Lecture 4: Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing
Link: How to Start a Startup
(You can find notes to the other lectures here.)
Adora Cheung (@nolimits)
Take advice as good guidance but every business is different.
When you start a startup you should have a lot of time to immerse yourself in the problem developing solutions to the problem you’re trying to solve.
If you really want to disrupt an industry you should not be a player in it.
Get in the shoes of your customers from all angles of what you’re trying to build.
You should be obsessed with knowing what all of the other people in the space are doing.
Become an expert in the industry. There should be no doubt you are an expert so that people trust you and your product.
Cordon off some a certain portion of the customer base and optimize for them.
Storyboard out the ideal user experience.
Make sure there is a way for people to contact you.
If retention goes up over time that means you’re doing a good job.
If it goes down that means you’re doing a good job.
You get more feedback if you make someone pay for (your product).
There is no point in building features for when you have a million users.
You don’t need to try to automate everything.
Imitation is cheaper than innovation in terms of time, money, and capital.
To get people to tell others about you you have to deliver a good experience.
clv > cac
There are different acquisition costs for different types of ads.
A lot of times something becomes a bad business when you start spending beyond your means.
Have a growth plan when you start out, What is an optimistic but realistic method to grow this business?
