As you all know, or will learn the hard way, you need be sure there is a market, before you build your product or service.

That is a basic premise of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup methodology, so I was very excited to be able to attend the Lean Startup Conference this week. It was a great opportunity to learn new ideas and refresh old ones.

I got to the conference early to hear Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt who had a great idea for community-oriented scalable startups
–  “Go where you are loved. Give it away. Build a community around it.”

Startups within companies are apparently catching on as well. Bennet Blank from Intuit suggests that for internal startups, the idea is to show people how to do it rather than tell them what to do, i.e lead by example.

Specifically for internal starups, the idea is to use the company culture but to do things slightly differently. The key idea is to avoid scaring anyone that something might break.

Startups within government have got to be a breath of fresh air. There are 2 parallel efforts in the US government to create better software and openness: USDS and 18F.
Leah Bannon spoke of how the FEC.gov is trying out open git repositories for collaboration at

A startup is a way to solve new problems. The best way to learn of problems is to talk to people.
– Unfortunately, people are nice.
– They will make up problems to make you go away.
– What people do on the other hand is interesting.
– They create inefficient work-arounds.
– This is where a product may fit in.
-There is a difference between Needs vs wants.
– Needs are well defined by behavior.
– Wants on the other hand are what people say they need. It changes.

So, how to find people ?
– Post on groups that have a concentration of users.
– Use surveys that take a maximum of 1 minute to answer.
– This can create fast learning.

So, what to build?
– Make it small and useful.
– It should take as little work as possible.
– And be easy on first time users.
– Give them something easy to do.

Amir Shevat spoke of how he initially built a meditation app.
It was initially hard to find the button on the app.
It’s also hard for first-timers to meditate for 45 minutes!
I reduced the meditation time for much better results.
Here is the meditation app.

At lunch I met Eric Leppo from the Silicon Valley Software Group, who told me about an MVP calculator he built, which estimates the cost of creating an MVP based on various features of the app.

There is a focus on marketing people these day. Amanda Richardson from Hotelstonight.com may have a point redirecting focus to problems instead. It seems more relevant since you can only solve problems. In other words, you need talent to solve problems and market the solutions to people.

They built an app that solves the problem of the last minute booker.
Its an easy to use interface to be used on mobile.
If they just worried about hiring stars, they’d not get anywhere!

But I keep feeling people-light in my startup. Lots of skills are involved in building things.
So I’m not really clear about the importance of finding the best people and getting a massive cast of characters.
Also, I learned that I should reward small failures because they enable learning.

One of the ideas from the closing conversation with Eric Reis and Chris Dixon from Andreessen Horowitz was that too much money is a major problem.
Money gets spent in the same 18 months no matter how much.
If you don’t have product/market fit, it’s a waste and can lead to big losses.
Startup movement is about building things.
The important change in this generation is that entrepreneurship is a viable career path.
Business has become more democratic.

Lyft was initially Zimride for a long time. They had a carpooling app for long distances.
What they learned from that car-share experiment was that it had to be:
-On demand.
-Dramatically increased supply.
-Community: there is the idea that taxis were disgusting.

General startup algorithm is to find the best problem to solve.
– Develop the technology to solve it.
– A lean startup keeps risk low with fast iterations.
– Accurate bad news is better than inaccurate good news.
– Valuation is not a KPI.

Find the thing needed to be successful.
– Innovation-options.com
– Brady Nagel had a great talk on using LinkedIn (the free part)
– Google is not bounded by LinkedIn’s rules that restricts search size.
– When you want to find problems you’ve to talk to strangers.
– LinkedIn is a database of strangers. It’s free!
– The goal should be to define the problem.
– So, don’t talk about the solution.
– Take out details about past positions in LinkedIn profile.
– to avoid biasing peoples answers.
– Find a group on LinkedIn.
– Promote events.
– Talk about problems.
– Look for relevant groups.
– Say that we are doing research if the group is moderated.
– Create a group on LinkedIn
– Invite people to participate.
-Other useful sites for meeting strangers:
–Emailbreaker.com
–Intel-sw.com
–Voilanorbert.com
–Connections
– Find alumni networks

Here is an idea on how to start a conversation with a stranger:
Send an opening email saying:
– I’m involved in a program or am a researcher on X.
– You are knowledgeable about topic Y
– Can I have few minutes of your time or someone you know.
– How about such time on Tuesday?
– Follow up 3 times. That is persistence, more than that and you’re a pest :)

Andrea Hill from ReadyTalk on spoke about internal startups:
The key here is to find early customers who are stakeholders, then measure the importance of stakeholders in terms of:
– Contribution. Legitimacy. Willingness. Influence.
– Contribution: have valuable info.
– Legitimacy: are they affected?
– Willingness to engage.
– Necessity of involvement.
– Understand their needs.
– What does success look like to them? For example with the CFO, the idea is “Don’t break existing cash flow!”
– Find a sponsor to support and be the face of the project to the rest of the organization. This makes it easier to work on the product rather than explain all the time.
– Create a clear 2 way communication channel with management; in exchange, be honest when something is wrong.
The tradeoff with internal startups is that you take less risk and get less reward.

I went to this interesting talk about an experiment in a kitchen. The talk was called: Caution Live Subjects: by Lauren Braun
It was about an experiment to test if a sub-menu of possible substitutions on a menu added value.
They created real “looking” experiments for data and measured real behavior.
The conclusion from the test was that the list of substitutions added too much friction to add value.

In conclusion, the Lean Startup Conference was an interesting place to me as an entrepreneur. I met a lot of great people and heard many new and interesting ideas.

I’m a quant, so when I started Quantprice I tested the market, because it seemed the logical thing to do.

Since attending the Lean Conference, I look forward to using more lean methodologies as I build Quantprice.

And in case you are wondering, Quantprice improves Shopify’s e-commerce store margins over 30% in the same way that larger retailers and airlines do by enabling them to manage their offers in real-time based on factors that are automatically learned from past consumer behavior using big data and AI techniques.

KG Charles-Harris is once again attending the Lean Startup Conference and sharing his impressions and what he’s learning with you.

Once again the team of Sarah Millstein & Eric Ries has created a weeklong conference – the Lean Startup Conference – that hits it out of the ballpark! 

If you didn’t see my updates from last year’s conference, I must reiterate that this is the most useful of all the tech/business conferences I have attended.  And this year they took it to a new level of excellence in several different areas.

There were two very notable differences from previous years, firstly, the larger contingent and programming for enterprise organizations and government (intrapreneurship), and secondly, the significant inclusion of women and minorities in the speaker and mentor lineup.

One would think that for a startup conference, having a large portion of programming dedicated to mature and large organizations would be a distraction or departure from the core values and intent of the conference.

However, the way in which they developed the programming, it became a learning experience for aspiring entrepreneurs of how to not only grow their companies, but also for how to keep their companies vital and vibrant as they became larger.

Several of my conversations with people who came from large organizations and governments, both nationally and from far flung destinations like Norway and Portugal, displayed a tremendous optimism that the Lean Startup methodology had potential to revitalize their organizations and how they serve their customers/constituents.

The second important difference from previous years is that the conference was characterized by the diversity of speakers and mentors. 

In terms of gender, age, racial background and experience, the conference was replete with different perspectives that give us the knowledge that Lean Startup is good execution regardless of whether I am a diminutive woman from India or a large, bearded white male. 

This made the conference much more interesting than any other I’ve attended and the networking was exceptional as a result. 

Clearly the conference organizers thought carefully of how they could provide both a learning experience in business and a culturally expanding perspective. 

Thank you Sarah and Eric for both a superb learning experience, as well as a personally expanding event – truly exceptional!

KG Charles-Harris is once again attending the Lean Startup Conference and sharing his impressions and what he’s learning with you.

It was especially interesting to listen to Mikkel Svane’s talk about Zendesk’s story, because I had read a pre-publication copy of his book Startup Land.

The book was the basis of the talk, I found Mr. Svane to be enlightening, honest and real and all that carried over in his book.

Startup Land was an enjoyable read from a strong entrepreneur, with real stories about the struggle of starting, moving and growing a technology company. 

The fact that they started as entrepreneurs in Denmark and moved an embryonic company to the US only increased the complexity and challenges that the three founders had to traverse in making the company a success. 

Not only were the founders outside the normal Silicon Valley entrepreneurial eco-system, but they were also in a different country with little access to the information or thinking patterns common in the US.  It is a testament to the tenacity and determination, and even more so to the “hustling mentality” of the founders – they were willing to take significant risks and stay completely focused on two things — building a great product and getting immediate revenue on this product.

The author rightly credits the Scandinavian social system for their ability to take some of the risks that they were able to assume — they knew they would never end up on the street homeless, but could suffer a temporary reduction in living standards if they failed.  This is radically different than the case in the US and many other countries where startup failure can lead to destitution.

Regardless, the ingenuity and determination displayed during the process of bringing Zendesk from birth to maturity was an inspiration.  I’m a serial entrepreneur with international background myself, and I know how much effort is required to make that kind of move. 

The major challenge, however, comes with adjusting to the new mindset and culture in your host country.  Startup Land discusses this to some extent, but it would have been interesting to get some more insight about it.

Mr. Svane does a good job of synthesizing his experience into practical advice, summarized in special sections at the end of each chapter.  As such, the book can be a practical guide to such things as what to consider when hiring team members or how to think about particular aspects of the business. 

Also, some of the most interesting, and sometimes funny, parts of the book are found in how the three founders interacted based on their particular personalities and proclivities. 

Considering that founder dynamics is one of the most prevalent reasons for startup failure, this information  should be studied closely.  The difficulties and required tolerance for navigating these issues is core, especially the sensitivity required by the Founder/CEO.

In short, the book is well worth reading — it’s a quick and easy read with practical insights and a good dose of humor.

KG Charles-Harris is once again attending the Lean Startup Conference and sharing his impressions and what he’s learning with you.

Tuesday

Metrics: The Data That Will Make or Break Your Business

Alistair Croll, Solve for Interesting, @Acroll

The first day at the Lean Startup Conference 2014 has been excellent!  I’ve been at an all-day seminar by Alistair Croll – the author of the book Lean Analytics.  A very boring sounding name, but really the essence of how to create a sustainable product market fit and scalable business.  How do I know that I’m on the right path with my products?  How do I know that the pricing is correct?  How do I find the factors that are influencing the growth of the company?  Etc.

I must say that every minute spent in the seminar (from 10 am to 5:30 pm) was worthwhile, even the time spent on the larger organizations, as he made it very useful by comparing to startups in every single part of the process.  Even for a startup guy from a tech startup, the part of the session that focused on innovation within large enterprise companies was fascinating.  Understanding the difficulties those intrapreneurs experience almost made the travails startups go through seem simple.  Alistair’s suggestions and advice for how to think around these issues and attain success.

The room was filled all day and I noticed that I wasn’t the only participant with rapt attention on the presentation – everyone else was very focused on what he was saying.  The sessions were very interactive with people feeling comfortable to ask questions and Alistair encouraging discussion.  Everyone I spoke with during lunch said they were captivated and that his lectures were transforming their thinking.

I am lucky to have been able to participate in this seminar – it is clear that it will have a strong effect on how I execute within my startup as we begin interacting with customers on a broader scale.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Well, actually, it was a shared 1st place with the Garage.com conference I went to in 2000 and met Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert who funded my company based on the impromptu pitch I did to them at the conference.

However, I am writing now about the last day of the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco.  A fantastic last day.

It completely reinforced what I wrote yesterday, that this has been the most practical and useful conference I’ve been to as a startup founder.  

Even though I’ve done several startups and had successful exits on three, and been on the other side of the table as an institutional investor in startups, it was astounding how much I learned that was useful.  

I really wish that this conference had existed 15 years ago when I got started in the startup business!

In the morning I went to a seminar led by Ash Maurya, author of the book “Running Lean,” called Innovation Accounting: A Blueprint for Defining, Measuring, and Communicating Progress With Internal and External Stakeholders.  

In addition to Ash being a good presenter, every minute and every slide he went through was deep learning in how to get the operational aspects of a startup up and running around a new product.  

In fact, it was a systematic methodology of building new products that I wish had been available for my past ventures.  Everyone who is in the process of creating a new product, especially a software product, should read Ash’ book and participate in one of his practical seminars.

The afternoon session was called Science of Pricing: Tools to Optimize Price Without Sacrificing Conversions and was led by Justin Wilcox.  

I have yet to experience a more dynamic, fun and practical seminar leader.  In building a startup or product, one of the core challenges is how to price the product to get maximum conversions to sales at the highest possible price.  

What Justin did was lead us through a hands-on session of how to accomplish this and got us actually doing a practical test on several products (after dividing us into teams, each testing pricing on one product) focusing on how to price them and pinpoint the optimal price to sales ratio.  

Justin and his team are experts well worth consulting with to get this right.  It is guaranteed to earn you a lot more money and save you from pain.

To be honest, based on past conferences I’ve attended, I had low expectations arriving at the Lean Startup Conference.  And as you have read, I’ve been totally blown away by what I experienced.  

If you are an entrepreneur, even an experienced one, you must beg borrow or steal to get the opportunity to go.  

Don’t miss this learning opportunity – for me. It would have saved me millions of dollars in cash, several years of time, and lots of sleepless nights and struggles at home and at work.

I have one criticism about the conference – please choose better names for the sessions.  

The naming convention was horrible and made it difficult to compare notes with fellow conference participants of what they had experienced since none of us could remember the names of the sessions.

Thank you, Lean Startup Conference – I’ll see you next year!

Image credit: HikingArtist

I am seldom effusive in my praise of any conference I’ve attended.  

Most conferences bring in speakers who simply recycle the presentations they’ve done for many other audiences, people clap and get a momentary high from associating with others and hearing engaging speakers.  But a few days later, it’s all gone.

This is even truer for conferences dealing with the startup ecosystem.  

These are focused on getting already poor (sometimes starving) entrepreneurs to pay hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars to go and listen to the same stuff.  Often the carrot is meeting angel and VC investors, but very few people I’ve encountered (if any) ever received an investment based on meeting an investor at one of these conferences.  

The Lean Startup Conference is very different, in fact, I cannot be more enthusiastic.  

This is one of the few conferences I’ve attended as a company founder and serial entrepreneur that has provided practical knowledge that I can use in building my company.  

Low bullshit factor, lots and lots of case studies related to company problems and solutions, great strategic insight and golden nuggets strewn through all the speakers’ talks.  In addition, the conference was well organized and the logistics worked flawlessly.

The audience was very diverse – race, geographical origin, profession (software engineer, bioengineer, marketing, C-level execs, tech support, etc.), size of company (everything from pre-revenue startups to major companies like GE and Intuit), and industry (pharma, tech, government, automotive…).  

It is doubly impressive that they managed to pull off a conference that worked for such diversity.

Maybe there is excellence in the conference business after all.

Today we welcome Janelle R. Alexander, a new voice at MAPping Company Success. Janelle is a successful entrepreneur and one of the smartest and most fun people I’ve met in a long time. (Click About Janelle to learn more.)

I had the opportunity to attend the 2015 Lean Startup Conference a couple of weeks ago. While I had read and embraced the writings in The Lean Startup years ago, this was my first occasion to attend the now-iconic startup event. The environment there was buzzing with startup geekiness and I loved every minute of it. My takeaways from the event are 3 key learnings and one confession. First the confession: I missed the point when The Lean Startup went from methodology to movement.

The Confession

It’s brave of me to admit this. I espouse passions for early-stage companies, inclusive innovation (a.k.a. diversity in entrepreneurship) and positioning New Orleans as a leading startup hub—Lean Startup methodology provides a clinical process to power all 3 missions. I’m not sure under which rock I was sleeping. I understand the genesis of the movement—the wisdom of Eric Ries’s continuous innovation, minimum viable product and validated learning warrants a loyal following. And yet I still marveled whenever I met yet another devotee who had flown from Australia or Sweden or Ireland, all speaking in a shared Leansian language (“…it’s a lean startup company,” “by then they’d developed their MVP,” “then we iterated,” etc.).

Realization #1: Lean Startup methodology could be a pivotal force in fostering diversity and inclusive innovation

There are real barriers to entry for startups founded by women entrepreneurs and those of color. One of them is a disproportionate lack of access to resources—e.g. capital, networks, influencers, anchor customers. When these resources are markedly low or missing entirely, the nefarious runway becomes shorter; the importance of eliminating uncertainty and working smarter not harder becomes decisive. In short, adopting Lean Startup methodology is obligatory for underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Realization #2: Data is the equalizer that makes innovation truly inclusive

I sat listening to Alistair Croll Lean Analytics talk. Nearly every seat had a laptop open, and, from what I could tell, every monitor was showing Slack. Mr. Croll’s talk drove home the measure and learn parts of the methodology. His Street Smart Tactics were distilled for maximum relevance and insight which rang true (and were a delight to hear).

At its core, Lean Startup methodology is powered by data. Data is the new abundant resource for diverse entrepreneurs, which will offset the historical obstructions to the old school forms of capital.

Some Quotes to Remember from his talk:

“Archimedes had taken a bath before.” Meaning: The old tale of Archimedes’ displacement discovery in the bathtub was used to show that it was the king asking the right question which led to the discovery, and more importantly, the new data.

“Business plans are a lot like drawing a map before you’ve gone exploring”

Realization #3: New Orleans is the perfect environment for Lean Startup methodology

New Orleans is quickly establishing itself as an emerging startup hub. Collision is coming here. Mega companies have relocated here. Forbes thinks we’re great. The energy surrounding entrepreneurship in this city is palpable, and New Orleanians embrace this new focus with their usual delight and fervor. I heard Steve Case say about New Orleans that it’s a model for community connectivity and inclusiveness. It is in such an environment that Lean Startup methodology can thrive. Here we support our entrepreneurs in a way this native New Yorker never anticipated when I first moved to the Crescent City. Here, the community organically does what it can to minimize the entrepreneur’s time through the loop that is the Lean Startup process.

I came back ready to spread the word, and excited that I had another tool in the toolbox.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Yet again Sarah Milstein and her crew at Lean Startup have knocked it out of the ball park.  The first time I experienced it was at their Lean Startup Conference last year.  With the new Office Optional Conference, they have tapped into a motherload of issues that affect the Future of Knowledge Work and Workers.  Companies both large and small are struggling with attracting, growing, retaining and managing distributed teams, just like an increasing portion of the workforce is enticed by the ability to work from home (or anywhere).

I attended with Galina Landes who leads our engineering team, and one of the great experiences was to see how differently she and I experienced distributed work and strategies for improving what we’re doing.   But then, engineers have always had a more logical approach to most things than those of us working in management or other functions in a company.  Combining our perspectives and discussing strategies was interesting and very productive.

This conference on distributed teams dealt with collaboration, communication and the tools necessary for achieving goals as a team and creating a positive work environment.  I’ve personally struggled with this in my previous company and now as we are building a new one.   Our small team is fully distributed, although several of us are in the San Francisco Bay Area and can meet face to face when necessary.  But it’s still challenging to build a company culture, have good communication and trust without which we can’t achieve our strategic goals. 

Personally, I got a lot of ideas for tools and strategies to enhance our collaboration and communication.  In addition, many of the speakers spoke about the need to create an environment where “water cooler talk” and informal communication (and interruptions) was acceptable.  Just like in a normal office environment.  After all, we human beings are (mostly) social creatures and need to create bonds and trust with those with whom we work to achieve goals.

It was a pleasure to see that so many people from large organizations such as GE to small startups like EMANIO, and everything in-between, dealing with the issues around an increasingly distributed workforce.  In interacting with fellow participants, it was clear that we were all neophytes in the area and even those organizations that successfully had deployed a distributed model were still learning and adjusting their strategies and methods.  Office Optional was a great learning experience and I’d exhort anyone dealing with these issues to participate next time they put it on.  It was invaluable for us.

My only negative feedback would be that toward the latter part, the speakers became a bit repetitive.  However, for a first conference small issues like this should be expected and judging from my prior experience with the Lean Startup team the next one will excellent.

The day ended with a conversation between Eric Ries, who wrote The Lean Startup, and Stanford’s Bob Sutton, who penned the No Asshole Rule, and more recently, Scaling Up Excellence.  Though the conference would have been very good on its own, this was the crowning part of my experience.  Professor Sutton is an engaged and charismatic speaker with deep knowledge of how organizations work.  Excellence is what we’re all striving for and he provided a captivating roadmap for how to achieve it.

Image credit: HikingArtist