, a marketing firm that delivers ‘big agency’ quality at rates that are affordable for startups and small business. I've made more mistakes along the way that I care to admit (or even want to count!), which is where the inspiration for Successful Startup 101 stems from.
The goal of Successful Startup 101 magazine and the Successful Startup Series is simple: to help. We live in an age of information overload. 571 new websites go live A Minute and 2 million blog postes are written PER Day. The days of doing a quick search online and finding an answer to a burning business question are long gone. Instead, if you head over to Google and do a search for “Small Business Finance,” you’ll be greeted by 775,000,000 results. Even if you have the time to read through the top 10 search results (which let’s be honest here, you probably don’t), you’re not guaranteed to find the answer you’re looking for. The information could be outdated. It could just be wrong. The content you read may contradict with what you've seen or heard elsewhere. So how do you know what to believe? Where do you begin? They say analysis is paralysis, but when wer’re talking about something as important as your business, can you REALLY afford bad advice?
Successful Startup 101 cuts through the clutter. The articles in the magazine are carefully selected to help you – the budding entrepreneur, the startup founder, the small business owner – get the information you need to help your business succeed. All authors are thought leaders and experts in their respective fields so you can rest easy knowing that the information is accurate, current and of the highest quality.
I consider myself a lifelong student. I love learning new things. And I love my business. I am fortunate and blessed to be doing something that I love... I help businesses with their marketing and branding strategies every single day, which in turn, helps them grow. Now, I am extending that helping hand even farther and wider that I ever dreamed possible. That you for your interest, and most important, your support in Successful Startup 101.
I sincerely hope that you enjoy the magazine.
All the best –
TABITHA JEAN NAYLOR
Publisher
Busting the Lean Startup Myth
By Howard Tullman
If your minimum viable product doesn't have some meat to it, you're going to fail. Here are three things to watch out for.
One of the greatest TV commercials of all time featured a crotchety old Chicago woman (Clara Peller) whose plaintive 3-word inquiry ("Where’s the beef?") became not just a huge advertising home run for Wendy's but a national catch phrase. Every comedian, late-night television host, news commentator, and politician seized on the expression and couldn't use it enough.
"Where's the beef?" is a question that's still worth asking today, specifically at those many startups that have jumped aboard the latest and greatest craze--"lean" everything. That's because, when it comes to "lean," the same question applies: Where, exactly, is the beef?
Is There "V" in Your "MVP"?
I find myself thinking fondly of Clara's pronouncement whenever I have to sit through another bogus business review session where someone with the bare bones of an idea is trying to convince a group of otherwise intelligent investors that there's a real business opportunity buried beneath all the B.S., and that (a) all the shortcomings of the story being spun and (b) all the gaps in the gospel aren't actually problems at all. They're not bugs, oversights, or misses; they're the intentional result of trying to be "lean" and trying to launch "something" (not to say, "anything") to get the ball rolling.
I'm not sure when it got to be OK to try to do the least work possible in developing something that you are seriously trying to do well, but maybe I missed a memo or two. But when people tell me that it's the minimum viable product (MVP), not the meat of the matter, that actually counts I remember that Clara knew better. This entire lean startup movement not only misleads and misdirects people into building mediocre products and potential services, it's also much more of a curse than a cure.
We're encouraging an entire generation of young entrepreneurs to rush things out to prospective customers--to throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. In the old days, people thought this was a good way to test to see if the spaghetti was al dente, but it actually wasn't
. Pasta that sticks to the wall is most likely overcooked and too gummy to taste good.
Like so many other things in life, there's no simple shortcut or quick way to do these things right. It takes time and craft and patience to build things that will matter and last. "Quick and dirty and out the door" sucks as a strategy for successful startups. Maybe you can never be too thin or too rich, but a startup can clearly be too lean. The ultimate goal isn't to build skinny start-ups, it's to build smart ones.
I understand that it would be naïve to delay your launch until you thought you had every single detail exactly right. We know that even the experts can completely overlook glaring interface flaws or other obvious omissions that the simplest novice user will see right off the bat. And it's equally arrogant to assume that you can't learn a single thing from the marketplace or your users. But that's a different issue.
As I see it, there's a basic flaw in the common understanding of the "lean startup" concept, and then there are three main problems with the way most young entrepreneurs are trying to adopt and implement it.
The Basic Flaw
Even the best MVP won’t succeed without an MVA. An MVA is a Minimum Viable Audience (that's my simple shorthand for a bunch of potential buyers). Long before you start creating your product, crafting your code, and designing your UI you need to find out if anyone gives a damn about your idea and your proposed solution. This isn't easy work. You have to actually get off your butt and get out into the field and find and talk to actual people--not your co-founders or your folks--about what you're hoping to do.
You have to find actual problems that are generating real pain for a large number of people. You have to determine whether those people recognize the problem, appreciate the pain, are willing to admit that they have the problem, and are willing to pay for a solution. Then you might have a fighting chance to define and build a viable solution.
You have to also recognize that: (a) there's an infinite demand for the unavailable (anyone can say they'll buy something that you don't have for sale); and (b) the easiest way for a buyer to get you to leave them alone is to say "Yes" and "Come see me when your product is ready," and then show you the door.
Problem 1: They Won't Care
If you haven't done your homework and identified the right pain points and the right target customers, you might as well take a hike because no one wants the cure for no known disease; no one is going to invest in solutions in search of problems; and you'll end up building and wasting a lot of time on the greatest software never sold. The way you start the process determines where you end up, and these businesses are hard enough even for the people who do all the proper research, preparation, and planning. A goal without a plan is just a daydream on someone else’s dime.
Problem 2: They Won't Suffer
The idea that you can dump some partially-baked solution on your first prospects and they will then help you figure things out is another pipe dream. Trying to make your first users into your last beta testers is a waste of everyone's time because smart users want simple solutions that work right out of the box, not more problems. And it doesn't really matter what the problems are (implementation, training, support, stability, or security) because they're all just more noise and aggravation that busy people don't need. We are quick to try and even to adopt things that work for us, but we're much quicker to dump stuff that doesn't. And while there is an obvious trade-off between the degree of the customer's pain and the customer’s otherwise heightened expectations, in the end no solution that simply swaps one set of problems for another is going to get out of the gate.
Problem 3: They Won't Wait
As the Heads & Shoulders people say, you don't get a second chance today to make a first impression. Customers won't (and don't) wait for you to figure things out; if your first attempt falls flat you can bet that they won't let you come back. It's ridiculously easy to burn your bridges and impossibly hard to rebuild them when there are fast followers and copycats galore standing by, watching your mistakes. Customers don't want stories or excuses; they want workable solutions.
The Right Way
There is a right way to do this and it's pretty simple. Do your homework and find an important unmet market need. Recruit the right early users who are invested (by virtue of their own desires) in your success. Build your MVP to their specifications and with their input and buy-in. And then prepare to enter the perpetual iteration loop.
Launch, Measure, Modify, Re-Launch and Repeat the Process ad nauseam.
Successful solutions today are all the same: moments of mad creativity followed by months of maddening maintenance. Continually raising the bar and improving your offerings is the only way to stay in the game.
About the Author
Howard Tullman is the CEO of 1871 in Chicago where, at the moment, 260 digital startups are building their businesses every day. He is also the general managing partner of G2T3V, LLC and Chicago High Tech Investors – both early-stage venture funds; a member of Mayor Emanuel’s ChicagoNEXT Innovation Council; and Governor Quinn’s Illinois Innovation Council. He is an adviser to many technology businesses, a published author and an adjunct professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Connect @tullman.
* This article originally appeared on Inc.com
Tips from the Startup Fundraising Playbook
By Nathan Beckord
I’ve been considering raising a seed round for my startup Foundersuite. So, to get my head in the game, I’ve been chatting up various startup friends who have recently been in the market for capital.
Here are a few of the best tips for running an efficient fundraising round.
1. Mine AngelList and CrunchBase to Build a List of Investor Targets
I’m a big fan of AngelList, and whenever I need to build a dataset of target investors, it’s the first place I go. Here’s how I do it: From the homepage, navigate to the “People” tab and use the “Role” header to select the relevant type of investor (seed, angel, VC, etc.). Next, scroll to the “Markets” field and enter the appropriate industry and vertical (e.g. “SaaS,” “e-commerce,” “Digital Media” etc.). Pick out names of people you’ve heard good things about, or who clearly get the space, then add them to a spreadsheet or dedicated CRM product.
An alternative, and somewhat more aggressive, approach comes from Dan Martell in an answer on his Clarity site. To paraphrase, he states, “Find other people [on CrunchBase] who have raised money and ask them who they got it from.” The process he follows is to first create a list of all similar companies that successfully raised money. Next, cold email the CEO/Founder and ask to schedule a call with them for advice. Finally, as you develop a rapport with them, consider asking who their investors are and if they’d be willing to make an intro.
2. Aim for the Double Opt-In Intro
This is a tip I recently learned from my friend Richard Goodrum, COO of RaceYourself. The best intros come from warm referrals, but instead of asking your referrer to simply make an intro, suggest they first ask the target if she or he would like to take it. For example, send a personalized email to your connector asking for an intro to Ben Horowitz, and instead of making a direct intro, your connector first forwards your note to Ben, asking him if he’d like to take the opportunity.
Generally speaking, people dislike intros being “forced” on them; it creates awkward social pressure if they’re really not interested. Further, if they do say they’d like to take the intro, they’ve already said “yes” once and may be more predisposed to liking the deal. It’s a subtle difference – but an effective one.
3. Create Time Pressure
This tip came from startup wunderkind and Y Combinator alumni Shehzad Daredia, who recently closed a round for his startup bop.fm: “A tactic that’s worked for me when fundraising is to create the perception of time pressure so investors have a forcing function. A high-risk, high-reward way to take that one step further is to very politely and diplomatically acknowledge t
hat the VC is probably not well-equipped to make a decision fast enough to meet your timeline.
For example, stating, ‘I know you guys must have a process to go through, so I understand if you can’t make our timeline.’ Issuing such a subtle, playful challenge to one VC resulted in them literally running after us in the parking lot shortly after our first meeting and saying, ‘We’re in for $2 million – is that fast enough for you?’”
About the Author
Nathan Beckord is co-founder and CEO of Foundersuite, a San Francisco-based developer of of software tools for entrepreneurs, including an Investor CRM for managing the fundraising process.”
* This article originally appeared on TechCrunch.
80 Ways to Find Your Next Big Startup Idea
By Thomas Oppong
You want to build the next big thing? The good news is that it’s not beyond your skills and capabilities if you truly believe you have something great to offer the world. The bad news is that most people don’t get to do it because they make the mistake of trying to solve a problem no one has.
The following quote by Steve Jobs is perhaps one of the greatest quotes that can inspire the creative genius in you.
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it.–Steve Jobs