[Music] so most of this I'm going to you know have it Loosely based I've got a couple things that I want to hit on um really trying to think of you know four years ago what's a speech that I would have wanted to hear what are the kind of what what are sort of uh kind of a best hits compilation of all my favorite mistakes over the last four years uh you know a couple moments of of of success and then a lot of things that I learned you know the hard way that I could have learned a lot cheaper and a lot easier I do want to make this relatively conversational as well I know it's a bit tricky with a huge group we're going to have some Q&A at the end but if there are some questions you know we might might be able to kind of uh pepper some of them in but as far as you know as Abby mentioned um you know I I am a a a non-technical Founder uh soulle founder at that which is occasionally in certain circles you know hushed about like an obscenity uh and I think you know I think there's a lot of great ideas from non-technical people um obviously you know technical is great it's it's an important skill to have but I feel like you know my people these kind of non-technical Founders are occasionally sort of ridden off they like oh nice idea kid what are you going to do um oh you know you're you're some guy with a PowerPoint um and some of you have heard that one okay uh and I think there's a lot of great ideas and you don't have to know you know exactly how all the code happens there's a a much larger segment of the population that is you know bright that is entrepreneurial that is paying attention to what they see every day that understands what they want to see in the world that doesn't happen to know how to code than those that do um but at an early stage you know if you're a software company software helps uh and so but but I feel like it's that there's this stage the first you know how do you get started as that non-technical founder what do you start to do that makes everything potentially possible and I feel like this is where I got stuck the most this is where a lot of people get stuck and say you know all right screw it I'm going to I'm going to be an actuary or whatever they end up doing you know once they spend you know three months touring the entrepreneurial lifestyle uh most of what I've learned to do uh is you especially at that early stage is I mean it it it starts to get kind of pretty well tied to what you're I think You' it's it's about kind of building the instinct and trusting it but then doing a lot of hard awkward things that you wouldn't do otherwise so you know really putting yourself in in in direct confrontation with your idea with your potential of success and being really brutally truthful with yourself and and waking up every morning takes a lot to be to kind of have that founder perspective and saying what am I absolutely wrong about what do I like that I'm wrong about um but really kind of this this stage here so you have an idea you know what do I do about it and this is and I was there myself and I hear from a lot of people like I've got this great idea idea I've got this amazing idea all you need to do is sign my NDA and I'll tell you about it um but now all I need to do is get somebody to build it uh you know just get somebody to build it and kind of the the technical folks always kind of scoff at the idea of it's just you know the commodity of getting somebody to build it uh but first stage I have an idea I have a PowerPoint I need to get somebody to build it I need a technical founder I need to try to get investors I need to start applying to accelerate even more now than than ever before it's like idea accelerator right now um hire an agency to build your big Vision this is my personal favorite this is one of my Allstars when I started my company I um so this this past company I've done a handful of other startups this one I started uh cashed in all of my money my 401k and paid a bunch of contractors to build an app that I pretty much threw away about six months later um I also did that uh quit my job to do it and uh you know because I like doubling down I actually launched the company the same month my son was born so you know hey you know everything all at once um PR strategies to shake the world when you launch I mean your idea is so Mammoth and great and amazing that I want to make sure that a nobody ever hears my idea before I'm ready to launch it and B I can sort of start this you know whisper in the ear of Giants and this ideaas going to spread like wildfire um or I could just have a viral marketing campaign I can just get a product that by its nature everybody tells two people and all I do is have to you know just wake up on launch Day and hit the first little Domino uh these don't work uh none of these ever work uh for for a few key reasons uh they take a tremendous amount of time they take a tremendous amount of money uh they won't succeed and you built so little value that you'll have to give up a tremendous amount of your uh if you can even get anybody involved whatsoever you can get a tremendous amount you you'll have to give up a tremendous amount of the company to to get anybody involved uh so there's a tremendous amount that you can do really early on to build real value and before you do any of this you know that your idea whatever becomes successful if something become successful it's not you know because I can tell somebody a sentence about my idea without them having signed an NDA and they're going to go ahead and do it if if somebody else can hear your idea and go ahead and do it you're the wrong person to do your idea uh if you're doing an idea because you're not the right person to do it but it just seems like such an awesome marketing opportunity and oh my God nobody's ever thought of it you're the wrong person to do it somebody else is the better person to do it somebody else is going to want to do that more and it is aam slog some days to get something off the ground to wake up and have that passion to do it if you're not doing something that is you know intrinsically has to be done by you don't do it let somebody else do it you'll fail doing it uh but before you get there there's a there's a lot that you can do to really validate and and provide very quick value that will help you get investors that'll help you get a technical founder uh you know when I first when I started my first company in uh 2001 uh we had eight guys on the phone and I got uh I spent 50 Grand on a PBX phone closet I don't know if anybody knows what a PBX phone closet are but they suck and they're expensive and we had this guy come like twice a week to come in and like wiggle wires and charge me two grand and I hated him every time he came and I hated him every time he left now I've got an $18 a month subscription to Grasshopper And I don't have to worry about it it has become infinitely easier to start to do something to start to prove something and you're not trying to launch a $10 million company the day that it launches but there's a lot that you can do to say you know you don't need the $50,000 phone system you know there's you from the Amazon to Google there's this tremendous amount of infrastructure that allows you to do stuff incredibly quickly do it before you try to get out there if I tried to get a a a you know a co-founder somebody to build it or if I had some basic ugly idea and I was able to get an investor imagine if I spent four weeks and I got 2,000 people to sign up what my valuation would be if you've got something that you can get anybody to buy in with so little proven spend four weeks prove something you know and and you're H if you can add value so quickly at the beginning of that company um you'll be much better off for it this is it kind of from uh you know what is a prototype right so this is really about how do you build a prototype that can actually test some of your basic assumptions uh and generally you're not trying to prove 50 different things you're not trying to have you know a billion different features you're trying to have something that proves your point that proves that you've got something that's that's valuable um I had a buddy of mine that was starting a carpool service he's a really smart guy uh he's probably brilliant and brilliant people I think have a I'd say a disadvantage in startups because they come up with Brilliant Solutions to problems that might not exist uh and they can find incredibly clever ways of solving things that that are not the key thing to solve uh but he's a brilliant guy and what he's doing now is actually pretty successful but he wanted to start uh a carpol service I'm going to do this online car pool sharing whatnot first of all what I have to figure out is do I have enough drivers versus Riders uh uh and he had this like you know beautiful mind page of math uh actually legitimately wrote it on his windows I think that was pretty showy I think that's it's like dude I know you've get notebooks you can just write it down um we get that there's algorithms uh but he did it and he had them and he said you know this is a driers earth Riders here's how it has to work if I can if I can ensure that I can get this much drivers versus Riders it has to have this ratio and then like a month and a half later I went up to him he's like well I've twed my tweaked my algorithm but I've realized that Riders 15% of the time will also become drivers and here are these incentives that will actually drive people from being a corpal member to being being a caral driver and then he's like okay now I have to figure out do I need saturation or can I launch in 12 Metro areas it's like well do I need Metro do I need Suburban do I try to get work people do I sell the HR and then eventually and I kind of worked with them through this and I like can you so you know what what's the least that you can do right what's the least that you can do to say yes this is worth me doing the next step or no I should do something else uh and eventually what this whole thing boiled down is he built up a landing page he built up this thing that said like we are and he built up ads and he said we're running a carpal service in your area it's great it's free or near free or super cheap do you want to sign up and there was a link and once somebody signed up I was like oh sorry we're actually still building it uh and he's like if I can get people at you know I'm going to do this ad bu I've got a thousand bucks if I can get people at less than a buck 50 each to sign up even with an ugly site then I know I've got something that works and he had three people sign up so his acquisition was 350 a person people didn't want a carpool and you have an ugly site you can get a pretty site and go from three people to eight people or maybe three people to 12 people you know Forex Improvement is awesome uh from an optimization perspective the thing that startup folks need to focus on initially is what's the difference between a an optimizable something that that is kind of an optimization issue versus an intrinsic default uh getting from three people to 800 people doesn't happen it it's not your sight's bad your call to action your colors your buttons what's pretty it's that you don't have a product that you can Market well to an audience that will respond to it and if he had built that goddamn landing page and spent a thousand bucks he would had six months of his life back um and once he did it he's like you know what I'm going to do something else even if you know the Market's not ready whatever it is that that that was a lease that he could build and he spent six months worrying about all the wrong things worrying about things that a company that had already proven that yes I can get users for a buck 50 each great now what can you get them to do how do you get them to spend two bucks how do you get them for a buck 15 each there's all these optimization issues that are essential to a company once you've proven that you've got a fundamentally sound concept that you're capable of executing to but don't do it before then do not do not optimize your prototype um this was you know m is I I you know when we were launching and I really reached deep into my 401k and said listen I know that these are the 12 features that you developers think we should build I need 15 like this thing's got to be out of the gate Great uh such a mistake I mean none of those features were the features that mattered I we ended up doing four different versions of that deconstructing it actually took some of the capabilities and folded it in my company now but almost none of it was important uh if I could have said what's the two things what's the bad version of it that I can I can prove that it's fundamentally sound your product will never fail or succeed uh going from 12 features to 15 it's not about doing everything it's about proving one specific value to one specific audience and showing that you can do it uh it's not about how okay it would be great if if if it was optimized for Twitter if I could share out on Instagram right so I've got this map thing and it's travel we're going to plan together and need to share it on Instagram people love sharing travel photos on Instagram that's an optimization feature that gets people to spend 20% more time that gets you know 10% more users it's not part of proving whether this is fundamentally sound prove if it's sound and then you can say okay now what we can do can we do to optimize um in that I think um you know I think you know the the the vanity in there and and it is true I mean as a a startup founder there's a certain amount of you know necessary egotism you know you've got to say you know yeah I know Google and Facebook have you know they're kind of working on this and they've got things that they're thinking about but you know what those guys they can't do it right I mean they they don't they're not able to do what we're able to do because they're not you know nine smart people in a corner of a room in Cambridge that really have a new approach to this and that is the only thing that startups have is that flexibility and a little bit of that unrealistic ego uh but you have to be careful with that right so you have to be able to say you have to be able to put a very ugly baby out in the world and you have to be able to know that it's ugly your your initial prototype you know they always say that if if if you're not embarrassed by your prototype you waited too long uh you know that that you got to get something out there um and I think that's important as well what I did is I had spent everything on my initial product and I think my vision was I mean well time will tell but I think my vision was essentially sound what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it and why I was the right person to do it you know that was that that ended up working out so far it looks like it's working out okay um but I had built a bunch of product that I thought meant my vision and it wasn't right that that didn't that was not how my vision um you know took form but I put everything I had into these features right so my vision I got confused with what my product was was these 15 features my vision wasn't 15 features but my product was and I had gone all in um we eventually had to scrap everything turn it off I had paying customers you know it was always at that version you know we had a previous version of the company and it was always you know right when I right when we were and it was me and you know two guys and right when we were about to get you know right when we needed it we had the next client come in we never went all the way broke but it was this lukewarm success which is almost worse than failure because it can keep feeding you uh and eventually we said all right we're not going to take those checks we're going to tell these clients no we know what this should be but we have this debt we have this product debt we're so tied to our product that that we need to be honest with ourselves and pull off a Band-Aid that at that point it become incredibly painful if you optimize and tweak and make a pretty prototype and you love the button uh that you built if it comes to the point where your vision doesn't need that button you're still going to put it in there uh there's a a great quote by Hemingway uh that I don't remember so I'm going to misquote it but the the basics of it is that you know for the sake of a story you have to be able to throw out the lines you like the most and and you know if you if you and it's tough uh to to find that part of it that you love and say but that that's part of my product not part of my vision and at this early stage you're you're proving out your vision not your product uh another another issue that I had definitely a fault that I had is you know and I had done this whole thing my contractor I had my own mockups my guys make fun of me whenever I mock something up it's like here's a rectangle and here's other rectangles and here's rectangles that fit in them uh I I've got good Instinct on product I'm a product guy I'm not a design guy and I would show this very early prototype to people and i' be like oh yeah we've got you know 12,000 users and they're like yeah but it's kind of ugly and you know I'm like no it's not ugly it's awesome it's optimized it's perfect it's everything that it should be which was completely the wrong answer I wanted this product to be impressive what was impressive is yes I can't design for here's an ugly product I've got 12,000 people that can't stop using it that's more impressive that's why your vision is impressive and not your product do not defend your ugly baby you know and I had designers eventually when I was raising money and they're like you know this page is ugly I'm like yeah and it works imagine what a good page would do That's How Strong my vision is that it can it can it can stay out of the way of my bad product of my ugly baby of my buttons of my clunky interface of my three-step signon process um and and good investors will see that and if you're trying to attract you know the good incubators will see that you you they don't want that stubbornness to say that this will never change uh if I can validate something that can absolutely be optimized that I can I can tweak and I can pretty and you can hire designers then then you know you've validated it even more so because it's ugly and there is room to optimize but you've proven that fundamental basis um and you know telling people it's good never convinces them it's good right it's it's you know oh it is pretty it's like yeah all right you know they'll just stop telling you it's ugly to your face um and and uh yeah so doing that as well you just you view everything through what you already have through the lens of what your existing product is and not what your not what you uh you you'll get stubborn on where you should where you should change where you should admit that you're wrong and and when you have to cut those losses it'll be that much costlier uh so that this slide in particular I don't know if anybody remembers uh this this is Pulp Fiction which is kind of I found was somewhat inspired I don't know if you remember the the scene that they were having here but here's uh yeah very typical for that entrepreneur for that first thing out into the world this is where he's on the phone with Bruce Willis it's like you feel that that that sting Butch that's Pride with you uh very true Pride with you and and as an entrepreneur like you can it does it takes guts it takes stubbornness it takes a little bit of arrogance uh it takes an ability to know that you can change this that other big companies can't uh but that you're going to be wrong about 80% of how you do it and you have to have that weird stubborn flexibility uh and not submit yourself to product submit yourself to vision uh you know you can talk to investors you can you know you can talk investors into something you can fool the Press into something you can you know fool some company to believe you're something bigger than you are and and and you know maybe make a partnership out of yourself you can't fool yourself if you ever get to the point where you're trying to talk yourself into it where you know that you're fooling yourselves you're screwed uh you've got to have that absolutely brutal honesty and you've got to be able to kind of really quickly learn from your own mistakes and then wake up in the morning and say but my vision's good but this core is good and and testing a foundation that you know you know having built that in a way where you can actually test how that Foundation Works where you can actually strip it down to its guts to its ugly ugly core and and know how it performs um you know that that core has to be battle tested and and you know that core is not 15 features it's it's you know three points right how do you or or whatever it is it's a small nucleus of what's what's truly important to that company and to say that I know that I might be wrong about this this and this but I know this is true and I know this is true and I know this is going to happen and I'm and I'm the best company to take advantage of it um you we we have a an exercise internally at the company where we say you know what do we do as a company and we break this down for every department and then for every person but I always say kind of what's your five things um and you know we we've got like here's our five weekly things here's our five product things but as a company what do we do you know what's true for us that if this is true that we are successful and I've been in companies where it's like here's the 23 things that are important it's like nobody's about 23 things you know at at the most there's five key reasons why you could be right um and then even for our customers you know one of the constant disciplines is somebody's like oh we can also do this we can also do this you have a very small amount of somebody else's mind that you can rent right you you're a company about one thing what is your one thing why are you there uh and if you can't and I think you've really got a pound and hammer and chisel that so that you know your one thing you know why you're a company um it's it's incredibly important to have that you know you go from one person testing a bunch of stuff to three people to 10 people to all these customers there's going to be a lot of conflicting Visions there's going to be a lot of different ways that you can start to execute it you've got to let everybody know you know we're a company about one thing and bringing people in that understand that Vision that feel bought in from that Vision there's a lot of different ways you'll execute that there's some different people you'll sell that to but but to really have that that core uh nucleus is incredibly important and this is the phase where you have to figure that out uh a prototype is really very much the least that you can build what is what is the the the very very very very least that you can build and then examine that am and figure out okay can I do less like really just I've never seen a company fail because they did too little for the first step never ever uh and it's a tough thing to do you know I I've had stories of people that have said you know how do I validate what do I do and that have actually gone I've got a a good buddy of mine that that had a had this great vision spent a whole lot of time put six months into it and then scrapped it and what he did instead his second version of the product was a clipboard and he hung out at the Charles MGH uh t- stop and he waited to see people running for their trains and just miss them and they go up he's like excuse me do you have three minutes and nobody's like uh ah uh and he asked people he's like I'm G to do this you know and and really get their feedback I'll get into that in a little bit um but with any prototype I think you've got to say you know what's important to measure what can you do quickly that proves that value uh and initially it's very few things uh there's not that much that's that that's important similar to those kind of five things what what is important to you and then what's the hierarchy of that uh one of the ways that I phrase this is you know if you have um a conversation with somebody you're you're kind of talking to your startup about and there's that that term occasionally the the entrepreneurs that have that idea but don't do anything and you see them I'm going to do this you know you see him three months later I'm going to do this oh we're tweaking this we're about to launch you know I know folks that have been like about to launch for like 15 months now and it's like you know do something but if you were to catch up with somebody four weeks six weeks later like oh yeah I remember that what's changed what could you tell them that would really be impressive that would not just mean something to them but would mean something to you to say uh and I I'll talk a little bit about how to hack some of these really quickly there are definitely good ways to do it uh but you know there's it's easy to get up into secondary metrics you know my buddy with his carpool algorithm and finding out the right you know validating buyers versus drivers and the incentives that takes one from another um depends on the company but for a lot of companies you know you're generally not from a measurement perspective as as unique and beautiful as a snowflake as you might imagine you know there's a lot of these very hard metrics that are the same for most of us um figure out what yours are but kind of mine and this is a templ that I think depending on what you're doing could snap on SLAP onto about 70% of companies so Revenue uh Revenue matters customers users additions to team you know are you building the team are you attracting other people U actions what's the product putting out and then kind of actions for user uh what is and I can get into these a little bit I've got a a slide wall talk a little bit about um you know how you can start to hack these and how how you can actually drive change in them um one thing that you don't want and the last thing here is you know nice things people say in response to Leading questions so they don't have to crush your dreams uh you can get a lot of people to say nice things about you and you know a bucket full of that doesn't get you a whole lot um so really how do you start to validate the idea um some of it is going to be talking to people how do you talk to people I've got some you know what kind of what's useful feedback and useful questions I'll get into that but um it's also about you know with these goals there's kind of twofold so I think especially in the rise of sort of some of the accelerators and you know some some very early investors there's the goals that matter to me so what fundamentally means that my vision is right uh verse you know what could I do that shows somebody what can I show somebody that's impressive uh at this point you really got to tune out some of those external voices right that you've got to you can Pro you can make something look important to somebody else uh you know there's always that kind of Hollywood facade where it looks great and it it it feels great and as soon as you kind of walk sideways to it you realize it's a front and there's nothing behind it uh and a lot of companies take that way too far uh I've seen and and and then fail uh do something that's initially valuable to you but at the same point have it something that is kind of external something that you can show someone uh and something that is a very hard defined number so I like Revenue customers users these are important to me as well granted you know there's a difference between proving value and and kind of having something that just kind of falsely looks valuable uh you know you want something you can show someone but you don't want it to be something for show uh but it is it is important that you write it down and that it is sort of an external variable there it is you know something that you're actually driving to and measuring yourself against here's grandma here here not my particular Grandma but she seems really nice uh so this is part of customer validation before you start building you've got to talk to people you know my buddy that was out on the tea station I don't know if you've ever tried to talk to 120 strangers in a day it's awkward uh but you know strangers can give you the best advice depending if that's the kind of person that you want to talk to uh you got to get out you got to talk to people you don't know uh you've got to ask hard questions you will get if you want somebody to say nice things about your idea they will do it uh and I did this a lot uh you know what do you think isn't this clever isn't this great you know isn't this amazing yes you know that nobody wants to nobody wants to crush your dreams uh but it's not useful uh and it it feeds into that vanity but it means that you if you're great and your vision's great and you're meant to do this it just eats six months of your life and maybe any Runway you have to get your your idea off the ground so part of this is ego to know that you're going to be wrong about the execution and then how you can uh really get people to say bad things about your idea um you know I call this the the kind of you know the grandma syndrome uh you know don't ask Grandma uh don't ask anybody you know anybody you know well is not candid advice it's not good advice it's not useful uh and then when you do ask don't ask vager leading questions you know do you like it what else should should we add uh you've got to force people to say mean things about it so you say why wouldn't you use it uh you know can you uh what else are you using right now do you like it uh how long did it take to choose that uh how long would it take you to switch um a lot of and and don't ask kind of questions that don't also require commitment um there's a lot of can I come back in six months can I show you this in three months uh can I can you give me somebody else's name that I could show it to uh you really get to ask questions that specifically capture intent uh there's initially we had a a version of this thing that everybody thought was incredibly interesting and we were doing crowd sourcing and you know mobile based crowdsourcing when the iPhone came out oh my God it's mobile crowdsourcing those two words amazing uh okay now pay us for it uh oh okay hold on uh different conversation it's a kind of thing that people wanted to seem Innovative about it's a kind of thing that they wanted to be expert about we had news releases that would get you know 142 tweets and eight clicks which means that less than 10% of the people that bothered to tell other people about it actually clicked on the damn link themselves right that there is this I want to cultivate a Persona of this is the kind of thing that I'm interested in and and and that was part of the challenge is getting from uh interesting to imperative getting from the kind of thing that I want to sound and you know if it's not too hard to build something that sounds interesting uh that sounds appealing that sounds like something that that I want to keep track of but you know is it actually solving something crucial is this something that you can Implement is it something that you have budget for are you the person that does this who does this who picks it how long do you choose you know what's a vendor cycle look like um all these questions we learned to ask after people had already said this is great this is awesome and then we'd get two months of them saying like I'll show somebody else and they'll say the same thing you know we weren't asking questions that force people to say no we have this in our current sales process something that I've kind of termed the uh the the PMG uh which is we get to a point we show somebody this is great uh can you send us five slides and I'm going to show it around and I'm GNA you know we'll we'll tell you what we think and and initially we tried to figure out what are the right five slides how do we present what are the notes what's the right level of detail and then several painful months later I realize the correct answer is no no you can't uh because it's not your job to tell a room full of people five slides on what my product does that's my job so we can either have if you're ready for a proposal great if there's other people that need to see it let's get a meeting I'll talk to those people or goodbye you seem like a really nice person let's keep in touch uh but not chasing if you can't get to that next step I mean this is from from sales but even from a product validation if it's this sort of very loose ended neat uh that that isn't tied to action uh I think you're really it's easy to chase false validation uh and and whatever you can do to kind of cut that down and then to understand what your actual obstacles are going to be you know so if somebody said this is a great travel app or this is a great carpool app great it's got all the features I want awesome like do you carpool oh no you know I take the teer I'd never let a weirdo in my car uh you know there's there's you know beneath the surface of every compliment is a reason they won't use it and you've got to find the right people uh and you've got to understand every single thing that it would take uh to to to to Really prove out what you're right about what you're wrong about and what you're going to have to solve for this is really important this is probably the one of the single best things I learned about telling my idea to people and understanding how well my idea resonates tell somebody about your idea give them the short version give them the 30 seconds give them two minutes and then stop talking great I love it that's perfect that's exactly what we need great tell me what we are have them give the pitch back and it is so much different than what you told them uh just it's a little weird to do but please do it you know just kind of have other people give your pitch back to you after you've given it to them and and what's important to them will really come through sometimes they extrapolate on great things that are really you know you didn't even tell them but are essential to your product sometimes they have an idea of something completely different uh but but that little trick has helped me a ton and you really get to understand why you do they get you what are they wrong about and what really truly resonates uh even if you've got the right ingredients in there depending on who you talk to what they think is most important what they think is most impressive is very rarely what yours what is is not always what you think is uh and you know to hear it in their own words is great especially if you're selling to you know whatever if you're selling to Enterprise HR reps uh what they say how they say it is going to be in the language of the people that you try to sell it to so really really kind of capture that um so here's some useful questions that work for me are we like anything else you're currently using if so what are we competitive are we compliment why do you use them how do you use them who uses them in your organization how much do you pay for it like people will answer a ton of stuff uh and initially even on sales calls where I'd have somebody on the phone I'm like man I wonder if this is even the person that buys it and I'd have like three meetings with them and then you know now that I've gotten you learned a little bit about that like 10 minutes in I'm like so are you the person to buys this like oh well you know I inform it but it's really my boss or we've got this outside group or oh no all that's done through our agency people will tell you a tremendous amount of stuff customers uh Pro Prospects investors uh ask you can ask a whole lot of questions I've probably asked you know 200 questions I was slightly uncomfortable asking and I've had two times where it's come back at me where somebody's like well and they're really like well you know I'd probably rather not talk about that uh or we can talk about that later on in the deal you can ask for a ton more information and I'd always try to say like well I could tell from the tone of the voice and their and the way they hold their hands it's like hey why don't you ask them uh as far as uh you know kind of what's painful about switching uh how do you measure it so if this is something that somebody's interested in why do they want it what would they do with it how would they measure it I think you know from a we do a lot inside Enterprise inside big Brands so kind of who makes a decision where's the budget how long is a cycle um how much would you pay I think one of the things to be crucial is once you've kind of checked the boxes on interesting what would you start doing it with it on the first week uh is this uh imperative versus interesting you know one of the things I've heard is uh and this one isn't mine but like if for a company your main value prop your one big thing uh vitamins are nice you know if I give you vitamins a little bit of B2 you're going to walk around you're going to be a little bit peppier maybe they work maybe they don't you know people buy painkillers don't sell vitamins sell painkillers Killers like you have this and it really godamn hurts you do this and it won't uh getting somebody incrementally better on a problem they didn't know they had is a slow way to go you really got to you know people want to buy that painkiller that says you know hey do you have this I'm like yeah it sucks you know my boss yells at me every quarter I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what we're going to do about it that that's what people buy that's what people need no obviously that's for kind of an Enterprise model but from a consumer as well you know if I'm going to say you know are looking for a way that you can tell you know one of the things that I H I'm so godamn sick of and we hear about it for the last 12 years is the goddamn connected refrigerator and I'm sorry if that's somebody's idea uh I don't like it but like that that at some point in the extraordinarily near future we're going to need refrigerators that can talk to us on the internet and tell us how much milk they have left and it seems like the technology is always right on the cost but now there's a bunch of things to do it CES they always have like four refrigerators in the back where somebody's like this year we did it um nobody wants a refrigerator that talks to the internet stop building it uh but it's technically feasible uh and even if it's neat and maybe you could sell to a couple Gadget heads and need to have everything but it's not a problem people have and it's not a strong problem anybody has it's a wow wouldn't that be kind of cool you know uh I I wonder what my you know broccoli is doing on Pinterest right now uh uh so you know products that do well especially at startups if you're GE and you can teach a whole generation of people to want uh you know tweetable groceries fine that's a big corporate problem I I don't I don't think they're right but but go for it you're a startup you're not going to teach anybody to want anything new uh nobody nobody wants anything new uh for the most part or nobody wants to no you can't teach them to want that it's something that they're they either want now and maybe they don't want your exact product you know you had uh Henry Ford said that if I had asked everybody what they had wanted they would have said Faster Horses right so maybe they don't know exactly what the car should be or how the carburetor works or how many horsepowers or what color they want they know they want to go faster people always want to go faster you know but uh the technology enables that teaching them that they want to go faster uh so uh this one's been really powerful for me I'll get into it a little bit in the next slide as far as kind of how you can start to hack some of these growth metrics will you sign this piece of paper uh this is really useful really powerful and pretty damn easy if somebody's like this is great I'd love to have it I mean try to get customers but um talk about it a little bit here so and I'll get into this on customers but as far as how to hack real Improvement in four weeks kind of what's changed you're talking to that person you know what do I want to show that I'm proud about um you know this is this is a sample list but from revenue uh gfd this is one of the things that my uh investors early investors one of my first it's a good guy he's a little Gruff um we get along but when he was talking about you know how do we measure revenue is it when it's sent is it when it's received is it a customer that's 80% likely to close for $100,000 can we count it as $80,000 he said gfd Dan gfd uh green dollars you know what's what's in there now uh and gfd goes a long way gfd with investors if you can charge somebody $50 for something congratulations you're a post- revenue company uh having something that if you can get a bunch of people to pay $50 even better but you that first initial traction even if it's a few people even if if it's for something ugly even if it's for something manual you know getting some gfd in there goes a hell of a long way um there's a you know I've always heard they're all they're all liars till they're buyers right uh everybody wants something until they have to get it until they have to buy it everybody has an intent to do something until they've done something so the quicker that you can get in dollar one uh I would depending on certain types of companies but if if early startups you know I'm I've mentioned my my brilliant friends I am perhaps not not brilliant uh I'm I'm you know simple enough to know that I want to make money doing what I'm doing that I want my product to make money that I want my value to be that other people are paying me you know that that other people find it valuable money is a great way to kind of denote that somebody else finds it valuable they've given you money that money can be exchanged for goods and services you know it's valuable it really is a great uh Catalyst it really does sort of can can can really cut into that and and and Define what is valuable um and it's interesting too from an app Marketplace you know we used to build apps I don't anymore uh I'm I'm happy to not build them uh or have contractors build them uh but the difference on an app store if you go from an amazing incredible successful app that does a whole bunch of stuff that's free to the same app that now charges a dollar if there's nobody else that you're directly competing against you drop 97% of your users from zero to $1 you drop 97% uh so what people will use what people will look at what people will be interested in versus what they pay for What's valuable enough that they go into their pocket for is a really Stark differentiator um especially in the term of kind of Quasi users where I could say well we've got followers or tweeters or you know somebody that put something into an app or signed in you know what what constitutes a user can often be very can occasionally be vague um yeah revenue is great customers so this is what I talked about as far as if you can get somebody to pay a buck for it that's great if you're trying to get um you know GE to Fork out 80 grand on a really ugly prototype it might not happen uh but if you are at a very early stage and you can get somebody and you can get in front of that guy that would eventually buy it or the woman that would eventually buy it and he say why would you buy it how valuable is it yes it's great and they tell you man if you could finish building this if you can get these three features we're in this solves a huge problem for us great can I get a non-binding letter of intent non-binding letter of intent that says at the beginning like this is not a contract like this is a non-binding letter of intent that states that if we do this this this and this you have an intent to buy I mean it's a contractual equivalent of of of nothing right uh but to get somebody to do that I found that when I would get somebody all the way to that 99 yard line here great launch it we'll do this at the very early stage while we were going from appsw the previous company to crowdly we're in we're your first customer this is so exciting will you sign this well actually I'm not the one that makes these agreements It generally happens above me my boss would have to decide it's like why the haven't we've been talking to him you know this is my eighth meeting here uh I don't swear so much in the client meetings uh the eighth one I might a little bit but you get to find out your real buying process you get to figure out it's like well we actually have a contractual thing with the agency and they have to vet everything they have to approve everything it's like oh you haven't gotten to yes yet on the other hand if you can get these you know I had a friend that did this they were trying to put a solution that went into gyms across the country to fitness clubs and crowded space there's a lot of companies that are trying to do it he got six letters of intent from you know six pretty small you know not even chains but just sort of groups of gyms and he got investment like that's great it's not customer but you can sort of approximate customers uh not gfd Jim wouldn't let me count that in the revenue but uh but getting that letter of intent cuts through a ton of that process and from a growth hack perspective it's a really quick thing that you can do because if I go in front of an investor or an incubator and I say listen I got a lot of people that say great things about me it's like oh awesome uh you know tell your grandma I said hi uh but if I can say you know I've got six letters of intent from these six I'm targeting gyms I've talked to 15 I've got six letters of inent good I mean it shows that you're persistent enough to get in front of the right person that you know how to actually sell the damn thing you're talking to the people that'll buy it and that you're you're serious about proving this value and you can get letter of intent with you know a PowerPoint with that ugly prototype um users are obviously very valuable um and this is sort of a a descending list of value for me uh you know but but users are good uh signups are good uh number you know that's obviously something that people look for specifically if you got something that is going to be primarily consumer based uh even that prags so like I mentioned my buddy with a carpool that put up a landing page if you can say I got 4,000 people to a landing page versus I got 6,000 people to an early prototype I mean they're great you build out a prototype maybe that prototype took you two more months 4,000 people with the landing page sounds just as impressive if you're trying to get to that incubator to those investors or to attract a technical co-founder and you know technical co-founders they're uh um you know it's occasionally like that that that high school dance sort of mentality where there's a few kind of floating around the edges and everybody's trying to date them and like oh hey buddy you know how's it going uh you know let's grab drinks and you have a couple drinks and you you know a little tipsy and you're kind of like you know they know it's coming they see it's coming they've totally got you in the co-founder friend zone and you're like how's that Contracting work you ever think about getting a startup you know it's oh you put the awkward move on uh you know and they're like and they see it coming and they get hit on a lot right and if you're some guy in a PowerPoint all right okay cool who cares I got 4,000 people to a landing page I got users at a buck 30 each they're not doing anything yet because I haven't built anything my ugly baby has value so even going out at that level and getting those people excited about building your thing and to show that like I'm a guy that can actually do within four weeks with nothing with this kind of stone own soup I've cobbled this together right so whoever you're trying to trct whoever you're getting excited about you're going to learn a shitload about what you're wrong about you're going to refine your vision you're going to be more confident about what part of it is fundamental to what you're doing but you're also going to be you're eventually going to have to get somebody else excited uh and and and having some of these hacks to go to somebody and say I've got four letters of intent it shows that you can execute and it shows real value you're not you're not you know just just some that that entrepreneur um additions to the team so that that's a component of it as well you know early on with no money it's hard to hire a lot of people because you know you can't pay them uh specifically towards I think well this is valuable a lot of places but towards the incubators or the investors um having a good team having strong people that believe in what you're doing is really important it's okay if you can't pay them it's okay if they're not full-time if you could say I've got three great people lined up and they're really contributing they're helpful I've got 10 hours a week whatever it is get their sort of fractional commitment and say and you know I've got Mark and he's an amazing developer and when we get to 10,000 signups he's going from 10 hours a week to 20 hours a week and when we get to 15,000 signups he's going full-time uh that I've got this team that's going to build as my uh progression builds and another thing here is for these people as you're starting to find these people that are excited about your team you know validate that with them as well like here's my expectation like we start off we're going to do you know I need this much time initially and then what would be compelling to you what would have to be true for you to want to come on full-time or to go from five hours a week to 15 hours a week you know that we do this every night Tuesdays and Thursdays after work you come over and we do this until midnight what would have to be true for you to be this excited uh this goes back to some of your own core metrics uh but you know having that discussion getting other people Ed and understanding what matters to them I had a couple of these folks where I had you know uh I I had you know developers that oh were that were in kind of that that are Contracting but maybe they'll come over to perm but I did you know I danced around it and I didn't want to make it awkward and I didn't really have that explicit you know what what's going to happen here like well nothing like I'm working 20 hours a week making a good amount of money I sleep till noon I stop at 5 like I'm going to be a contractor forever uh you know you do have this kind of um you know that this nomadic sort of contractor class that can do that that that you you don't want to spend a lot of time barking up the wrong tree if this is a contractor great I use contractors uh use good ones I could fill another several hours on how to not pick bad contractors and how to not screw up the Rel you screw up your engagements with good contractors but but know that everybody that is involved in your project is not going to come on full-time that you're not going to suddenly Amaze everybody and win them over if you haven't had that discussion so what needs to be true for you to come over that can happen with investors as well that if you are um with investors it's very true uh if you want if you want advice ask for money if you want money ask for advice uh you can't say like hey I want your money uh go to them and say we're not raising right now I wouldn't take your check if we could get it but what's important is four months now we're considering maybe doing it in the future maybe four months from now uh what do you think about this I want your candid feedback also for you what would have to be true in four months from what we've done now for you to get involved or would you not and if they said like well a combination of things we want to see progress we want to see traction you know that just means like I don't believe that this will work uh but I don't want to be the guy that loses the awesome deal uh in my firm and looks like so I'm going to try to infinitely keep the door open there's a lot of investors that figure if they never say know that it just stays open infinitely uh but it also means that all the nice things that they said about you if you can't say you know what would be true then and maybe there there's a lot of really smart investors out there as well maybe they don't you're not at a stage yet where they're ready to see what the next phase of your company is maybe your idea is still a little raw um but if you really think that I'm on a projection here where this is you know this is where we're going in four months uh figure out who your the people that are bought in on that and and get their perspective if they said you know what if you can get um you know if you can get 3,000 users that's great I'm in uh I had a group of investors that were super excited after we started to have some revenue and like well you know what we really want is we want um want about 15 Enterprise customers and we want to see that at least 70% of them retain like on our annual contracts right okay so we're trying to raise and this was early before we did our last round we're trying to raise 300 Grand and what you want is $25 million of recurring Revenue before you'll put your 300 Grand in and you know I'm like all right you know that uh that that was the goodbye that's seem like nice people you know let's keep in touch uh so find out what's important to them but find out if you've got people that might be those right Partners down the road um actions this is a lot of kind of how the product works you know how well the product executes uh turk it uh I don't know if you guys are familiar with Mechanical Turk sort of an example of something you can do on Amazon the real story of so Mechanical Turk is a way that you can buy PE you can pay people to do sort of micro actions um for like 10 cents each in huge volume I had a great friend that did this he had a service that you could tweet to it and based on the history of your tweets it would tell you what restaurants you might be interested near you and there's a lot of math and there's a lot of algorithms and there's a lot of that he didn't want to build because it's hard to build and it's expensive and he didn't know if people wanted to use it so he hired people to for25 cents in each to tweet out recommendations restaurant recommendations for those people and it's like look at the magic of my algorithm and it wasn't it was like a room full of people uh at 25 cents a pop and he got his first you know and he launched this and he only spent about 600 bucks on Mechanical Turk CU nobody actually wanted to tweet something and find restaurant recommendations uh and he didn't have to build all that big algorithm he did something else that later became successful the real Mechanical Turk story there was actually so Amazon calls that Mechanical Turk there's a lot lot of services but the the story behind this is like you know you're kind of The Wizard of Oz at this point right no nobody else needs to be behind the curtain uh that that that is your curtain and at these very early stages if you can fake it behind the curtain you know if they can't tell the difference what difference does it make and that's not scalable eventually you don't want your service is not a way that you can pay people a quarter to tweet Out restaurant recommendations but you can prove out a hell of a lot really quickly without having to build out the guts of what it'll eventually be uh I love the real Mechanical Turk story it was actually several hundred years ago somebody built a a robot uh a Mechanical Turk that they actually took around and tored the courts of Europe and had beat all these princes and kings in chess so they built this real moving robot and you could open up its chest and you could look at the gears and nobody knew how it did and it did it for like 30 years toward all the courts of Europe and it was this technical Marvel and the guy was in inantly the the the person that engineered it was this uh you know friend of kings and very rich and died in his mansion and uh like three years after they died they realized he had stuck a a really smart in its belly uh so you know really smart midgets they go a long way um so actions per user are really important as well so this is something that if you're going to say especially if you're kind of paying for users there's a lot that you can do to say I got somebody to sign up but what are they doing are they coming back are they engaging with it uh don't don't worry about optimization here don't worry about saying well I need 3.2 visits per user and I've only got 2.7 it's absolutely solvable you know you can do that uh but if I know that I need to have somebody take 30 actions and nobody comes back you've got a fundamental problem again don't focus on I mean you're always going to optimize a ton of the rest of your company is going to be optimized ing find out here is what is where are the fundamental differences versus sort of the the the things that you can optimize but looking at users is a is a number uh but actions is really where you start to dig in and you figure out you know great I've got something that I can optimize towards uh what's really important in this as well is learn what useful things that you were wrong about so if you have a set of assumptions uh P I think Mike trano has got a great deck if anybody's had a chance to see him speak and he's like hey you've got a a fundamental set of expectations when's he here oh he was here with Michael Scott oh nice yeah he's great uh but if you've got all these fundamental assumptions that are important to your company and they change all the time and they move all the time and you reflect on them all the time hey maybe you should write them down and uh you know I think at the early point the first time I heard that I'm like oh we haven't written them down and they move so much and you think like well I know what they are obviously they're the fundamental pillars to my business and I measure them all the time but it it's kind of like you know wind on Sand the whole thing moves 3 months later it's it's shifted and and you're not always it's important to be able to look back and remember that it's shifted um but see what you're wrong about uh I'm going to get into Q&A in a little bit here but just um super quick some tools that are really useful so as I mentioned you know my PBX phone closet Horror Story it's really easy to prove a lot of value pretty quickly or to prove some value and to kind of understand what you might be wrong about um first thing is get a domain name if you were sending me something from a hot mail address like you do not have a you know you have a hobby um get a domain get your email buy that domain if you're going to get anybody to take you serious I have a huge pet peeve a ton of people will disagree with me spell your domain right uh don't if I if the first thing you get to say to everybody at a cocktail party is like here's the name of my company and then the second thing you say is and here's how you spell it I just oh man just great uh I'm I'm an old you know writing major so that that's my particular bias um but yeah spell your domain correctly no like crazy extra K leave out an e you know get something even if it's I mean crowdly is not a real word in case anybody wants to call me on that but we spelled it right uh that it should seem how it look how it should be spelled um Google Google Apps is really useful um you know you don't have to spend a whole lot of money on software but there's a lot of tools here you know put that on your own domain have a professional looking email address nobody's going to with anything I think you want to make sure you're a good version of what you are uh you are not a 400 person company and you're not going to convince anybody worth convincing that you're a 400 person company if you're three smart people in Cambridge be three smart people in Cambridge but be a good version of that you know get so being professional is not about um you know trying to convince anybody otherwise just just being a good version um project tracking is really important I think there's a lot of I think spend the work and prioritize what you're going to do really Define well why you want to do it so here's what we want to do here's why we want to do it and I always try to do this in our teams once we're there and we like our answer and then how we're going to measure it I always say and why shouldn't we do it right try to convince yourself out of it if if you can convince yourself not to do something don't do it or don't do it now um but track what you intend to do especially as a team gets larger track how you do against it um there's a bunch of tools that we use trell is a good one for project management a sauna um a lot of these are kind of free versions the site landing page these got a little bit done to death but I think it's still a good important step you know there's a lot of folks that are you had some companies that rais like $4 million and still had just a landing page uh but a landing page is basically a site that you can build that you can send traffic to where you can ask people to sign up for something and then they're kind of generally they'll get to a very simplified version of something afterwards or it'll be a um you know thanks you're signed up we'll tell you when we've launched uh I I really still strongly recommend them there's a tremendous amount that you can sure so I get this question all the time so you sell to Enterprises how do land just work with Enterprises yeah so landing pages work much better when you're looking at specifically consumer I think there's some of it if you're going to say yeah so if you're really saying that um getting a Big Brand to sign up I don't think you're going to get a ton of sign ups there but if you've got like a Blog that's you know first thing we're going to do is really start talking about this and why it's important uh you know we've got a social media manager now so she looks at like all the brand managers on Twitter and you know chats them up and they come in and they sign up for the blog so there's things that you can do to kind of valid Val are they interested in signing up for the kinds of things that you talk about but landing pages in an Enterprise are a little bit different I think they could sign up for your kind of subject matter expertise or or whatnot but most of those if it's going to be this is mostly kind of a self-service product if you intend for people to come to your site and sign up by themselves you know go ahead and do that for an Enterprise something like um I think what does work well for a landing page is something like a white paper so we have really good do leadership on what you need we've got I won't be self- serving so I'll come up with something fake but if we if you have something that is explicitly about your value andain to that particular audience hey download the white paper specifically on you know our solution for gym managers and how to maximize offline Revenue that's not my business um yeah I'd say that landing pages work in that regard to get people to sign up for for that um the white papers rather kind of a trigger there uh you can set them up really quickly and and there you're really looking at is there actually an interest in what I'm doing is this something that and not just is there an interest can me you know one person or two people or however big you are can I acquire them at a rate that is that is reasonably eventually profitable for my company uh if I'm trying to sell uh you know sports scores or whatever the hell it's like all right the whole rest of the internet has this if I'm going to do recipes it's like oh you know who else has recipes fing everyone uh you know if I'm going to say like all right well I'm going to do you know gluten-free non- peanut and that's an addressable Market I can get people I can get people to sign up for that for you know a buck 10 each I can get clicks I can buy so another thing is how you start to kind of get traffic towards it people are searching for it I can start to rank in traffic there's enough of a drive the community around you know gluing free peanut free whatever it's a strong Community they bring other people in um so so you can really start to say can I bring in can I bring in my audience at a reasonable rate if you're going to pay 300 bucks a click you can get people to come in for just about anything and you don't have to have them if I eventually need them here at 80 cents a pop but I can get them at two bucks it's probably optimizable if it's 20 bucks you're not um so I'd say yeah from that in in that regard you know get that landing page up there uh I really like the buying some ads some some of the PPC through AdWords and Facebook you know who are the communities who do I think this is going to resonate you really get to test it so if I'm going to say I want to sign up you know gyms and I'm going to say um make more revenue or I'm going to say you know make more Revenue per customer I mean I have another ad that says you know get more people in your gym or you know have them buy Personal Training lessons whatever my drivers are if I'm trying to appeal to those even to that same audience what pitch do they find most valuable that will get them through and get them to sign up uh so there's a lot that you can really do to understand how your product lives in the minds of people who will eventually buy will eventually use um and a landing page and some bot traffic you know you might quickly find like here's a keyword recipes everybody owns I'm it's going to be a really hard thing to own or do I have a niche and then which of those messages Works which of them don't what are the keywords if I can get people to say that they want something and click on an ad but then they don't click into the site you know where's the disc um and a lot of AB testing and a lot of tweaking uh I think out of the landing page sites um I like unbounce right now I think they do the best job there's a lot of great AB testing stuff that they can do they integrate in with Google analytics um definitely do Google analytics learn learn who the people are and this is kind of an important thing too is what's your you know what's your expected action what what do you expect people to do on the site I want them to get to the site and I want them to sign up for the program or I want them to sign in um what's your conversion there uh how many of them convert if I change that how many more if I need to be at 10% and I'm at 7% get an optimizable problem if I'm one in a thousand not so much um but if you can get traffic at a reasonable rate and then that traffic performs at a reasonable you I I can get people here for 40 cents each and they 10% of them or 25% of them convert you know that's that's not bad at a buck 60 a person great now why don't I build the damn thing but doing that first and then especially understanding what that message is because as you build out the site as you build out the product you're going to get a lot more information on on kind of what what those sort of emotional hooks are that took people into action that you're going to want to put into kind of your your own product identity and your own site messaging um some kind of basic CRM I think is important you can do some of it through Google contacts there's a few free things that plug into Google you really don't want to pay a ton and it's easy um I'm the same way whenever I have to do something that I I I don't want to do uh I'll like clean the house you know or I always did that in college like I don't want to write this paper uh why don't I just like have my dorm room Immaculate it's it's one of those sort of it feels like you're doing something but is really procrastinating I think there's a lot of tools where you could say I'm going to put everything into all these wonderful amazing online tools and it looks amazing and I've got the best corporate dashboard ever uh for a comp with two people uh some of that is is you know vanity and some of it's procrastination uh mail chimp Survey Monkey uh LinkedIn is good you know you can kind of stock the people that you want to reach out to get a premium membership and just say like hey can I show you something for 10 minutes it's nowhere near ready to sell you and that's part of being kind of a good version of what you are um don't say I've got an amazing fully built out product say I'm I'm a really smart person I've got two other really smart people with me we're building something that could really use 10 minutes of your advice uh but find those right people don't find the people that are um you know around the house when you want to ask questions find the people that you'd eventually want to sell to uh yesware is kind of so I put LinkedIn is stalking and yes wear is Advanced stalking you can actually see how they're doing with it and if they pass it around and what gets opens what gets replies tweak your messaging see what gets responses do it with large numbers of people it's awkward as hell nobody wants to be a spammer nobody wants to be that pushy guy um you know your your idea does not get validated in your own head you have to ask other people that are not you and that do not know you and it it it is it is awkward um be authentic about it be a little bit pushy and don't be uh scoreboard I think it's important to kind of say you know as I mentioned sort of measure what's important to you from kind of daily is probably too much from a startup but from a weekly and a monthly basis uh from a don't write a business plan there's a lot of great stuff out there on the a lean scorecard and the the idea there is that a business plan is a 40-page document uh that naive investors will ask you to produce and they'll never read and you'll never read and we'll stick in your door your your your desk drawer and you'll never look at again where if you can do what's called The Lean Startup canvas it's a one-page document where you can actually honestly measure what's important to you Google it there's a lot of good stuff out there on the Lean Startup canvas it's a it's a living document that you can actually measure what's important to you you'll actually use use uh anything any long documents business plans they'll change so quickly and you'll never find time in a startup to go back and revise my 20page business plan uh so so really kind of keep keep a a a useful very basic dashboard on just the key stuff that's important to you don't worry about the secondary stuff um yeah so that's um mostly it for the for the slide component of it I know Abby has uh the microphone Happ to ask questions about uh any of this any of my uh particularly memorable failures or stumblings or occasional successes as well could you please tell us a little bit more about finding a technologist and maybe some of those um uh interesting experiences you've had with the contractors yeah um oh and maybe a word on um incenting them as well at at the very earliest phase uh on incenting okay y uh so with any um I'm it I'd say make sure that you're kind of explicitly clear if this is sort of a contractor or if this is a contractor to perm and then what those triggers are uh and a lot of folks will be like yeah I'm really interested let's see how it goes and let's keep the conversation going that is a contractor unless you have a milestone a trigger something at which they get involved you have a contractor and know that they are not ever going to be anything different um if you have contractors understand what their compensation is if it's just Equity or if it's paid um you have to be I think one of the things that that that I've learned is you have to be very explicit not just in kind of what you want from contractors at the beginning always do fixed bids they don't like it but it's the best way to do it uh there's too much variability let them take that variability on don't just say kind of I want this button here but say why I want it so with everything that we build we say you know if we call them kind of the the user case story so not just I want a button here that gets clicked and goes here like why do you want it so whenever you're writing those be extraordinarily you will pretty much get what you ask for um so be really clear in sort of a spec document extraordinarily clear on everything that you want make sure that that's part of your agreement and then say here's in very big detail what I want but here's why I want it uh because there's a lot even regardless of how detailed they are once they start building if they have a context of why that feature is important they'll build a weird version or maybe they have other ideas um so I'd say I'd say definitely that with anything on and this is very very true if you've got a couple of people and everybody's devoted a different amount um and their stock do vesting extraordinarily early and figure out how to split that Equity up within the team too so if it's something where um you know what what is everybody's participation okay it's on a four-year vest and and then if you're great and you're the technical guy and you're going to be in here 10 hours a week and I'm here 40 hours a week maybe we both have the same amount but you're on that pro-rated vest until and as you keep coming up then you vest faster but everything everybody has a six-month cliff and everything is on a four-year vest there's so many companies that had you know the two guys in a dorm room and then like oh the third roommate and like he owns a third of the company cuz that weekend he said a lot and now it's this awkward thing where it's like oh hey buddy um uh everybody raise your hand if you're in the company whoa not you so fast uh and people's passions changed and people's capability to do it changes as well uh the team very rarely looks like it does it at at the outset when it's just this idea um so be very honest have those Frank conversations uh figure out how you split it and kind of be honest about what stage they're coming in on as well if you have three people instead of figuring out well this guy is a little bit smarter this guy's a little bit more involved you know you've got 40% he's got 25% he's got 33% if it's about even or if it's 2 people instead of doing 6040 somebody's always going to resent the hell out of it make it 50/50 just it's unless there's a very compelling reason not to if you're all kind of the founders then split it evenly invest question so I I have a question about how did you make the transition from the non-technical guy to a technical guy and uh what's the difficulty in making those transition because right now I'm learning python I'm I'm a student at Harvard so I found it's kind of diff difficult for me to make that transition so yeah um I it's a great question I think you know if I had to do it over again I definitely learned more about programming so I never became the technical guy I still can't code uh I just you know eventually went from contractors and then I built enough that you know all of a sudden we had you know some funding and some investment and some great customers and then we became a lot more appealing to be able to bring in great talent you know where they said this isn't you know some guy in a you know with a with a PowerPoint that like this is a company going places and I want to get involved so for me it was kind of getting that Vision right getting something that people were excited about having traction behind it but but not becoming the the developer I think with that um when you are and I've seen this from a lot of developers especially when they're kind of learning and there this is sort of their prototype if if your prototype fails your very early ugly baby you will throw it away you'll completely discard it if your prototype does well and you're going to build a company out of it you're going to completely throw it away a prototype is not a early first version of your company or of your product the Prototype is a very small disposable item where you can prove out of core value and then stop and build something real if it works uh but a lot of times you'll get somebody that'll have this they've got some sort of in between super hacky thing uh and they'll put way too much time in building out a prototype like I've got to have it scaled to a million users um so you'll either put too much time into the Prototype or not but I'd say at this point like feel free to build something very hacky and very small and then you know once it gets there great then maybe you get another developer somebody more senior that helps you with it as well um but I know for those folks that have done it uh like paired programming getting proving enough traction that you can get somebody to come involved maybe at like a half Equity half cash rate or whatever it is and have them pair with you for like two months once you've gotten past the Prototype make make that ugly prototype yourself okay uh so let's say you're kind of in the lucky position of having a somewhat validated Vision in other words you've done a lot of this early stuff you've gone through and there are people they want what in your product uh you've shown that you can at least build some of the basic parts of it it's not in its final stages but you know there's a true need for what you're doing and this is kind of I guess a broad question a bit but how do you decide what to do next to make it a reality particularly as a uh sort of a soul founder in other words should you focus on documenting your validation as maybe a way of raising money and and and showing that yes there is a need for this or should be focusing more and building the product so there's something that you can put in front of people how do you uh what goes what's a good strategy for I guess organizing a path forward once you've gone through those initial stages yeah I mean uh so some of it depends on the company obviously not knowing a ton about the company or the stage of the company I mean if this is something that you're you feel is absolutely ready to raise money and this is essential to have happen and you're really at a cross roads um you know go ahead and do that but I'd say for the most part you know build product that that value is valuable and how you if I've going to spend if I've going to take three months off of building value to explain to people why my thing is valuable uh I can you can you know walk in with paying customers with whatever with ugly slide decks notice I have an affinity for ugly slide decks um that you don't have to have everything completely polished if you've got something that's sort of slightly valuable and very polished I'm always suspect of it where if I have something that's incredibly valuable it's like listen we haven't had time to polish it I mean we raised our last round you know I never had a I never had a real slide deck and that was sort of it it's like oh well can you build us a pitch Tech it's like no like if you want in like we're we've got people we've already got some investment we're busy building it if you want to come in on the opportunity here's the opportunity but like we're going like trains leaving the station uh some of that is because you know it was a little bit but some of it is you know you if you're not you know the the the if you're too Polished in that somebody's going to think that you're trying to sell them and you know we were trying to raise in this last round we were trying to raise you know 700,000 initially we got the first 200 was like pulling teeth and then everybody wanted to come in everybody wanted to be the last money and then we opened it to 900 and everybody wanted to be the last money we ended up coming into like 1.4 once everybody else saw that somebody else was in that it went uh raising money is about having a really good simple easy to understand narrative it's true and then having a couple very smart people say yeah I've looked at the details and it works out um but people very rarely especially all the individual investors are never going to dig into an nth degree of detail they want that compelling narrative they want to understand what your one thing is and they want to know that smart people have already bought in uh but but polish doesn't help nearly as much as rough value does at this stage you are you know you're going for Angel Money seed money if you're a diamond in the rough that's great um so i' i' I'd focus on that but make sure it's stuff as I said don't do stuff that is for show you know but but do stuff that you can show right so don't have oh well we got our internal processing 90% faster you know I've got a couple really smart Engineers I've got one guy we've got this uh algorithm that can Define you know like gold spice is a client of ours they have three million fans we can tell them which one's most influential and they have no idea who anybody is in this three million people so we can say here's all 3 million here's what they do and and for them it's like coming into a dark room with the lights on it's like oh my God here's everybody and I've got this uh one of my Engineers who's like well we could tweak it we could modify it we can make it a little bit better I can make it 3% better and um if we could look at this fourth level derivation on this type of behavior against a cohort and I'm like nobody cares nobody cares that it's 3% better we went from dark room to lights on if we're going to start to Tone and say okay well can we get the natural shade a little lighter and it's a a technically fascinating problem but that's not the main thing that anybody's going to look at to decide whether or not they buy and whether or not they buy is what's important to our investors important to me um so so make sure that the stuff that you're working on is not um the wrong stuff is not stuff that is that that that doesn't show well um make it something that it's external and that's somewhat it's not like you don't want to care about infrastructure that's important as well but having something that you can show is important at some point you're going to need some external validation if you're looking for invest or other team members but it also gets it out of your own head you know a lot of times you can think about something that is you know small and not visible to anybody else sometimes you even that if you think that that's it's easy to convince yourself the wrong things are important if you don't have to put a number to it and quantify it and explain to somebody else but yeah build value I'd say oh I happy with the mic um when you were first starting out uh how did you I don't know if you're you want to talk about it but how did you handle the equity versus cash with your contractors and uh when you were raising Equity um from Angel Investors and VCS um how did you kind of handle their concerns about a non-technical Founder with Outsource development and did any this is kind of complicated but did any of them have an any stipulations in terms of venture debt or anything like that did any of the investors have a stipulation yeah like you're not allowed to take it if you take our money or how did they feel about Venture debt on top of their own money okay um so that wasn't as much of an issue um I really like plain vanilla documents I mean there's a lot of lawyers out there there's a lot of Smart Ones I'm not the only company that's raised a seed round this year like why of all the things we could do I want to reinvent the wheel on what a term sheet looks like uh there's any VCA has a really good term sheet there's a few others there's like three things that you should ever argue for in a term sheet and it's like what the valuation is you know what the pre what the post what the rights of each of those you know what what what the stock class is and what the you know what what the option pool is there's not that many things that actually matter there's a bunch of like really tiny minute details um and I guess if there's board board seats so kind of board seats option pool uh valuation and class of stock I I I wouldn't try to Pioneer anything very different I had one investor that was like you know like oh can we have so if these are your Revenue projections can we have something that if your Revenue projections are like 20% down we get 20% more stock and I'm like yeah great here's something that if our Revenue projections are 20% up you get 20% less stock he's like well that seems kind of atypical I'm like yeah all right let's uh uh yeah know and and to a certain point like I've got some really smart investors I they're incredibly valuable to us they can ask for anything that they want it doesn't mean that everything they ask for is is reasonable you say listen there's a really standard Doc and if you start to if you want something weird that kind of gives them permission to also want something weird to offset it um so say listen this is a really standard document uh we've got lawyers I'm not smart enough to know legal document let's just do this uh but there's there's no real good reasons to do something really crazy and smart investors will know that it's like we could spend $20,000 paying the lawyer to come up some weird scenario that's never going to happen or we could sign the same document that 80% of everybody signs and just be okay with and understand what are your levers what makes sense to you what's important to you um for the technical you know we had folks that I I did that sort of prated where initially I had I had a lot of people that were just trade contractors some of them that I had hopes and dreams would come over I had one guy that we had like i' bought a laptop for and he showed up and he's like oh actually no I'm not ready it was like total like my uh uh like Winnie Cooper Wonder Years Tech technical founder dating moment where it was like cue the sad music and you know big eyes and oh and so you know I've definitely had some of those where I didn't set the expectation I didn't understand sort of where what we were progressing towards after that I had some really good developers and we had a some of them were contractors where I said here's going to be that you know split between I want your discounted rate but you're going to get equity and then I've had other folks that I've eventually hired to say you know we're going to have I really like working with you I think you'll be a good part of the team why don't we contract for two months and then you come on Perm but this is two months this is 8 weeks not like hey let's contract for a little bit there's a lot of these especially once you have a little bit more money there's a lot of people that just want to be contractors and they're like well let's see where it goes because I know that you don't want to hire a contractor but they want six months of contract work um so setting that expectation and moving towards it there really wasn't any stipulation from that for my investors again like if you've got you know the main story the the the the you know that that once and I had started to build the team around me you know once they could say like yeah we've talked to people Dan's not he should be okay building a team there's other people that seem to like him you know he's he's got a team he's got good people and that Milestone thing as well to say you know I've got a great guy he's going to be my CTO I have him 10 hours a week right now one of his Milestones is as soon as your money's in he's on full-time it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do just be honest and upfront about it with your investors and make sure you have that agreement with that person uh the Venture debt thing did didn't come up but um uh yeah I'm trying to we'll talk later about how that works but but uh as long as that's part of the deal you know your deal is whatever you can get the most amount of people to agree to that they find reasonable uh so if you've got one person that's going to do your whole round and they don't like Venture debt it's not going to happen if you've get nine people or 10 people and one person doesn't want it you either leave that person out but usually there's sort of that social Norm we say listen everybody else is okay with this this is something that we're going to do this is the nature of the round you know be very honest with your investors about everything um especially once our money's in you know and let them know like here's the expectation here's a relationship coming in just to follow up on the contractors how and where did you find your contractors and how did you know that they were good yeah um so start going to Startup things a lot I mean we there there is a really strong startup community in Boston they're very welcoming they're not very clicky uh I with everybody that I hire uh from a kind of a vendor perspective I want us to know a ton of people in common you know as much as you could look at you LinkedIn recommendations and and whatever else um what I love about the startup scene in Boston is it's incredibly welcoming it's incredibly friendly it's also a village like nobody's going to screw you over uh if if we know all of the same people uh that it's it's a small pool and nobody wants to pee in it so find somebody that's in the same pool as you don't find somebody that doesn't have any relation to the rest of the community but yeah points in common and then ask right and say you know well what do you think about working with uh you know uh Mark and I'm like okay then oh he's great he's awesome I love him he's you know well why aren't you working with him then oh you know so you got to dig a little bit there too and you might say like oh he's a great guy you know he does PHP we're all rails there's a lot of good reasons for it but don't and then you know not just say like well do you like but like how well do you know him have you worked with him who do you know who worked with him what's the nature of it so dig a little bit doesn't take a lot but if you've got people that you trust and they're in that Community um you you can you can get a good sense of somebody and then they have that that obligation to you and you have that obligation to them I mean Boston I think a lot of things are but Boston's the kind of town where you live and die in your reputation if you kind of shake somebody's hand and tell them something like that's got to be the truth they've got to know that you mean it and they've got to know that can trust you um you my reputation is very important to me and I I like to work with people where that's the same with them and that we have those common obligations hi thank you so much um in terms of a name um I've been toying out around with names and then like in a rash of like excitement I was like okay I'm just going to buy this domain and then like I started using it and everyone's like really and and then like what about this what about this so but because I already bought it like what's your and I noticed I just Googled crowly it used to be something else like so how did that transl transition work like what's your advice on that so I mean I had crowdly stuck in my head for like 12 months and I eventually bought it um but I bought it cheap I bought it like 1,200 bucks if you're a bootstrap startup you can play the poverty card a whole ton right somebody's like oh it should be worth 20,000 it's like I'll give you 300 for it you know like don't that's where you are kind of bootstrap you can can negotiate there I'd say with a name the thing to be careful about if you say that I am kind of I want to do um you know bridal shower flowers.com and it's like oh actually wait a minute maybe you want to sell those to weddings too maybe you want to sell them at funerals right so a lot of times people have a name that really paints them into a corner uh you know appsw we were appell with the previous thing I'm like oh I don't want to make apps anymore it's like well that doesn't work that's a whole lot of years in that but I think people go even more specific as well um I'd say have a name that's sort of evocative that that is um means something to you but it doesn't have to have like your entire what your company does in the title and give yourself some flexibility in that as well um I I actually me like it's quite bro sorry I actually meant like right now it is quite Broad and we did it on purpose cuz we didn't want to P pigeon hole ourselves but the respon is like oh it's a bit clunky like they say it's quite long so they're like you should think of like a shorter one but for now is it I guess I'm asking like is it okay to just keep using it until we decide on something better yeah definitely you're not you're not trading on your brand value you know you're not you're not Coke you're not Pepsi it's not like everybody's going to recognize you in the supermarket so I'd say until you're really kind of building brand and building volume I mean don't have an awful name but but you're not you're not at the point where you're married to something that you can't move okay I think just one more hi uh from the time you go from a startup or or finding your first co-founder till being well funded or having uh a great set of advisers what are the top few traps that you need to be cautious about in terms of lawyers or people or Services tools or getting the best product out at the outset yeah definitely um so it's a great question I think some of it is that you've got a lot of people have good advice uh you don't have to listen to all of it you should never listen to all of it uh I I had some good advisers that came from very specific backgrounds there like you need to stop everything you're doing and build a patent portfolio right now and they were like you know switching router guys from you know the 128 30 years ago and that was the whole business uh everybody sees things from their perspective so know that you've got good advisors know that they're looking out of their own Windows um and being able to temper that I think as far as the people that you start to do your your company's going to change faster than you think it's going to uh for the people that are involved in it especially the people that are starting to get involved in it the vast majority of them will not be involved in the same capacity as you anticipate vest everything never do anything that's not vested uh your stock is not infinite you know you can kind of give it away like it's candy and eventually you'll be out of it um I I think you know but yeah kind of temper the advice that you get and there's also you know don't spend there's very little that you actually have to spend money on you know try to reduce every single thing that you do to the absolute core Basics you know there's there's some companies that kind of pray off of earlier stage companies if you have a little bit of money on how I can kind of how they can get the money out of you or if you buy services that are kind of beyond the scope of what you need you know I need a $20,000 a month PR Company for my you know my landing page probably not so make sure you're not overspending the wrong things awesome thank you so much thanks everybody [Music]