With anticipation around season two of Marvel’s Daredevil at an all time high, it’s easy to forget just how much of a gamble the first season was for Marvel Studios and Netflix.
Making — not to mention green-lighting — an entire season of a show about a blind lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen by day who becomes its “devil” vigilante with heightened senses by night, could not have been easy. Though a cult favorite, Daredevil and his tribulations do not scream mainstream success like say the Avengers, his crowd-pleasing brethren over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
But to call the series first season a triumph may be an understatement. Daredevil did not only enjoy immediate buzz when it debuted last spring, but has also gone on to earn unequivocal praise from fans and critics alike, with unanimous ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
In that, the show has achieved what virtually every startup wishes it could at launch: that one-two-punch of market validation, and word-of-mouth. What did Daredevil get so right? And what can early stage founders learn from its success?
I count five things that the show nailed which are directly applicable to startups:
1.) It recognized the context (and embraced it)
Bringing Daredevil back to the screen took guts. Whether it’s overcoming the perceptions on the character’s viability after the lackluster 2003 movie, or setting expectations against the MCU’s much larger and successful franchises like The Avengers, you can bet the show was greeted with good levels of scrutiny and skepticism.
That’s exactly the same situation technology startups face at launch. Either they’re entering an already crowded market, or they’re taking on a category that’s dominated by large incumbents. The risk of being viewed as a me-too product, or as too-little-too-late by customers and investors alike is only too real.
But just like with Marvel’s Daredevil, it’s an opportunity to embrace that context, and do bold things. The show has been lauded for the grittiness it’s brought to the MCU, as well as the risks it’s taken with certain characters and established dynamics. For instance, important characters die (as in thrown down an elevator shaft die, shot multiple times at point blank die, or strangled to death die). More importantly, those characters stay dead, unlike what might happen on other TV shows. The show also alludes to the rest of MCU in ways that acknowledge its place alongside it in the world, but that don’t feel deferential.
For startups the lessons is this: acknowledge the context. If you have true competition, don’t ignore it. Address it head on by showing just how different you are. Because if it’s not your potential customers or investors asking about your differentiation, the press and analysts most certainly will. At Salesforce, we made it a point to make Oracle the Goliath to our David, and sparred with them many times. It was good, clean, and fearless fun. What more, the press ate it up, and it galvanized our ranks.
2.) It took its time (to get the right things right)
“Your outfit kinda sucks by the way”
“It’s a work in progress”
Marvel’s Daredevil takes its time, and that pays off. For example, Daredevil does not don his iconic costume until the last episode. Instead, he wears what appears to be an Under Armor long sleeve shirt, dark cargo pants, and a mask that makes him look like The Princess Bride’s Dread Pirate Roberts. He knows it’s not perfect, but it’s what lets him get out there, and progressively figure out what he needs, and more importantly why he needs it. Light armor plating to stay flexible, but not get cut up by ninjas. Check. Medium range weapons to take out multiple opponents at once. Check.
In the startup world, that first costume is the MVP, or minimum viable product. The term, popularized by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup refers to your first prototype that’s just good enough to get you out there, test your value prop with potential customers, and let you make tweaks. That’s great feedback on the product side alone. But you should also think of the MVP as something you actively assess your personal and team competencies against. It’s not enough to simply measure your product metrics, you should also benchmark your effectiveness in marketing it, distributing it, and in the enterprise space especially, how productive your sales is at every stage. Product and team execution go hand in hand.
3.) It made conscious trade offs (and eschewed convention)
It’s easy to follow conventions, and even easier for TV shows to follow common tropes. Take for instance “love triangles” — standard fare for TV shows, and very dependable filler material to eke those extra minutes of drama and character angst. The Daredevil canon might have one of the most enduring ones this side of the Marvel universe: that between Matt, his best friend and business partner Foggy Nelson, and Karen Page, their first client who becomes their legal assistant. As penned by Jeph Loeb (who also serves as a producer to the show) in Daredevil: Yellow it can be the stuff of legends, and certainly adds to the drama and multi-dimensionality of the characters.
Marvel’s Daredevil, however, takes a complete pass on it. And while this took certain fans by surprise, especially because of the visible chemistry between the lead actors, it ends up making the show that much stronger because it allows for deeper focus — or as LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner puts it: fewer things, done better.
Successful startups often need to take the path less traveled, because they’re forced to prioritize. This could be due to technical or resource constraints, or because of self-imposed dictates borne out of principle. Sometimes it can be a combination of all of the above, which can lead to unexpected, but extraordinary results.
Take for instance the reason why Twitter only has 140-characters. Although that limitation is now synonymous with the service, it was a bold move at the time when rival social networking services supported not just longer status messages, but also pictures, check-ins, badges, and such. Twitter’s character limitation had its roots in the initial platform choice the service was built on, which was based on carrier text-messaging standards which were limited to 160 characters. The team then earmarked 20 characters to make sure most people could add their user names to messages, netting out to the final, and iconic 140. But there was also another overarching consideration: from a design standpoint, a character limit felt cleaner, more simple and elegant. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, and newly re-minted CEO, was famously quoted back in 2007 as saying: “We’re fond of constraints that inspire creativity.” For startups, the implication is clear: scarcity and focus can be excellent forcing functions.
4.) It teased at the roadmap (but without revealing too much)
For fans of Daredevil, the series breathes new life to the character by culling some of the best elements of his mythos — as penned by Frank Miller in the 80s, or Brian Michael Bendis in the past decade. The show also builds upon the well-laid foundation of the MCU.
Whether it’s Foggy casually referring to the “greek student” Matt dated in college, or a henchman berating his subordinates for getting their a**es handed to them by someone wearing a mask — versus a “suit of armor” or wielding a “magic hammer” — the references are clear. In the former case, the discerning fan saw an indication that ninja assassin Elektra may make an appearance in future seasons, and the teaser trailer certainly hints at it.
The lessons for startups here is that it’s perfectly fine to hint at what’s next, and even create the anticipation for it, as long as your roadmap feels like a logical extension of your product and core capabilities. You can buy yourself a lot of goodwill with potential customers if you can point them to both those proof points. But no matter what, you have to deliver, as nothing will sink you faster than roadmap promises that are unkept or stalled.
5.) It ignited the base (with a killer demo)
I’ll finish with this final point, and will simply link to the following scene to support it.
Within hours of Daredevil debuting on Netflix in April, this was the scene that everyone gushed about on Twitter — an exhausted and wounded Matt Murdock returning to take on an entire gang of human traffickers in their lair, after they had previously ambushed him. He’s hurt, alone, but steadfast in rescuing a kidnapped child the gang had used as bait. What follows is a masterful fight scene shot in a single take. If you don’t have time to watch it now, just knows this: what the show accomplishes in this sequence is to go straight to the core of what Daredevil’s character is all about: he’ll never give up. For fans it was the ultimate tribute, and for the uninitiated it was the killer demo.
Many startups and must-have products have been buoyed by either that first demo video, or that dramatic on-stage unveiling that fired up the base. Why? Because those demonstrations all went to the core of what the product did and its value proposition. It could be a three minute video, or a three second gesture on stage, but it’s the one thing that sparks that aha moment — the one that immediately places your product in someone’s consideration set.
For startups, a simple question to ask when trying to extract that value prop is: how do I convey that my product makes someone a better version of themselves? For more background on that essential framing question, take a look at this excellent post on Buffer.
It’s not an easy question to answer, and it’s awfully tempting to get stuck thinking about features versus benefits. But it’s a question that forces you to figure out what you stand for, and take stock of virtually every point we made above.
Understanding your context and what makes you different matters. Extracting the learnings from your MVP, even if takes time, is worth it. Applying ruthless focus is of the essence. And finally, painting a large, but realistic vision is key. It may take you a lot of tries, but you’ll know when you nail it.
Until then don’t give up, because every entrepreneur can learn a little something from the Man Without Fear.
This post originally appeared on LinkedIn, and adapted for Medium.
I write at the intersection of technology, leadership, and awesome things I geek out on. For more of my writing, check out my other posts here. This post was created using iA Writer, mostly during my daily commute.
