Dan Martell - August 22, 2016


How To Validate Your Startup Ideas


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

202.22592

Word Count

1,175

Sentence Count

66


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.120 People get excited about an idea
00:00:03.000 and then build the product
00:00:04.920 and then find out six months later
00:00:06.800 that nobody else was excited.
00:00:19.280 How to go from zero to selling your first product.
00:00:23.080 This video is the most important video
00:00:25.240 that you're gonna wanna watch.
00:00:26.160 If you've ever thought of starting a software company,
00:00:28.800 Maybe you have one, maybe you've gone to the market,
00:00:30.780 your customers aren't buying.
00:00:31.920 Maybe you're struggling with finding your best idea
00:00:34.680 to pursue, maybe you have built something
00:00:37.800 way too complicated.
00:00:38.980 I'm gonna share with you in this video
00:00:40.500 the simple framework on how I've built companies
00:00:43.800 over the years.
00:00:44.640 I've done 1,300 clarity calls talking one-on-one
00:00:48.020 with entrepreneurs about their top challenges.
00:00:51.260 Here's the deal, a third of those calls
00:00:53.760 were entrepreneurs that did this framework backwards.
00:00:57.060 They built the product, six months,
00:00:59.420 tens of thousands of dollars invested.
00:01:01.080 They put it in front of a customer
00:01:02.180 and their customer said, that's cool,
00:01:03.740 but it doesn't meet my needs.
00:01:04.680 Or, that's really neat,
00:01:06.260 but I don't know if I understand how to use it.
00:01:08.840 It's too complicated.
00:01:10.380 They built something for somebody that didn't exist.
00:01:13.000 They thought that there was a pain in the market
00:01:15.120 that was just a vitamin.
00:01:17.060 And that's what I wanna share with you guys in this video.
00:01:19.120 Number one is how do you come up with the best idea?
00:01:21.860 Because you might have no idea, which is totally cool.
00:01:24.840 A lot of entrepreneurs run into that.
00:01:26.320 or you have a number of ideas
00:01:28.560 and you can't figure out the right one to do it.
00:01:30.020 Well, here's a quick three P framework
00:01:32.200 for thinking this through.
00:01:33.320 Number one is you need to know that you have the problem.
00:01:37.740 Like I would never start a company
00:01:39.540 if I didn't have the problem myself
00:01:41.700 because at the end of the day,
00:01:43.340 you need to understand the mindset of the customer
00:01:46.480 and where they're struggling with
00:01:47.780 and here's the reality.
00:01:49.080 If it doesn't work out,
00:01:50.140 at least you'll be a customer for the product.
00:01:52.580 So number one, you have the problem.
00:01:53.820 Two is the pain.
00:01:54.940 Make sure it's not a vitamin.
00:01:56.520 Make sure it's a painkiller.
00:01:57.800 Make sure it's a must have, not a nice to have.
00:02:00.640 Alright, so that's the distinction of a great idea.
00:02:03.120 Is this something people really, really, really want
00:02:05.260 and are gonna beat down a path to your door?
00:02:07.000 Or is this just kinda something,
00:02:08.380 maybe they would like it to make their life better,
00:02:10.700 which are usually typically hard to monetize
00:02:12.840 and make money from.
00:02:14.200 The third area is passion.
00:02:15.540 At the end of the day, if you're not passionate
00:02:17.300 about your idea, then you gotta make sure
00:02:19.400 that you find one that you are,
00:02:21.060 because the problem is what's gonna get you excited,
00:02:24.180 not the solution.
00:02:25.240 Finding a customer that you would love to serve
00:02:27.000 and being passionate about that, that's key.
00:02:28.620 So that's the first part of the strategy
00:02:30.940 is make sure that you focus on the right idea.
00:02:34.020 Number two is get feedback from the right customer.
00:02:36.800 So when you have an idea, most of you, you get excited,
00:02:40.320 you talk to your friends, they all go,
00:02:42.000 that would be awesome, yes, totally,
00:02:43.680 you should pursue that.
00:02:44.760 What I do that's totally different is I find customers
00:02:47.940 that use my competitor's product.
00:02:50.700 So if you wanna build innovation, that's cool,
00:02:52.600 but you're probably in a market and you can find customers
00:02:55.500 that currently pay for that solution and ask them
00:02:58.880 about your specific approach to solving that problem.
00:03:01.340 Because those people actually have put their money
00:03:04.120 where their mouth is, whereas if you just go
00:03:05.780 to a general market and you ask people for their advice
00:03:08.540 on your idea, they're gonna be kind.
00:03:10.320 I'm from Canada, Canadians are super polite,
00:03:12.960 they will never tell you that your idea's a bad idea.
00:03:15.580 Do you realize that?
00:03:16.460 Do you know how much risk you incur by asking people,
00:03:19.360 hey, what do you think of my idea?
00:03:20.960 No, you wanna talk to customers
00:03:22.160 that have the problem and get their advice.
00:03:23.960 That is the second one, getting feedback from paid customers.
00:03:26.760 Third is prototyping and not building a product.
00:03:31.400 The problem I have with the word MVP
00:03:33.400 or minimum viable product is it's got the word product
00:03:36.140 in there.
00:03:36.980 What I would suggest is build a clickable prototype,
00:03:39.300 something that you could sit down and design three core
00:03:42.480 features of the idea, not the future vision.
00:03:44.980 Look, in five years the truth is the world's gonna change,
00:03:48.360 innovation's gonna take hold.
00:03:49.860 You don't know what that's gonna look like.
00:03:51.180 just sit down and say, okay, what could we build
00:03:53.340 in a six week product sprint?
00:03:55.260 What are the three core features that'll deliver value
00:03:57.880 for our customers?
00:03:58.720 And you sit down and you build a prototype.
00:04:00.180 You can use tools like Balsamiq or UX Pin or even InVision,
00:04:05.000 but you wanna build a clickable prototype.
00:04:06.860 I've seen people use Keynote and PowerPoint.
00:04:09.160 So super simple, build the prototype.
00:04:11.900 Then here's the key is you wanna run a pilot program.
00:04:15.300 You go back to those customers that you've talked to.
00:04:17.780 You go back to people that you think are interested
00:04:19.740 and you get them to pre-buy the product.
00:04:21.840 People ask, well what should I charge?
00:04:23.440 My suggestion is 50% off of the first year cost
00:04:27.860 that you're eventually, when you launch it.
00:04:29.300 And here's the deal, if you put that clickable prototype
00:04:32.060 in front of the customer,
00:04:33.100 you've nailed their pain point in the market,
00:04:35.460 you're excited and passionate about the problem,
00:04:37.980 and it's something that you wanna solve yourself,
00:04:41.620 they're gonna resonate with that
00:04:42.860 and they can join that pilot program.
00:04:44.560 You only have a limited amount of seats
00:04:46.040 because really all you're looking for is feedback
00:04:48.020 as you co-create it with them.
00:04:49.840 You do that two cycles and eventually
00:04:52.080 you launch your product public.
00:04:54.060 That is the framework from going to zero
00:04:57.040 to selling your first product.
00:04:59.060 Hope that served you.
00:04:59.980 Really excited to share that with you
00:05:01.260 because it's one of the top questions,
00:05:03.260 the top frustration, the problem that I have to address
00:05:06.100 every time I talk to a new entrepreneur
00:05:07.800 that's already out there doing it.
00:05:10.020 So excited for you, excited for your future,
00:05:12.280 excited for you to sell the first version
00:05:14.360 of your product pilots all the way.
00:05:16.620 As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life
00:05:18.960 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.
00:05:21.320 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel
00:05:23.800 to get other videos on how to start and grow your business.
00:05:26.340 I'd also like to invite you to join my newsletter
00:05:28.860 where I run community contests,
00:05:31.020 I give you exclusive invites to events,
00:05:33.200 as well as other free training videos,
00:05:34.740 and if you're ready to get going,
00:05:35.920 I've got queued up two other videos
00:05:37.780 to help you along your journey.
00:05:39.300 I'm excited to have you here, and I'll see you next week.
00:05:46.620 You