Think Benefit, Not Benefits.

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:23:00 -0700

Think benefits, not features.

Those are words my co-founder and I lived by when we began working on our startup, Noteleaf, about three months ago. We knew our goal was to solve a problem, not to pump out a complicated piece of software, so keeping the user benefits front-and-center in our minds made sure we executed on that goal.

Since the idea for our startup sprung from a personal need, focusing on the benefits wasn't hard. In fact, it was almost too easy. We had a main benefit in mind for the software, but when we started brainstorming, other related benefits quickly popped up that that seemed like almost trivial extensions of core benefit. If we were solving one problem, why not solve a couple more?

As we began to developing the product and speaking with potential customers, small changes started coming up. It turned that it was best to do things a bit differently than we initially planned. So the initial benefit that seemed so simple, ended up requiring a more nuanced approach. Meanwhile, those additional benefits, which initially seemed like they were quick and simple extensions, started taking up more and more development time than we expected.

That's when it hit us: if we don't get our main benefit right, then the others don't matter.

Our goal all along has been to move as quickly as possible to a public beta release, so we could see whether we have made something people want to use. By focusing on multiple benefits, we took longer to get to a point where we could test whether we were solving a problem people cared about.

After all, if no one's interested in the main benefit, then the added-ons are irrelevant.

We only spent a couple of extra weeks working on additional benefits and went from just an idea to a public beta soft-launch of Noteleaf in about three months, so that still ain't bad. But when you're moving at startup-speed and trying optimize for learning, the quicker you can get to real, public use of your product the better.

So if you're at the early stages of designing a product and some "crucial" added benefits jump out out at you, make note of them, but put them aside for now. Only focus on the main benefit until you've got a minimum viable product, then if, and only if, there's interest in the core benefit, you can start adding.

Think benefits, not features is a great philosophy, but I'd like to propose an corollary:

Think benefit, not benefits.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Just Do It: Move to Silicon Valley

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:19:00 -0700

For years I made excuses: "You don't need to move to Silicon Valley to do a startup," I would tell myself. After all, the Internet is all about freedom from location, information anywhere, global empowerment.

After I finished my Masters in Physics, I knew I wanted to do a web startup. Which meant that I needed to find a co-founder, I needed to shore up my web dev skills and I needed to get some traction on some small projects. My hometown, Toronto, is a wonderful city filled with plenty of smart people and lots of wi-fi equipped cafes that serve damn good cappuccino, so why would I need to go anywhere else to get things off the ground? Or so I thought.

Anytime someone brought up Silicon Valley, I was always excited by all the exciting things happening there. I agreed that it was a good place for innovation and a real hot bed for web startups. But for me? No, I was fine right where I was. I would just tell myself:

You can do a startup from anywhere.

And it's true. Except that it's mainly bullshit.

We humans are used to thinking in terms of true or false, yet often, the concept of probability eludes us. It is possible to have a successful startup anywhere, is a true statement (proof: [insert example of one local web startup], QED.), but that doesn't mean it's probable.

The odds are already stacked against you when doing a startup -- the best angels in the valley only see a positive ROI on a third of their investments, and that's after they've already made a 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 selection from all the companies they see. As an entrepreneur there are dozens of factors out of your control at any given time. Given that, the people who have the highest probability of success are those who tune all the variables they do have control over to their advantage.

And after moving to Silicon Valley a few months ago, I can tell you from experience: being here is a BIG advantage.

Take, for instance, the challenge of finding a co-founder. While it is possible to meet a co-founder in Toronto, it's certainly not probable. For over three years, I would question almost everyone I came across who sounded like they were into tech: "Oh, so you code! Are you into startups?" and the answer was often be "Yes". But after some follow-up questions, I'd soon find out they don't even read TechCrunch (let alone Hacker News), they work for the government or one of the big banks (they might consider leaving, but not for a year or two), and when you ask about starting a company, and they'd say they would love to start a company, but "probably in a couple of years, when I'm ready" (yeah, like two kids and mortgage, ready?).

Compare that to the Valley: in the first three days I was here I met more people who are genuinely into web startups than I did in three years back home. By three weeks it was a complete knock-out, no contest. By three months, I was working with a co-founder who had also moved here to do a startup and not only reads Hacker News, but has so many karma points I would know what to do with all of them.

Take another telling example: cafes. I mentioned those delicious cappuccino's in Toronto, right? Well, I worked months and months on an almost daily basis in dozens of cafes back home and I didn't I once overhear some hackers sitting around having a conversation about their startup (okay, okay, maybe once, a year or two back, I think).

Contrast that with Mountain View, CA. Just down the street from my apartment is a cafe called Red Rock. There are so many conversations about startups going on there that sometimes I need to put on my headphones to tune them out.

It's these conversations that are complete game changers. If you are overhearing them with such frequency, even if you don't know a startup entrepreneur here (I didn't know anyone in the area when I moved here), your odds of getting to know one are huge. Soon enough you are the one having startup conversations that other people overhear and those conversations make all the difference.

In Silicon Valley, almost every new person you meet not only knows about startup entrepreneurship, but lives it, has first hand experience in it and knows dozens of other people who are the same. Once you get to know enough people like this, that's when things begin to move quickly for your startup.

That idea that you've been kicking around in your head for months, gets questioned and scrutinized in a way that pushes you forward faster than you ever thought possible. That person that you chatted with randomly at the coffee shop, at a meet-up, or at a friend's house, gives you the exact solution you need to a problem you've been banging your head against for a day or two.

Or better yet, your roommate turns out to be a hacker who moved down here to do a startup and you end up being co-founders (true story, by the way).

It's interactions like these that completely changed the game for me, countless others I've talked to since I got down here and I am convinced, any other entrepreneur who makes the move. And notice I haven't even mentioned funding or venture capital.

The point is, although it's possible to do a startup anywhere, when you surround yourself with people who live and breadth entrepreneurship, the possible starts to become much more probable.

So stop rationalizing, stop making excuses and just do it: move to Silicon Valley.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Jake's posterous

Think Benefit, Not Benefits.

Just Do It: Move to Silicon Valley