161–170 of 200 posts
You can do all of the above and still fail. Often, success or failure is luck-based and completely not skill-based.
By doing more & learning more & meeting more people, you essentially increase your luck surface area in 3 different ways, increasing the odds you'll get lucky.
Many founders I've seen 'got lucky' when they were on the way to the 100th trip to meet customers. Did they get lucky or did they make their luck?
> 1. Make something people want. I haven't had a ton of experience in startups...once I had to work out of a startup space. And it amazed me the number of conversations I would hear between aspiring entrepreneurs and random strangers that were variations of, "Please tell me if you think this is a good idea". Everyone knows what it's like to want something. I didn't really hear about Tinder until after it blew up into…
We went through this at my previous company, which we sold to a large Silicon Valley software outfit. Even though we had an existing business and could sell product to customers it still took about a year to build a solid presentation to help sell the company itself. At the end we could explain the company value proposition in a few sentences, but that was after talking to numerous insiders as well as a bunch of prospects. It took a lot of practice as well as feedback from many people to get the story right.
Focusing on growth and revenue sounds like the right thing to do for a p2p dog walking marketplace, or a SaaS enterprise meal planning app, but what about the startups solving big problems? Is month over month user growth relevant to a nuclear fusion or jet airplane startup?
I've built a product that manages the compliance process for the Big 5 (i.e. PCI-DSS, SSAE16-SOC2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and FEDRAMP).
My product, ComplianceChaos[1] competes with RSA Archer, Protiviti, Lockpath, Aruvio, and MetricStream.
From my research, 80% of IT operations around the world can't confidently certify themselves against any of those information security frameworks. When recently talking to Security Directors and above, they claim "I don't need to comply" or "well we may not be the best, but we're not the worst, so compliance just isn't a priority."
We understand that a big business like General Electric will not do business with your company unless you can show some kind of proof that you're compliant with the Big 5. For example, if you're a cloud service provider or SaaS, GE wants you to certify for SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
We also know that if you host on Amazon's FEDRAMP Compliant environment or Catalyze.io's HIPAA compliant environment, it doesn't automatically mean your company is also compliant. Your company still needs to go through the compliance process too."
When I first set off to build this product a couple years ago, the security officers first exclaimed, "We need a compliance tool so that we don't have to deal with scattered documents and long spreadsheets." When I built the MVP and continued iterating on it, security officers again exclaimed, "this is the most beautiful compliance product I've ever seen! Better than RSA Archer."
However, when I asked them to use it, for FREE, they would say, "Well it's nice, but compliance just isn't a priority for us because the business has other missions like doing real security work". Explaining to them that compliance frameworks like ISO 27001 and FEDRAMP is real security work was met with deaf ears. In fact, they would retaliate saying, "Compliance like ISO 27001 isn't security. It's a low bar, bare minimal, and not enough."
When I counter with, "But 80% of the industry can't confidently assert that they've done due diligence in meeting the compliance controls. If compliance is so bare minimal, then why do only 20% go all the way to Attestation instead of all 100% of you guys?" That question would again fall on deaf ears.
I've recently pivoted to a services company, no thanks to TrustWave for getting sued for performing subpar security compliance auditing work. I'm specifically looking at you auditors who ask employees to put their passwords in a spreadsheet.
So here I am, having built a product and auditing service that IT Operations do in fact need, but do not want. They don't want the politics behind it nor the emotions behind it, and wish to sweep compliance under the rug.
How do I solve for #1 Make something that people want, when nobody wants compliance, but definitely needs it?
[1]http://www.ComplianceChaos.com
I'm going to sleep now, but I would really appreciate reading your responses in the morning and I'll definitely respond too.
Yeesh. #2 hits close to home. I think I've asked this question but I found myself a cofounder with 2 others that prioritized too highly IMO coffee meetings with "investors", no name board advisors, expensive conferences, and basically everything on that list. My approach was to gently voice my concern and but also let them do it in the hopes they'd see how useless it was. The other thing that didn't help was I was th…
Why is this a distraction?
> 1. Make something people want. I haven't had a ton of experience in startups...once I had to work out of a startup space. And it amazed me the number of conversations I would hear between aspiring entrepreneurs and random strangers that were variations of, "Please tell me if you think this is a good idea". Everyone knows what it's like to want something. I didn't really hear about Tinder until after it blew up into…
I had no idea I wanted Twitter until I used it. I thought it was completely stupid, but I was completely wrong.
> Doing a “partnership,” thinking it will get you more users Why is this a distraction?
1) you get introduced to customers indirectly (the partner's users), this isn't necessarily a bad thing but you'd rather have customers come directly to you.
2) the partner's objectives as a business are not your objectives, they may demand exclusivity of you or prevent you from doing business with their (the partner's) competitors. This may come to bite you if your startup grows, evolves or pivots and a better partnership comes along.
3) partnerships usually involve contracts which cost time and money.
"build stuff and talk to users" is so simple but great advice. For my first successful startup I did the marketing and build and my partner focused on the users. And we crushed the incumbent in under 2 years completely bootstrapped and they tried to buy us. Now I have a new startup where I'm handling the build and the customers and another partner is focused on the marketing. It's a subscription business and talking…
Jessica asserts that conventions are too distracting and you shouldn't go to them. I don't completely agree with that. Depending on what type of business you're making, the best way to get work done is to go to conventions, because that's the only time you can easily meet with a bunch of people that are related to your industry and make new partnerships, check out new hardware/software solutions to save time or money…
I think the dichotomy is A. Go to customer/user conferences? YES YES YES! B. Go to startup or generic conferences? Not more than once or twice a year. Everyone in this thread seems to be mixing up the two. Now unless you're selling to other startups, her advice is crystal clear.