3 Lessons We Can All Learn From Being the New Kid in School

When Kevin and I came together to build PeopleNotes we were driven by a need that had been brewing since our childhoods.  We both moved around a lot - 16 schools between the two of us - and we were always the new kids in school.  This taught us to work hard for, and subsequently treasure our personal relationships.

As our professional careers developed we’ve seen how others can struggle to learn those same skills as they move in to a new city or career.  This inspired us to build what we learned as new kids into an app that would help everyone make friends and build better relationships:

#1 End missed connections

How many times have you had an amazing conversation at a professional event or conference and then forgotten to get some contact information to stay in touch?  I can’t imagine how much better my life would be if I always managed to follow up.  The biggest reason we included the people search features for PeopleNotes was to make sure that you could look up anyone you talked to on the spot without fumbling with business cards or a clumsy CRM system.   Our goal was to make a mobile tool that made entering a new contact as easy as searching Google.

#2 Make people feel cared for

Even with the best intentions we all forget important details about our contacts all the time.   That's a surefire way to torpedo a relationship. Conversely, there is nothing that makes another feel as cared for as remembering the little details - like a recent vacation or favorite food.  We built the QuickNotes feature of PeopleNotes to help anyone jot down the important details of every conversation to make sure they don’t forget anything about their important relationships ever again.

Review information and news before a meeting.  Take notes during and after.

#3 Empower people to choose their relationships

So many relationships rely on serendipity – who you work with, live near, or share friends with - to maintain their social network.  However, relying on fate to choose your relationships often can leave out some amazing connections.   We created the ReConnect function in PeopleNotes to allow you to pick and choose who you want to be reminded to stay in touch with.  This forces you to deliberately make the choice of who your most important contacts are, and helps you remember to keep in touch.

We spent the last five months building PeopleNotes to become the app that helps everyone put these three lessons into practice and build better relationships.  

Salesforce in a Nuthsell from Dreamforce 2013

Having just spent the day at Dreamforce I was struck by the incredible breadth of the offerings at Salesforce.  And, for the life of me I couldn’t find a single document to help me keep them straight.  So, with some help form @halesalesforce (thanks Will!) I’ve built out this quick and dirty diagram for those of you still at Dreamforce to navigate all of the new offerings:

The major theme of the company this year is integration.  In the past Salesforce has focused on storage in the Cloud.  Now they have the data, and need to integrate it into a cohesive system.  Every customer I talked to underlined this as the primary pain and the vast majority of partners at the Dreamforce expo were focused on this.  So, it seems this is the era of integration.

This begs to question – what’s next?  My money is on intelligence.  Once we have all of an organization’s data in one place – we can now (finally!) analyze it.  Sales needs to become smarter by harnessing machine learning, statistic, and NLP to translate the tribal knowledge of top salespeople to an entire organization.   Imagine a world where every sales rep can follow best practices powered by data. I’m looking forward to seeing some smart sales solutions at Dreamforce 2014!

The Case for Being Pig Headed

One of my dad's favorite analogies comes from breakfast.  In the classic plate of bacon and eggs the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

When applied to entrepreneurship I think about the interplay between investors and entrepreneurs.  Investors have money at stake - usually in the single digit percentages of their net equity.  Entrepreneurs on the other hand are betting it all - all of their time, all of their energy, and often all of their money.

So, I've always been surprised that entrepreneurs evaluate the viability of their company by the input they receive from investors.  The chickens, often with comparatively little at stake, evaluate opportunities and give advice from the perspective of the involved...not the committed.

Entrepreneurs should instead focus on themselves - the committed. Are you all in?  Does every piece of evidence point to this venture being worth the next 1-2 years of your life?  Are customers willing to bet the farm on you?

Be brave.  Be pig-headed.  And stop listening to those chickens.

Customer development interview template

I've spent the last week interviewing customers.  It is incredibly challenging to unearth the core motivations of a potential customer base.  Luckily I stumbled across the http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/ where Justin Wilcox lays out his basic template:

Ground Rules:
No pitching
Ask about past and present
Do not ask about future.  Would you/will you questions will result in unreliable data (nobody can project that well).

Questions:

1. Tell me a story about the last time you...
2. What was hardest?
3. Why was that hard?
4. How do you solve it now?
5. Why is that not awesome?

Bonuses:
Take note of any feelings/emotions
Ask why 5 times for each question
Repeat the cycle 3 times

This system has already produced some great insights for Contastic and I hope I can do the same for you all!  Let me know how you're using this in the comments below.

Rethinking Customer Development

I'm a huge fan of Steve Blank his theory of Customer Development.  I've found his writing always inspirational and insightful.  However, has been a little to dense for me to use as a clear roadmap.  Many in the Lean Startup movement point to the Business Model Canvas as a cure - which, try as I might, I've never been able to actually follow in a real live business.

The issue was that each of these pieces is part of a flow - not a discrete map.  So, here at Contastic we started using a variant that models the business as a process rather than as a map:

This covers same essential areas as the Business Model, but slightly re-arranged to fit the process of validating a startup.  Generally, each stage from left-to-right is dependent on the next and should be evaluated in that order.  At each milestone the company should seek to find a path through.  I like to have at least two stages written out to look at: general themes, and then specific actions/sources to test:

While by no means complete, this model serves as a basic roadmap of our plan.  We also often use  third level for tactical tests to confirm items in level 2 (ie acquire 20 customer per day at Dreamforce).  As they are confirmed the fact bubbles up to the next level.  As we develop the company we continually edit this knowing that the dependencies flow from left to right and then top to bottom.  

Hope this helps you all bring a strong evidence-based approach to your ventures.  We're continually evolving this model, so if you have any ideas for improvements or cases where it fails let me know in the comments below!

Seven Deadly Startup Sins

I've been working full time on Contastic (getcontastic.com) for about three months now fully immersed in the valley culture.  It's amazing to be in a place with so many resources, but each opportunity is also a distraction.  Time is your most precious commodity - if it's not invested wisely, your company will die.  In the spirit of helping founders make better choices here are the seven deadly startup sins to avoid:

1 - Building too many things

It's hard enough to build one feature well.  If you attempt anything more than that you will dilute your resources and will end up with a basket of mediocre features that nobody cares about.  Approach scoping from the prospective of a 10 second demo - only build what can be demoed in 10 seconds or less.  This is all the time you'll get from a customer or investor.  Spend your time making one amazing magical feature that can wow anyone in 10 seconds.

2 - Getting feedback from non-customers

The first thing people do when building a company is to ask the people around them.  This is lazy and leads to bad information that will lead you down the wrong path.  Focus on customers - people willing to pay for your product at some point.  Ignore all other input.

3 - Building features customers won't pay for

When I started using lean methodologies I quickly found myself drowning in divergent customer feedback.  When asked 'what would you use?', customers will ask for everything under the sun.   The real question is 'what would make you pay (more) for this product'?  If adding a feature doesn't change their willingness to pay drop it.   Only build what changes willingness to pay for a large segment of your customers.

4 - Following advice

Almost all advice is well intentioned, but bad.  Nobody knows your business like you do.  Ask people for their stories, their experience, and their opinion within their scope of expertise.  Do not ask for or listen to anything else.  The worst advice comes from experts outside their field of expertise.  It sounds deceptively credible, but will lead you down the wrong path.

5 - Telling customers what they need

Coming from a sales background I'm naturally inclined to get to 'yes'.  While good sales, this drive is a terrible way to gather data.  When interviewing customers adopt the socratic method - ask questions and avoid making any declarative statements all together.

6 - Not asking for the introduction

Every good conversation you have should send with an ask for introductions to others.  At any stage if you have one person that likes you, your idea, or your product, use them to find similarly minded people.  Birds of a feather flock together, so one fan can usually lead you to more.

7 - Not having a plan

Engineers are often guilty of the 'build first ask questions later' mentality.  Building is the most expensive way to validate an idea.  Create a step-by-step plan which ends with coding - require a high barrier of proof before building anything other than mockups.  We use the rule of 10 - 10 customers must say yes before we move on.  In this model we'll talk to at least 30 customers before coding.  Here's what we follow:

Customer Development Pipeline

Note: after the first couple interviews we lump the first three steps together.  Just be careful to ask them in order so you don't influence the user's perception of the problem with your solution.  Also, drop customers from your funnel if their needs start to diverge from the pack.  You don't need to make everyone happy - just 10.

HBS Retrospective

After three long (stuffed startup in between the first and second) years I’ve finally graduated from HBS.  Looking back, it was an unquestionably amazing experience in all of the most unexpected ways.

I originally came to business school for three primary reasons

• Credibility – HBS is one of the best name-brand degrees out there.
• Financial Toolkit – I was working on a company with good exit potential and wanted to understand just how to value it (google failed me!)
• Professional Contacts – I wanted to meet likeminded people and tap into great new professional opportunities.

As it turns out the only thing I really got from the experience that I expected was the financial toolkit.  I learned a TON about how acquisitions are valued in theory (discounted cashflow) as well as reality (market comps and asset values).  However, as an HBS grad I found I had less credibility than when I was a Microsoftie and never ended up leveraging the relationships I developed at HBS for professional reasons (less than 2% of HBS goes into entrepreneurship).

What I did leave the school with were the following:

• Community – This was the most valuable and surprising to me.  The cohort I came to know and love in both years was truly amazing.  Not only were they the accomplished and ambitious young professionals I expected, but they were incredibly kind hearted and fun loving human beings.  I know that I’ll forever be a part of the the best social club in the world.
• Nothing to prove – Up to this point I’d always felt like I had to prove myself to society.  Be it by garnering recognition or financial rewards – there was always another rung to climb.  HBS does provide a cloak of accomplishment (you went there?  must be doing something right) universally recognized.  Now I can settle down and do what feels right to me – not society.
• No Fear – Getting the degree means you never have to worry about money again.  As far as I know nobody with an HBS MBA has struggled to find a job that pays enough to cover basic needs.  It’s a meal card for the rest of my life.  This frees up the rest of my time and risk appetite to do only what I love with no fear.  One of my favorite professors (Shikhar Ghosh) is fond of saying his students have around 2500 weeks to live.  Use them wisely.   

In short, I came to HBS to improve my career and they ended up setting the foundation for the rest of my life.  The last three years will easily be the most transformational in my life, and yet I couldn’t be more excited about the decades to (hopefully) come!