Making Something From Nothing: Dan Erickson Of Viable On How To Go From Idea To Launch

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Do what you’re good at, delegate the rest: This is one I’m continually learning with every new role that I take on. The most important thing for you to know about yourself is what you’re good at. Then, only do tasks that align with those strengths. Hire for and delegate all other tasks as soon as you can. This allows you to do great work while working with others who can fill in the gaps.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Erickson.

Daniel Erickson is CEO and founder of Viable. Dan brings 15+ years of experience in the field as a self-taught coder including positions as CTO of Getable, and VP of engineering at Eaze, and Senior Engineer at Yammer, Inc. Dan believes in building systems and tools to help teams achieve their goals.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was born and raised in Oregon with my identical twin brother, and co-founder. My brother and I started our first company at the age of 16. I’ve been building systems and tools to help people achieve their goals as a self taught coder who skipped college in lieu of entrepreneurship. I’m bringing my 15+ years of experience to our new venture: Viable, the world’s first AI Qualitative Analyst.

I spent the majority of my childhood as a competitive gymnast learning a lot about how to fall gracefully and get back up every time. This comfort with failure has allowed me to approach entrepreneurship with the same mindset: building a company is all about trying new things, failing at first, and then learning from that failure to make something hugely valuable for your customers.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

A book I often refer to is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. Donella’s description of system thinking has been useful for me both as a leader within an organization and an entrepreneur, building a company from the ground up. Most situations in business, and often in life, can be expressed as a system. Understanding how systems and feedback loops operate can give you an edge, whether the focus is engineering, organizational culture, business fundamentals, fundraising, etc.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

There are a few ways to think about this: the first is the problem you’re solving for. An idea emerges when you can identify with the problem. To make an idea into a business, understand the problem in a data-backed way from the perspective of others.

The second relates to product strategy. You need to figure out what it’ll take to build a product that solves the problem better than others. Is it technology? Your business acumen? The connections you have? When building Viable, for example, being an early beta user of the latest in natural language technology gave us an advantage in the market.

Then comes your go-to-market strategy. In other words, how are you going to get your product into the hands of users? What channels of distribution will work best for you?

Lastly, as you build, fill in the gaps efficiently. I’ve found it helpful to know what I’m good at and what I need to look for in a new hire. For example, sales and marketing are two areas I’m not as experienced in so naturally I filled those roles early.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

My best advice would be to talk directly to the people that you intend to serve. Conducting user research helps you understand the user pain points rather than trying to figure out what solutions already exist. If a good alternative already exists, it’ll come up in your conversations with prospective users. It’s important to talk to many people, not just a handful of them.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

Since I’ve been at early stage and high growth startups my entire career, I’ve picked up lessons along the way before starting my own company. Here are five:

1. Be customer obsessed: I was an early engineer at Yammer, the enterprise social network. The main thing I took away from that experience was how important it is to keep the customer in mind. When making a decision, no matter how far removed from the customer, it is important to keep in mind how a customer might feel. For example, you may not think that a hiring decision has anything to do with the customer. When in reality, all of your employees will affect the customer experience in one way or another. It is important to keep in mind how hiring someone will help the customer experience instead of only hiring someone to help the team. The two are directly related.
2. Focus on distribution before perfecting the product: You can build the best product in the world for your market, but if you can’t get it into their hands, or into their minds, then no one is going to use it. I learned this one the hard way when I was CTO at Getable, a construction rental equipment marketplace. We built a tool to help construction companies rent and manage their on-site equipment. It had all of the bells and whistles for any edge case that our early adopters threw at us, without compromising on the user experience. But, having an amazing product doesn’t mean it will fly off the shelves. We failed to build out our distribution as we built our product and our growth suffered because of it.
3. Do what you’re good at, delegate the rest: This is one I’m continually learning with every new role that I take on. The most important thing for you to know about yourself is what you’re good at. Then, only do tasks that align with those strengths. Hire for and delegate all other tasks as soon as you can. This allows you to do great work while working with others who can fill in the gaps.
4. It’s often about who you know, not just what you know: I started building my network when I was 16 and I’ve been steadily growing both the strength and number of relationships in my network ever since. So many things are unlocked when you have a strong network. With a strong network you can find people who are good at the things you aren’t, you can find a way into companies or investment firms that you’d like to partner with and you can find advice for any new situation you find yourself in.
5. Be great at both giving and receiving feedback: Giving and receiving feedback is hard, but being good at it levels up yourself and everyone around you. Feedback comes in many forms: customers, investors, vendors, candidates and teammates.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

First, define for yourself why you want to build this. Building something from scratch is both the most rewarding and most stressful thing you will likely ever do. Understanding your motivation for building this product is key to sustaining the effort required to bring it to market.

Second, understand the value of what you’re building for the market you’re targeting. That includes articulating the problem, the target user and the value proposition.

Third, figure out what you don’t know and make a list. Then draft a plan for filling in your knowledge gaps.

Fourth, put together a list of the ways you’re well equipped to build this product. That includes what skills you have to build it and who in your network has expertise to help you technically and from a business standpoint.

Fifth, if you’re feeling pretty comfortable with the previous four steps, start talking to the market to assess how much traction your product could potentially get.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

There are certain situations where bringing in a consultant can be helpful. If you’re targeting a market that is hard to break into because you need to know the right people or speak the right language, a consultant can help you navigate those hurdles.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

If you don’t have the personal runway to bootstrap, the answer to this question is pretty clear: go get some funding. Just make sure you know what you’re signing up for. If you have the money to bootstrap, or you can start building the product as a side project, then you have a choice ahead of you: do you take funding to accelerate your growth or not?

Many bootstrapped companies can thrive on slow, or even no growth. That is not the case with VC backed companies — they’re, by necessity, on a high growth track. If you want to build a company that makes you money and allows you to live a comfortable lifestyle, whatever that means to you, then staying bootstrapped is the way to go. If, however, you want to shoot for the moon and build something huge, get funding and go big.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Over the years I’ve realized my superpower is finding ways to automate things. It helps that I have a knack for visualizing how systems work together, even if they’re complex. That has allowed me to add value to teams at many organizations by cutting out time-consuming tasks. It’s one of my favorite things about managing teams. I can unblock points of friction for others so they can focus on the substantial, strategic work that’s more meaningful and fulfilling.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

My brother and I got to where we are by doing a lot of learning on the job. From when we were teenagers to today, we’ve worked in entrepreneurial and fast-paced settings. The kind of learning that comes with that is invaluable. If I could inspire a movement around that experience, I’d love to see educational systems focus more on motivating learning-by-doing and rewarding hands-on experiences. I’m talking essentially 100% of foundational education could be done this way. I think it would inspire people in their formative years in interesting ways.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Neil Gaiman. I think storytelling is a hugely undervalued but important skill for almost any task that involves more than one person. Mr. Gaiman is a legendary storyteller and I think we could all learn from him.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.