Author: Adarsh

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4 Steps to Create a Winning Product

Lean Startup Model

Many articles have been written about why so many startups failed. Inevitably it comes down to any of the following reasons:

  • Not having the right product
  • Not being able to market the product successfully
  • Running out of money

So as a startup, what can you do to overcome these issues or at least set yourself up for the maximum potential success?

1. Focus on the MVP

Don’t worry about how you will market the product, how much you will charge for it or any of those details at this point. Just focus on the minimal viable product (MVP) that people would enjoy using (and potentially pay for). The idea should be to get this into the hands of users as quickly as possible. Leave the fancy and frill features for later on, once you have validated your product. This way you will know if you’re on the right track, without having wasted time and money by going in the wrong direction.

2. Find Early Users

Find people around you who match the audience you are planning to target. If members of your friends and family match this description, get them involved testing early versions of your product and (more importantly) get feedback from them. Is this a product they would use? Ideally, try to find people who have the very problem that your product is trying to fix.

There are other sites you can use to get beta testers to give you feedback, so use those if required.

After the initial testing, if they continue to use the product, that is a good sign that you may be on to something. If they stop using the product even after your constant prodding then assume that either they don’t match your target demographic or that your product still needs some polishing before it is ready for mass release.

3. Keep Iterating

If you find that users are not returning to your product, find out why.  Many times people who are close to you may lie to you for your own benefit, in order to give you support and not discourage you. So ask questions like:

  • What would you change about this product?
  • Are there any features you would like to see added?

Use the feedback given to improve the product and release new versions that incorporate that feedback. If the users helping out really have the problem that you’re trying to solve, then it’s in their interest for your product to succeed so that their problem can be solved. They should be more than happy to test new versions and give you genuine feedback on whether the product has improved or not. I have used this approach for many of my products.

4. Market when Ready

One mistake I’ve seen a lot of startups make is to start marketing a half baked product. The few users they do have rarely use their product, so they assume that their problem is not having enough users. In fact, the problem is that their product isn’t good enough!

On the other hand, if you do have a product that users are happy with, then now is the time to start marketing it. One way to know if you’re at this stage is if you can get testimonials or positive reviews from users with ease. After all, if they are happy with the product, then chances are good that there will be others out there who would also benefit from this product.

By using this approach, you can ensure that you’re spending money where needed. It’s very easy for startups to run out of money by spending money developing unnecessary features early on, or by trying to market half baked products. Instead if that money was spent on building the core product with a loyal base, before beginning to market it, then their chances of success would be much higher!

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How to Submit App to the Appstore for Faster Approval

These past couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to submit a new app to the appstore for my new startup. While I’ve submitted several apps in the past, this was the first time I had an app that I needed to submit for a deadline, so speed was of the essence. For PR purposes, you may have a date in time that you want to start promoting your app. It is in your interest to get as many downloads as you can over a short period of time (ideally the same day) if you want to rank in the charts, so having your app ready for download on your advertised day is crucial.

Here are some of the tricks I learned in the process:

  1. Check the current speed of app store review submissions. Here’s a good site that shows the approximate review times of apps currently being submitted. Be careful with this one since it refers to events in the past and not present. So for example, at the time of this blog post it shows this 11 days for apps. App store review times may have improved or gotten worse since then, but it still gives you a rough idea of how long it’s taking other apps to get approved at the moment. This way you can schedule enough time for your submission.
  2. Set the launch date with Apple. When submitting your app, you can choose to have the app automatically released when it is approved, or have it released on a specific day. So for example, if you wanted to launch your product in 3 weeks, you could submit your app now, but tell them not to release your app until the launch date in 3 weeks. Obviously this would only work if the launch date is AFTER they have approved your app. If the approval goes past your release date, then there’s not much you can do. This of course doesn’t make the approval any faster, but is useful for advertising your grand launch date.
  3. Ask for an expedited review. Not many people know this (I didn’t). Apple has a form you can fill out to ask for an expedited review of your app. They take a couple of days to review your request before deciding if your circumstance warrants an expedited review or not. They may also choose to ignore you if you regularly make such requests. If your circumstance is genuine though, you can do so.
  4. Create a test account. If your app requires a user to login before they can do anything in the app, then create a test account for the Apple review team to use. Otherwise you risk them not seeing parts of the app that require a user to be logged in. Include the test account details in the review notes (see next point).
  5. Fill in the review notes. Whenever you’re submitting an app, it doesn’t hurt to fill in details in the review notes. Even stating things that may be obvious won’t hurt (better safe than sorry).  For example in my case, I had to state that my app was only for release in Taiwan, and so would not show any content in the US (where the reviewers were located).
  6. Include a video. If there are parts of the app that the review team won’t be able to see (eg. future levels of a game or location specific features) then include a demo video that showcases the other parts.

The bottom line is that the easier you make it for the app review team to understand your app, then the faster they will take to approve it. So any steps you can take during the submission process to help them will end up helping you.

Good luck with your app submission!

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7 Benefits of Startup Incubation Programs

My team was fortunate enough to have been picked for Startup Labs’ inaugural Incubator program in Taipei, Taiwan from February 10 to March 2. In addition to seed funding, we were housed in a coworkspace for three weeks and encouraged to set and reach goals that honed our concept and focused on user acquisition during this short time. While there were many lows and highs during the time, we came away a lot stronger than we were going in. Here are 7 benefits that I found quite helpful from the program. If you are looking to join an incubation program, consider these benefits in addition to any funding you receive.

Team Building

In my team’s case, all four members moved to Taipei from a neighboring city for three weeks. This meant that we ended up spending a lot more time together than we normally would. In some cases, this could be a bad thing, but in our case, getting to know each other better was a positive! We got to see each other in stressful times when there was a deadline coming, when ideas weren’t coming together or after a long day when we were just tired and hungry! We also saw got to see each other in after hours settings, when it was time to unwind.

In each case, we got to see a different side of each other – one that we wouldn’t normally see, but that was good to know about. I’m now more confident going forward that we have assembled the right team of individuals who will have what it takes to perform when the going gets tough.

Vet your Idea

As part of the incubation process, mentors, investors and other visitors were constantly pouring through the building to see what we were up to. Each time, I would present our idea and the progress we were making. This was a great way to get feedback and reactions from a broad group of people. Some of their ideas were added to our own to improve the concept.

Having mentors on hand also made it easy to just shout out to the next table “Hey David, what do you think about this idea?” I realized that our regular routine of working out of  our own office kept us in a bubble of sorts, as we were not exposed to the regular feedback we were getting here.

Deadlines and Pressure

The main purpose of this incubation process was to show a delta in progress from our opening day pitch to our final demo. Goals and targets were assigned to each team early on, and pressure was applied to make sure we hit these targets. We were not used to such deadlines, but in this case, having them forced us to dig in and work 12 hour days to reach them. It also forced us to refine our plans to ones that could be tested and applied in much shorter time frames than what we would normally have. Instead of building a site and testing it out, we were forced to test mockup concepts first. This process saved us a lot of time, since it allowed us to throw away concepts that weren’t received well, rather than having to build it first to find this out.

Other Teammates

In addition to getting to know our own teammates, being housed in the coworkspace with four other teams helped us get to know others who were in the same position as we were in. While each team had their own challenges, it was very helpful to have members of other teams present to bounce ideas off of, celebrate in their achievements and provide encouragement and support where possible. It was also helpful to listen to advice being given to other teams and look for areas where that same advice could be relevant to us as well.

Other Resources

Another benefit of having 5 teams together in the same coworkspace was that we had access to great resources and presenters. At various times during the three weeks, we had visitors from a local law firm who represented startups, Google, Microsoft, Facebook’s local ad representative and local and international bloggers, all providing advice in different areas. These were people we might not have had the opportunity to meet with on our own, but now had access to in the future.

Informal Time

While most of the time was spent working out of the coworkspace, after hour events were organized to get to know the investors and mentors in more informal settings. These were great, not only for letting off steam, but also for getting to know the people we were working with better. Who knew that they were real people with their own lives, families and issues?

 

Honing your Pitch

At the end of the 22 days, a final demo was organized for local and international investors, media and government representatives. In the days before the pitch, we were encouraged to practice our pitches in front of mentors, who would then provide advice on how to improve them. The advice provided was very good, and applied before the final demo. After the demo, many investors commented on how much better the final presentations were than the original ones on day one.

Now that the event is over, and we are back to our regular lives, the real work begins. Can we take the advice we learned and build something real with it? Stay tuned to find out!

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How to Compete with the Big Boys through Outsourcing

© Fried Dough

We are living in a society that is unprecedented throughout the ages, as far as making money is concerned. In the past, businesses catered to local markets within their town or neighborhood. As they made money, that could be reinvested into expanding into more locations across the city, or even to other cities.

Then the internet came along and changed everything. Now businesses could market themselves to the world from a single location. Businesses moved from physical products to digital ones that could be instantly downloaded from anywhere. No more worrying about inventories and shipping costs.

It took me a while to start my first internet business, since I had limited skills, and required the money to:

  • Create a website and associated tools
  • Design a logo and graphics
  • Help me market the website
  • Handle the customer service

And this was assuming I already have a product to sell. If not, I would have had to add the costs of developing the product to the mix.

If I was to hire someone local (in a western country) to handle all these duties, I could easily be looking at investing several thousands of dollars before I had my first sale. While this would still be cheaper than opening a conventional bricks and mortar store, I certainly didn’t have the funds or the skills to get into it right away.

Fast forward five years later. Through the power of outsourcing, I was able to find specialists in each of the above categories to help me out in all aspects of my business, for a fraction of the cost I would normally have had to pay.

Why is outsourcing so much cheaper?

  • Many specialists are located in developing countries, where their costs are much cheaper.
  • Many specialists work from home, and don’t have the overhead of an office and other employees to pay.
  • Since I only pay for a project at a time, I don’t pay the additional administrative costs of hiring someone full time.

Now of course, in life many argue that you get what you pay for. So if I was hiring someone for $10 an hour, would his work be of the same quality as someone charging $150 an hour?

In some cases it was. In other cases it wasn’t. Like anything in life, a little due diligence was required.

There are several highly skilled individuals in developing countries who have many years of experience taking on projects in various areas, and have become very good at them in the process. Where my project matched their skill set, I got a very good deal.

In other cases, their quality wasn’t be very good at all. Or they were using my project as an educational opportunity to expand their skill set.

In either case, I was able to spot which type of person I was dealing with beforehand, by communicating with them and looking at reviews from previous projects they had handled.

As I got good at outsourcing, I started expanding to other projects that I would never have dreamed of doing before, but now had the resources to create. If I had a tight deadline and wanted something of the top most quality, I would look for someone experienced. In other cases, I had pet projects that were flexible – so I was willing to hire people with less experience for less money. Some of them worked out, some didn’t. However I did become better at vetting, in the process.

As I got more confident in outsourcing, I was able to outsource more aspects of the business that I hadn’t thought of before. This allowed me to create very professional looking products, for much less than it would have cost to have done in traditional ways. As an example, each of the elements below was outsourced to a different person in a different part of the world:

  • Logo, theme and graphic design for my first website (Russia)
  • Coding and custom features for the website (Hong Kong)
  • Composing audio that was used as an intro in my podcast (Argentina)
  • Editing of a YouTube video (Taiwan)
  • Development of my first iPhone app (Ukraine)
  • Custom icons and UI design for other iPhone apps (Canada)
  • Audio editing with music and sound effects for other podcasts (Philippines)
  • Singing of a cover song on a YouTube video (USA)

I’ve developed relationships with several of the people above. One side benefit of having them across different parts of the world is that in some cases I could assign some tasks overnight, and have them ready for me when I woke up the next day!

© Guilherme Jófili

So nowadays I am free to dream up new projects, that can quickly be assigned and developed for a fraction of a cost that competing companies would pay for having such employees on board full time.

What types of things would you be able to do or create for your own business, if you had your own team of highly skilled individuals waiting for your command?

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Generate Ideas by Solving Real Problems

Now that I’ve had the experience of attending two startup weekends – one as a participant and one as a speaker, I’ve been exposed to pitches from several other startups. Add to that, all the news on startups coming in from sites likeTechCrunch and AngelList and I’m starting to notice a disturbing trend.

People are focusing on ideas, rather than solving problems.

The focus should not be on “What startup should we create?“, it should be on “What problem should we solve?”

The good news is that we are not asking you to solve world hunger or broker peace in the middle east (although that would be nice). All you need to do is solve problems that real users have.

How do you find these problems?

Listen!

Take a look at your Facebook and Twitter streams and see what people are complaining about. Join forums and discussion groups to see what kinds of problems people are having.

See if you can do any of the following:

  1. Take something that is complicated and make it simpler. Perhaps by reducing the number of steps involved.
  2. Take something inconvenient and make it more convenient.
  3. Take something that is currently expensive and find a way to do it for cheaper, or even for free!
  4. Take something that is of low quality, and create a higher quality version that you can charge more for.
  5. Take something that is currently boring, and make it more exciting.

When I listen to a startup pitch, it should be clear to me what the problem is that they are solving. Let’s take a look at some famous examples.

It’s clear what problem Evernote is trying to solve. People tend to forget a lot of things. Evernote helps them remember by making it easy to take notes.

Facebook solves the problem of us losing connection with our family and friends, as we live our busy lives.

Both these products are quite clear, and require little convincing. As a result, both companies are huge with millions of users around the world.

If you have to explain to me what my problem is, or try to convince me that I have a problem that I previously didn’t know exist, then it may be hard to get traction.

Better yet would be to find users with the problems you are solving and introduce your product to them directly. If they continue using your product, you know you’re onto something. If they don’t come back, then follow up with them and find out why.

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5 Benefits of Networking

© by boellstiftung

Part of developing my new startup has required me to do a lot more networking than I’ve ever had to do in the past. This has meant attending networking events both in my local city and in nearby cities. I’ve noticed that in the process of attending such events, my approach towards them has also changed.

In the past, I would only attend events where I had a clear purpose and reason to attend. If I didn’t know the people well, or it seemed outside my area of interest or expertise, I would skip it. Why waste my time otherwise, right?

However over the past few weeks, after attending several networking events, I’ve noticed that my expectations going in and what I came out with were often very different. This has opened my mind to such situations and I’m now more liberal in the choices of events that I’ll attend. In fact, I’m now even begun attending (and speaking at) functions outside my regular base, as doing so provides the following benefits:

Practice your Pitch

Each time I attend an event where I’m introduced to new people, this gives me the opportunity to pitch my product again. I’ve talked about the benefits of this before but it’s worth repeating. The more you practice pitching your product, the better you will get at it. In the process, people will ask you questions about your products that you will need to know the answer to.

When I began, I found my initial pitch to be several minutes long, glossing over details that I later found to be unimportant. The questions that people asked, helped me refine the pitch to focus on the important details of the business. Being able to make a short, to the point pitch gives you two benefits:

  1. If the person you are talking to isn’t really interested in your product, it saves you and them time.
  2. If the person you are talking to is interested in your product, then you will be providing him with just enough information to know that he is interested, so that he will want to continue talking to you. The last thing you want to do is bore a potentially interested party with uninteresting details. They get pitches like this all the time, so it’s important to pique their curiosity early!

Market Research

If it turns out that the people you are talking to can’t help you directly as a potential investor, adviser or team member, they may still be able to provide you with valuable market research. Perhaps they fit the profile of the type of person who would use your product or service. Take this opportunity to find out what they think of your product from that point of view. Do they use competing products? What do they like or dislike about those products? Does your product or service solve any problems they are currently having.

These past few weeks, I’ve walked into several events, looking to make contacts with potential investors, advisers or team members. While I wasn’t able to find those, I was able to come away with valuable market research advice, that made attending the event very worthwhile.

© by Robert Scoble

Make Connections

One of your first investments as a company, should be in a set of business cards. Also get yourself a business card holder to put all these cards in. Replace the cards you give out, with cards you receive in return.

Create a system of making connections. If you’re receiving cards, separate relevant ones that you want to follow up with separately. Write notes on the cards if there are important details you want to remember.

If you have specific needs, ASK. Tell the people “Hey I’m looking for someone who can help me with…” Just because they may not be able to help you directly, doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who can!

This also extends to people you haven’t met in person. If there’s someone in the community you would like to meet, touch base with them on Twitter first. I did so with the CEO of a huge company in the similar market. That tweet led to a direct phone call, and now a regular email relationship. Who would have thought?!

Get Advice

There is a misconception that people have about asking for advice. It doesn’t cost anything, so ask for it! In the beginning, I shied away from the bigwigs at such events – big investors or other famous people in attendance. Why would they want to talk to little ole me?

What surprised me was that not only were they willing to talk to me, they were also willing to provide free advice! Take advantage of it. Establish connections with them on Twitter and other social networks and get the ball rolling. If they don’t want to talk to you, let them make that decision, but more often than not they will!

Make Friends

Have balance in your life. Not all meetings have to be about business and how to increase profits. It is also perfectly okay to just have a good time. Share funny stories. Become friends and nothing else. Enjoy the journey and take a break whenever you need it. You’ll get more out of life that way.