Dan Martell - September 04, 2017


How To Test Your Software Idea With No Coding Experience


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

190.31036

Word Count

1,676

Sentence Count

88

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.600 Dude.
00:00:01.360 Dude.
00:00:01.940 Dude, I almost went for it and then you said
00:00:04.300 you weren't ready?
00:00:13.540 How to test your software idea.
00:00:15.940 Look, I get calls all the time from people that's like,
00:00:18.080 this is my first time and I want to get it right.
00:00:20.020 Or I don't know anybody in the tech space.
00:00:23.600 Or I want to make sure I don't waste my money.
00:00:27.720 I think I get it.
00:00:28.660 Those fears are right, okay?
00:00:29.900 Those are challenges that are absolutely correct,
00:00:32.000 but what I wanna share with you in this framework
00:00:34.180 is really the quickest way to test,
00:00:37.580 and my promise is no cost.
00:00:39.440 Can you imagine that, at no cost?
00:00:40.780 And you're talking software, I'm saying no cost.
00:00:43.040 And with the highest probability of succeeding.
00:00:46.480 Now, the first thing you need to understand is that
00:00:49.060 the probabilities are low and it's okay.
00:00:51.580 I think there's different levels of failure.
00:00:53.760 And I think that it's okay if you don't figure it out
00:00:57.520 right away, but you keep swinging, right?
00:00:59.900 You only fail once you get out of the game.
00:01:02.040 It doesn't matter what inning you're in,
00:01:03.160 as long as you keep getting at bat and swing,
00:01:05.100 you're gonna win.
00:01:05.940 I learned this in a big way in my company, Flowtown.
00:01:08.180 We went through a ton of different iterations,
00:01:10.940 but we got to a point where we built the wrong product,
00:01:13.340 brought it to market.
00:01:14.340 It was a landing page app of all things.
00:01:16.080 It was called LandingPayGuess.
00:01:17.680 It was like .es with a G for it.
00:01:20.220 Long story, not getting into it.
00:01:22.120 But the next iteration changed everything.
00:01:24.900 We decided to focus on a core feature,
00:01:27.420 and we went, we tested it in the market,
00:01:29.560 and we found customers to pre-buy, get involved,
00:01:32.760 and that eventually helped prove and fund
00:01:36.200 the further development to get our customers
00:01:38.260 to the point where we got raw and profitable.
00:01:40.180 Now, I'm gonna share with you guys some key areas
00:01:43.440 and aspects that I kind of extracted from that process
00:01:45.580 and I've used for my next company, Clarity,
00:01:47.940 and literally at this point, almost thousands
00:01:50.220 and thousands of startups I've helped advise
00:01:52.080 to build products.
00:01:53.080 The first thing is to start off assuming you're wrong.
00:01:56.020 I think most founders have a hard time doing that
00:01:58.020 because it seems schizophrenic.
00:01:59.320 At one sense, I need to feel like,
00:02:01.160 I call it exclamation mark.
00:02:02.560 I'm gonna take over the world and this is gonna work
00:02:04.620 and this is amazing.
00:02:05.720 Cause they almost need that internal like motivation
00:02:08.900 and energy to do something.
00:02:10.760 But at the same time, you gotta be humble
00:02:12.700 and honest with yourself and say, you know what?
00:02:14.140 There's probably some aspect of this strategy
00:02:16.380 and the ideas that I've put forth
00:02:18.000 that are probably gonna be wrong.
00:02:19.780 And I think if you start at that level,
00:02:21.880 it's just a way easier conversation to move in
00:02:25.080 to the following steps I'm gonna share.
00:02:26.980 The second thing is to list all of your assumptions.
00:02:29.820 I think when you build a business, there's unexpressed,
00:02:34.580 you didn't express them, but there's assumptions you're
00:02:36.580 making that if those things are wrong,
00:02:38.400 it could be around marketing.
00:02:40.460 You know, how do I get in front of the customers?
00:02:41.960 It could be about getting customers.
00:02:44.400 Who is this right for?
00:02:45.800 It could be around the tech, the technology, the APIs,
00:02:48.960 how you're actually gonna build it.
00:02:50.540 Or it could even be around the cost.
00:02:51.980 I think it'll cost X to build or I could sell it
00:02:55.340 for whatever wide price and those are huge assumptions.
00:02:58.480 So step one is make the list.
00:03:00.840 Everything you can possibly think about your idea
00:03:03.880 and how you think it's gonna be in five years,
00:03:05.780 make that list of assumptions and start thinking
00:03:08.320 about those different categories.
00:03:09.880 The next step, which is the third step,
00:03:13.220 wait one sec, we are at, assume you're wrong,
00:03:17.160 list all assumptions, look at the different categories.
00:03:21.560 Sorry, that's step three.
00:03:22.800 Four is to prioritize, okay?
00:03:26.040 I do prioritize like this because I don't know
00:03:27.900 if you've ever seen like the sort button in the toolbar,
00:03:31.400 you know, in like Word or whatever.
00:03:33.280 It's like these two arrows, one down, one up.
00:03:34.980 So sort the right order of the assumptions
00:03:39.420 starting with the riskiest assumption.
00:03:41.080 That's the framework name which is what is
00:03:43.460 the riskiest assumption that if I prove to be wrong,
00:03:47.400 the whole business doesn't work, right?
00:03:50.060 For example, if I'm Uber and my idea is that people are
00:03:53.000 going to use an app to request a car and I test will anybody
00:03:57.240 use their mobile phone to hail a cab and nobody does that part,
00:04:02.340 the rest of the business doesn't work.
00:04:03.900 So there's like fundamental changes in human behavior that
00:04:07.820 you're assuming that people are going to do that they may never
00:04:10.520 do that would cause the whole thing to be wrong.
00:04:14.160 One of my favorite stories around this was one time I was
00:04:16.820 asked to sit down with these kids,
00:04:18.660 these entrepreneurs from middle school
00:04:21.300 and they had a ton of different ideas.
00:04:22.520 But one of the entrepreneurial groups, these kids,
00:04:25.620 had an idea to build what I call an energy park.
00:04:28.360 Essentially, it's a park for kids
00:04:30.900 that as the kids play on the park, right,
00:04:34.100 I don't even know how it would work other than the swing,
00:04:36.140 but like swing on the swing or do the teeter totter
00:04:40.080 or whatever other mechanical type of toys
00:04:42.280 they could put together, spinning things that make noise,
00:04:45.480 they would capture the energy from the kids playing
00:04:48.380 and it would get fed back into the grid.
00:04:51.060 Now, there's a lot of assumptions there,
00:04:53.360 especially living, I mean, just starting off with the climate.
00:04:55.960 I live in Canada where it's freezing and cold,
00:04:58.960 so could you even manufacture the gear in a way
00:05:02.360 that would work for seasonality, right?
00:05:05.260 So there's a ton of assumptions.
00:05:06.740 The other assumption is could you generate enough electricity
00:05:09.840 with the median range of usage of a park
00:05:12.980 to actually have some kind of meaningful impact
00:05:16.080 back to the grid?
00:05:17.760 Could you produce the gear in a way that would be
00:05:22.060 ROI positive from a upfront cost versus energy production?
00:05:26.500 And could you create the toys or the park elements
00:05:30.860 in a way that would be interesting to a two and three
00:05:33.000 and four, five whatever year old kid?
00:05:35.900 Those were the assumptions and when I asked them
00:05:38.080 to rank them, oh and could you sell it to the government
00:05:41.340 which if you've ever sold to government or K-12,
00:05:44.000 those are very tough markets.
00:05:45.580 It's possible, I have a lot of friends that have done it.
00:05:47.180 I've coached some entrepreneurs on making that attack plan,
00:05:51.120 but tough.
00:05:52.480 If you didn't make the list of assumptions
00:05:55.120 and start thinking about validating it,
00:05:56.860 then you're gonna have a hard time.
00:05:57.960 And that is the fifth step in the whole process,
00:06:00.460 which is validation.
00:06:01.820 There's two ways that I'm gonna share with you.
00:06:04.060 This is the absolutely fastest way to validate an idea.
00:06:07.760 One is to reach out to an expert, right?
00:06:09.900 So for example, I'm sitting there with these kids and I say,
00:06:11.740 have you reached out to an engineer that builds parks,
00:06:15.200 that designs parks for, you know,
00:06:17.500 municipalities or neighborhoods or whatever?
00:06:19.800 Have you talked to anybody that designs parks?
00:06:21.580 They say, no.
00:06:22.680 Okay, that's interesting.
00:06:24.240 Because I'm sure if you reached out to them,
00:06:26.080 they would have some ideas around cost, product, materials,
00:06:31.660 regulations, requirements for maintenance
00:06:35.320 and other aspects of a park design.
00:06:38.800 And to me, experts that are in the field
00:06:41.360 are the fastest way to start validating
00:06:43.380 some of your riskiest assumptions.
00:06:44.500 The second one is to run experiments.
00:06:46.380 And running experiments is saying, okay, it's with no code.
00:06:49.440 It's saying, this is what I think people are gonna do.
00:06:51.980 How do I simulate that behavior and see if,
00:06:55.280 out of 100 people that I put that in front of,
00:06:57.680 they take action and do the right behavior.
00:06:59.820 Or directionally speaking, enough people do it.
00:07:02.420 But the key is to define the parameters
00:07:04.420 and the expected outcomes before you run the experiment,
00:07:07.100 which is a hypothesis.
00:07:08.200 So experts, experiments, that is the fifth step in really,
00:07:12.740 truly testing your idea.
00:07:13.900 So starting off, you need to make sure you start with the
00:07:16.880 assumption that you're wrong and then I'm gonna share with
00:07:18.840 you guys a big myth and something you have to stop doing.
00:07:23.020 The second thing is list all of your assumptions that you
00:07:26.120 might have, try to group them into categories.
00:07:28.320 Number three, the categories are marketing, customers,
00:07:31.920 the technology, the cost of things.
00:07:34.460 So just start thinking about that.
00:07:36.120 Then prioritize them, like this, to make sure that they're put
00:07:40.260 in the right order.
00:07:41.600 And then finally validate using one of two strategies.
00:07:44.360 One is the experts, the second is to run experiments.
00:07:48.300 And the thing, the tip that I need you guys to do is get out
00:07:52.840 of the building.
00:07:53.680 Too many people hide behind email, blog comments,
00:07:57.940 Quora threads, Twitter discussions.
00:08:01.340 The true validation happens H to H.
00:08:04.620 human-to-human interactions, conversations in person.
00:08:07.920 Yes, you can schedule a meeting over the phone,
00:08:09.920 but get in the car, drive there,
00:08:11.520 ask your parents to drive you if you're one of those kids.
00:08:14.460 And I thought it was fascinating.
00:08:15.800 I didn't want to poo-poo their idea,
00:08:17.900 but I mean, take a few steps to really get to the crux
00:08:21.240 of the business model.
00:08:22.240 So, with that, I want to challenge you
00:08:24.800 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
00:08:26.880 and I'll see you next Monday.
00:08:28.580 If you're still watching, it means you kind of
00:08:30.640 enjoyed the video, so if so, subscribe to my channel,
00:08:33.180 But more importantly, join my newsletter where I share other
00:08:36.360 exclusive videos and training and events that I invite people
00:08:40.360 to in contests.
00:08:41.920 Oh yeah.
00:08:43.220 And if you're ready to keep going, I've got two other videos
00:08:45.260 ready for you right there.
00:08:46.920 See you next week.