Edmonton Lean Startup Circle

I was once on the board of a company that was cash-flow positive early in its life. The entrepreneur decided to raise more money, even though he didn’t need to. I was perplexed and asked him why he was raising the amount of money he had decided to raise. His answer was that when he had no cash in the bank, he was willing to run $1,000 experiments. When the company was cash-flow positive, he was comfortable running $10,000 experiments. He now wanted to feel comfortable running $100,000 experiments, and this financing enabled him to do this. If he ran a $100,000 experiment and it failed, it wouldn’t tank the business.

When an experiment works, do more of it. So the $10,000 experiment that pays for itself in three days by generating $4,000 of gross margin on a daily basis is worth doubling down on and running at the $20,000 level. If this generates $8,000 of gross margin on a daily basis, double down again.

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account.

I prepared a short talk. I called it ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I say ‘short.’ It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes.

Here’s how the now famous book became a reality: we started with a set of rules printed on a card no larger than a postcard. The next season we printed a larger card, then a leaflet, then a series of booklets, each one expanding in size and scope. After fifteen years of experimentation and research came this book.

What I’m starting to notice more and more, is that great things almost always start small.

I think Howard Aiken got it right: Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

One thing I’ve learned from developing software is that it’s very difficult to transfer ideas. A lot of software projects never completely transition from the original author because no one else really understands what’s going on.

And when other people do have your idea, they still have to implement it. That’s the hard part. We all have more ideas than we can carry out. The chance that someone else will have your idea and have the determination to execute it is tiny.

The best will be in contact all the time (or at least well before they have a news story to pitch) in an attempt to figure out how to maximize the chances of something being picked up. It’s a wonder there aren’t more of them.

Sadly there aren’t and 80 - 90 percent of pitches I received followed the tired format of "Hi X, Company Y is launching a product next week and we thought it would be of interest to publication Z."

So here's an idea to try when getting media coverage for your startup - don't start by pitching the product. Start by pitching nothing.Clearly showing that you understand that a journalist doesn't just exist to publicize you is one of the fastest routes to his or her heart.

Later opens and clicks are likely to be higher quality. There are fewer of them, but many retailers find they lead to higher conversion rates. In other words, the distribution of revenue through time won’t be as skewed to the first 24-48 hours as you’d expect from opens and clicks alone.

There’s also a need to keep campaigns “active” for longer. If people return to an email some time later, do the links, images and landing pages still work? If coupons or offers have expired, is that communicated and are alternatives presented?

Mistake 3: Failing to quickly fire disrespectful and destructive employees. Nothing is more poisonous to a young company than an employee who doesn’t fit, especially jerks.

Among tech entrepreneurs, there is a strong bias toward the single lifestyle for the sake of focus and an obsession pride in working 80 hours a week. But the data suggests this bias makes companies worse, not better.

The pundits proposed the mid-20s as the optimal age to start a company: At 25, entrepreneurs can give “everything to their company,” one pundit opined, suggesting that founders should not be “hamstrung” by families and non-business related commitments.

The Kauffman Foundation surveyed 550 successful entrepreneurs across multiple sectors, determined by profitability and being named a “high-valued” business by their peers. Their data suggests that most successful founders are in their mid-30s and married with children: