Paddling Like Mad

Blog moved

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:33:20 -0800

You can find my latests posts at https://medium.com/@marmarko

Latest Venice Tech was a total success with over 200 people...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:15:00 -0700

Latest Venice Tech was a total success with over 200 people showing up. Thanks to Giant Media for sponsoring the meetup and to Karen Soto for doing such a great job of putting it all together!

"On the cheap" - Becoming a data aware startup

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:58:00 -0700

Do you have a clear idea of where your visitors come from? Do you know how many are falling off along the way of becoming a user or a customer? Are you following your signup and churn rates like a hawk? Do you even know what your conversion funnels look like? Are you creating features without a clear understanding of how they will impact your funnel metrics, retention or virality of your product?

If your answer to any one of these questions is a NO, then you should definitely read on.

Data aware startups have one thing in common, they use data in their day to day decision making. This is not to say that data is the only thing they use, but it’s a very important part of the mix and if you are not leveraging data in your startup, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage in an already hyper risky environment.

To learn more about this topic, you should go through the KISSmetrics blog, follow Andy Johns, check out Dave McClure’s startup metrics and read Giff Constable’s posts (like this and this).

As time permits, I will be posting about key components of becoming data aware and how to do it on the cheap. Cheap doesn’t mean substandard, it actually means using the best tools out there in a smart way and all within your bootstrapped startup budget.

Here are some of the topics I’m thinking about:

- Collecting the right data using the right tools

- Defining your funnels, measuring retention/churn and virality of your product

- A/B testing tools and techniques

- Using Google and Facebook to drive qualified test traffic to your site

- Optimizing your funnel and focusing on what’s important

- Data vs Intuition

- Advanced tips and tricks

"On the cheap" - Starting with the Lean Stack

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:31:00 -0700

If you are not familiar with Ash Maurya’s latest invention, the Lean Stack, make sure you read part 1 and part 2 on his blog. This is the first version of what I’ve been looking for since I started using lean startup methodology back in ‘08. Ash and his team have come up with an awesome way to represent the Vision (Why), Strategy (How) and Product (What) and it’s an amazing way to kick off a project and keep on top of it as it evolves.

Although Ash offers to print and mail these three posters to you, I wouldn’t call myself an entrepreneur if I didn’t find a way to make it cheaper/quicker/easier :) Ash has released these under an open license, so I feel that spreading the love and getting more people to use his creation will only help him in the long run.

1) Download the PDF files

2) Open up an account at Walgreens

3) Create a photo album and upload the three files to it (you need to convert them to JPEG first)

4) Go to Posters and create a poster (24x36) for each one of the images (matte finish)

5) Go to RetailMeNot and find Walgreens coupons. At the time of writing this post, you can get $20 off (TWENTYOFFRMN) and free shipping (SHIPAT25), making it an awesome deal. Make sure you enter the free shipping coupon and it will get applied at checkout after you select the shipping option.

And voila, you’ve got the Lean Stack for under $70. Here’s what it looks like in production. Reply with a photo of your Lean Stack when you set it up!

Venice Tech Entrepreneurs

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:18:00 -0700

After going to pretty much every tech related event in LA for a couple of months, I was shocked that there were no events in the burgeoning Venice Beach tech scene. I live in Venice and love it here and I know of a ton of great startups and established companies (i.e. Google) based here, so there was only one thing to do, organize a meetup.

http://www.meetup.com/Venice-Entrepreneurs-Meetup/

Our first meetup was a total success with over 50 people showing up at Movieclips’ new warehouse-soon to be office. Great people, great atmosphere and a lot of potential! Make sure you join the group and come to our meetups on the first Thursday of every month at one of the awesome Venice startups’ offices.

Asking the tough question in Customer Development

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:37:00 -0800

"On a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being ‘definitely not’ 10 being ‘fuck yeah’, how likely would you be to use this product?"

I know I always get that strange feeling in the stomach when I ask this questions at the end of a solution or MVP interview. And you know that the person sitting on the other side of the table is most likely feeling the same (not always). The whole point of the exercise is to learn and that involves asking tough questions, so how you feel is irrelevant, so suck it up tough guy.

What really matters is getting honest feedback. Some people will not hold anything back and tell you how it is straight into your face. I love those people :) However, a lot of people will want to be “nice” to you and not hurt your feelings. Nice is in quotes because they are actually accomplishing the complete opposite, waisting your time. So, when I see hesitation after this question, I usually follow it up with something like this:

1. (a little intro to break the silence)

"It’s important that you are totally honest. If you’re not, we can’t understand your needs and make changes to the product that are needed."

2. (the easy bit)

"So, if you feel like you would use the product, tell me why, where you see the value and how you would use it day to day."

3. (the important bit)

"However, if you don’t feel like this product is for you, is there anything that would make it more valuable. Are there any features that would add enough value to push you over the line? How would you create a product like this with yourself in mind?"

So, you break the silence, you give them an option to like it but with a caveat that they have to justify why and then you give them an easy way out if they don’t like it. What they tell you when they don’t like the product is marginally important, so don’t take down the list of features they suggest and run off to build them. More importantly you got your signal and that’s what matters.

Impressions of LA startup scene

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:27:00 -0700

Coming to LA from Sydney has been quite an adventure. I’ll talk about this adventure in another post as I want to focus on my experience with the LA startup scene so far.

First thing EVERYONE here asks me is “Why LA? Why not San Francisco?”. My initial answer was that I had a feeling this was a startup community that’s on the cusp of breaking into the big leagues and because it wasn’t as noisy as SF. Both of these still hold true, but I’m adding one more thing, LA startup scene is FUCKING AWESOME!

Contrary to what I though before coming here, LA entrepreneurs are not stuck up movie types. They are the opposite of Ari Gold. They welcomed us with open arms and made us feel a part of the community from day one. I feel honored to be a part of this community and I’m extremely grateful to all the amazing entrepreneurs who call LA home.

If you thought there wasn’t much going on here, just check out the LA startup calendar (update: use this one instead) I cooked up in the last couple of weeks. If anything, there’s too much going on.

Also, check out these incubators starting early next year if you want a great excuse to move here: Amplify.LA, Muckerlab, ~~upStart.LA~~, ~~start engine~~ and Launchpad LA.

P.S. Living in Venice Beach kicks ass!

How many people do you need for each cycle of customer development?

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:59:15 -0700

Being a bootstrapped entrepreneur, you are pretty much short on all resources. This is a huge challenge but at the same time it forces you to trim fat wherever possible. I like being bootstrapped, I feel like I’ve got an “environmentally friendly” entrepreneurial existence. It’s quite cathartic.

So, since I love Customer Development and find a ton of value in interviewing people and validating problem/solution/MVP, I’ve come to a simple conclusion. Even with a relatively random sample, meaning I’ve chosen people who only approximate the target market, the magic number seems to be 8. Yes, eight.

After 2 people you see the glaringly obvious issues, after 3-4 people you start seeing strong patterns, after 5 you’re onto most of the big issues and once you hit 8, you’ve got 85%-90% of what you need. That’s enough. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to interview more people later. You should never stop soliciting feedback from users, but you need to know when you have enough to get to the next stage.

Once you get to 8, you’ll probably hear more or less the same things you heard before and lots of new feature requests. This is where the art lies, knowing what’s essential to show your unique value proposition and what needs to go into the icebox with other future features and be processed later.