Entrepreneurship
Business Startup - 7 Tips
This is a quick blog not on the Pizza-Porta product, but on the process of launching a business. Many people ask me about the thrill of going from idea to product to distribution. It is the coolest job in the world. right? Not a cubicle for miles. Meet new people. Cook at fun events. Trade pizza for beer! For those who are thinking about doing something like this, I offer the following advice:
You need Product Passion - You are going to have to love your product for a couple of reasons. First, you are going to doubt yourself and the product over and over. Second, some people are going to tell you that your baby is ugly - to your face! Third, you are going to need to demonstrate your product a lot even after the initial thrill has started to fade. You need thick enough skin to gently defend your idea, but not so thick that you don't listen for feedback when it is good.
Find a "Go" signal - Set some basic hurdles for your ideas to make it from paper to consideration. I am a lean entrepreneurship consultant and advocate. In this practice you spend as little as possible to find out as much as possible as fast as possible (I should trademark that maybe). Drawing pictures, creating brochures, and using look-alike products to gain an understanding of what your consumer wants are all really cheap methods to get feedback. (If your product does some sort of work inside of a black box, hand the customer a black box and describe what it does. They will react to your description.) Keep testing/refining your product concepts (not your prototypes) until your consumers give you a real "go signal". As you go, make the approval hurdle higher - collect deposits, get down-payments. For example: If someone hands you cash it is pretty much a "go". If they tell you your idea is awesome - they could just be polite. (working with Moves The Needle taught me well) Read The Mom Test.
Listen, but do it carefully. You want to gain insights into how your product concept fits into the life of your consumer. Don't forget, though, that not everyone you speak to is a target customer. You need to make sure that you are crystal clear on what type of customer you are targeting, and speak to them. I received a lot of feedback that was completely misplaced because the person I was speaking with wanted to help me, but was not in the target for my product.
Don't polish it too much. Until your product is purchased for full price and put to use by a consumer that you did not personally sell, you really don't know how it is going to go. As soon as you have something you can put on the market, Go! All the study, logo refinements, second-guessing, and design iterations just cost you money beyond that point. Get your product good (not perfect) and go. Work on improvements based on real in-market feedback. The saying goes: If you are not embarrassed (later) by the first product iteration, you waited too long.
Be the Cheapest SOB. If you are doing a lean startup, you have to conserve every dollar in the beginning. Find free software, open demo versions, don’t print letterhead and t-shirts, visit friends and family near your tradeshows. Every dollar you can save before you have Product/Market fit and have a story to sell to investors will help your product live long enough to see another day or the next pivot.
Figure it out-ness. The fantastic part about being an entrepreneur is that you have new challenges each day. The brutal part about being an entrepreneur is that you have new challenges each day. You are going to have to be very versatile. How do you do accounting? Did the box really go out without hardware? What if someone wants to ship a pallet? Can it ship to Crete? What happens if your website dies? What do you do when a competitor launches a knockoff? It is impossible to have everything in a planning document so be prepared for some creative problem-solving on the fly.
Love life. Don't forget to enjoy the ride. Thankfully people remind me of this at shows all the time. "Wow, you have the coolest job!", "Wait, you get to drink beer and make pizza at your job". "That is a cool invention". It is easy to get bogged down in accounts receivable reporting and lose track of how extremely lucky you are!
I hope this is a helpful list. I am grateful to all those folks who did favors, cut deals, took a risk on me, or offered feedback along the way. Let me know if I can pay it forward to you - send me an email.
Cortlandt
cortlandtm@pizza-porta.com