The One Thing You Absolutely Need To Do To Grow Your Startup
Hint: It starts with talking to the customer
Over the last 3 months, our Tradecraft class has had the privilege of learning from thought leaders in their respective fields. I feel incredibly lucky to have had access to these brilliant minds and inspired to share a few of their nuggets of wisdom.
Some ideas were repeated so many times that it was clear they had to be captured (if you get drilled in the head enough times, you start to notice). Others come from mentors who are at the forefront of their fields and therefore seeing, imagining, and sharing ideas which haven’t fully come to light yet. The biggest takeaway of all…
“Talk to your freakin customers”
It is only in getting out of the building and talking to customers that the transformations from idea to product can take shape. Gagan Biyani of Sprig (formerly Udemy, Lyft) is a great example of this. Sprig is a healthy dinner on demand service that launched in San Francisco last fall but it’s possible you haven’t even heard of it yet.
Nearly all of the efforts to date have been focused on customer development, product and operations. From interviews to surveys and customer service calls, a ton of time has been spent simply understanding the customer and getting feedback. In Gagan’s words, “talk to your freakin customers”.
Gagan noted that with previous companies he did not spend as much time talking to users and missed some core insights early, thus was not able to scale as quickly. He also strongly advises A/B testing everything.
“The biggest mistake of growth hackers is not understanding psychology of the user. Interview and understand them. Growth hackers want to be analytical but you can’t just be analytical about numbers, you have to be analytical about people.”
Round peg, round hole
Before focusing on getting traction, a startup needs to find product-market fit. Are we solving a real problem? Is our product the best solution?
Marc Andreesen’s original post on The only metric that matters, is a highly recommended read. Steve Blank and many others have offered their insight on product market fit, yet, in a metric driven world of growth, the concept remained abstract— “You’ll know when you’ve achieved it.”
In seeking to address this, Sean Ellis defined achieving product market fit when 40% of people would be disappointed if your product disappeared. Though it’s not a perfect science, he came to this conclusion by comparing results across over 100 startups and explained that it’s really a combination of both product market fit and retention.
It’s not how many people try the product, sign up, or even activate. Certainly these are important metrics, just not THE metric. Sean distills all of this down, and brings it back to asking the customer— if the product went away, would you be pissed? He also cautioned against confusing product market fit with a poor user experience.
“Did you not have product market fit or was it just a bad experience to get to what otherwise would be product market fit?”
Brand messaging that actually works
Phyllis Davidson of Oracle gave an amazing workshop on brand messaging. Key takeaway: The only point that matters, is your single point that matters. And it starts with the customer, not with the product.
“What is your customer trying to do? How are they trying to do it? How does your product help? How is it different?
Ask these questions repeatedly. Go back and forth and up and down until it sounds right. Then what? Test it and repeat.”
Square offers a great example of this:
As does Rapportive:
Both Square and Rapportive demonstrate a single point that matters which is clean, concise, and addresses exactly what the customer is trying to do, rather than what the product does.
It’s equally important to know what is not your single point that matters, which includes your vision, mission and tagline. These are very important things but not when you’re selling your product.
Think you’re good at explaining your product? Guess who may be better…
Your customer is a great place to start. Brands can improve their messaging by listening to customers and applying the language that repeatedly sticks. I originally discovered this concept through Ash Maurya and his insight on crafting the unique value proposition for an MVP.
Dan Martel uses this technique for his company Clarity which offers on demand business advice by connecting entrepreneurs and industry experts. Does he like the word expert? Not particularly. But this is how users describe the platform to one another so this is what he uses in Clarity’s brand messaging.
Listen to the language your customers use to explain your product. When you’re at an event and someone makes an introduction, pay attention to how they explain what your business does. This is gold. The insight can be invaluable to craft and test your improved brand message.
Powerful moments of growth begin with reflection. Reflections give us the opportunity to look back and connect the dots. I have found that by listening and learning from the paths of others, I am inspired and better prepared to forge my own.
These are just a few of the high level concepts that came up repeatedly and I’ll be sharing more over the next few posts. Questions or suggestions? E-mail me at margauxviola@gmail.com.
