Story: Startup environment

I met a lot of people who are running a business at Meetup before the COVID-19. I don’t count freelancers as Startup. It’s a different category. I define it first. Then, I would like to notes how to start a startup.

A startup is a company initiated by individual founders or entrepreneurs to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Founders design startups to effectively develop and validate a scalable business model. Hence, the concepts of startups and entrepreneurship are similar. However, entrepreneurship refers all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to grow big or become registered, while startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow beyond the solo founder, have employees, and intend to grow large.

Startups face high uncertainty and do have high rates of failure, but the minority that goes on to be successful companies have the potential to become large and influential. Some startups become unicorns, i.e. privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion. – Wikipedia

How and Why to Start A Startup

©stanfordonline

I like to think about why at first.

Motivation
– Financial outcome
You need a truly great idea, a unique, defensive, a large market, work hard, attract people, and a better strategy than competitors. In addition, luck. Also requires a long term commitment.
– If you want to a massive impact
Join the company which already startup and improve a product.
– Lifestyle as an entrepreneur
Not so dramatic, face many uncertainties.
– Hard things are hard
Co-founder, team management, fundraising and competition.
– Lifestyle
Boss has to learn from others even employees.

The reason why
– Passion and aptitude(do a startup or join startup)

– people believe the future in Silicon Valley
– The idea first, startup second ✔️
– Next wave, tech shift movement
– If you can align vector with someone, that’s good
– Determination, persistence, never give up ✔️
– Value(what cofounder cares about) < attitude < skill ✔️
– Build a product which a small number of people really love it ✔️
– Talk to a user(user experience, interview) ✔️
– Reach 100 user quickly, and get feedback ✔️
– Send an email you know, charge to them(real), research user, social media, buy ad

– Know user
– Long term commitment
– Hiring
– The build your team is the build your company
– Recruiting and retaining the people
– Accept rejection ✔️
– Clear communicator
– Clear mission ✔️

– How you get a great idea? talk to people.

How to Start a Startup

©Y Combinator

– An initial idea does not need to great
– Start with a problem ✔️
– Relationship with a problem
– Can you solve it?
– Brainstorm with friend
– Why you?
– Minimum valuable product, and release quickly ✔️
– Very small customer, but the product really solves their problem

©How to Start a Startup

The reading script is no good. You cannot engage with an audience in this way, but the lecture is valuable.

– Idea < product < team < execution
– The idea should come first, the startup should come second ✔️
– Mission-oriented
– A good startup takes 10 years
– The best idea is a terrible idea at the beginning
– Convince yourself
– Nitch is less competition
– Think transformation of a market 10 years later
– No care about a competitor, focus on the product
– Timing, why now?
– Easy to understand, easy to explain, clearly articulate a vision with a small number of words
– Meet a potential cofounder

– What customer/market wants, not what you want to do ✔️
– Build a product and talk to a user ✔️
– Acquire a small number of user who really loves a product

How to Get Ideas and How to Measure

©stanfordonline

– Fill up post is notes on the board
– Discuss what is the highest value
– Eliminate them one by one
– Absorb information
– Intuition for little idea
– Find the problem ✔️
– Pay attention to other people ✔️

– How to measure?
– Users getting value today
– Analyze user usage
– Retention of user
– Iterate fast

– Learning from the past
– Grounded in the reality of the present
– Optimistic about the future ✔️

How to Find Product-Market Fit

©stanfordonline

– Solve the real problem and your product has to fit the market
– Build and launch with several ideas
– Category leader
– What bad/good fit look like
– Ecosystem, build platform and user develop on the top
– Get out of a building product and talk with a customer
– Delete bad ideas fast(test, test, test…) ✔️

Y Combinator: David Rusenko – How To Find Product Market Fit

How to Build a Product I

©stanfordonline

– How to talk with a user?
– MVP, minimum valuable product
– Measuring and analytics
– Decision making

stanfordonline: How to Build a Product II
stanfordonline: How to Build a Product III
stanfordonline: How to Build a Product IV

How to Get Users and Grow

©stanfordonline

– retention, focus on monthly activity

Increase monthly active user
– Network affect
– Add interface, iOS + Android
– Add category

Growth accounting
– New users – churning users + resurrecting users = net growth

Approach
– Understand, identify, execute
– Talk to user

– Use the data to make a decision

Lecture 20 – Later-stage Advice (Sam Altman)

©stanfordonline

TBA

Validate your business idea: THE LEAN STARTUP by Eric Ries

©Productivity Game

MVP/minimum valuable products: Product made with a minimal amount of effort used to test a specific value assumption

1. UX vision
2. Identify critical assumption
3. Build an early to validate a critical assumption 
4. Release and measure
5. Pivot or persevere

ZERO TO ONE by Peter Thiel

©Productivity Game

– Bet on the contrarian truth, how people will act in the future
– Start by dominating a small market
– Strive to be a monopoly

Make the competition irrelevant: BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY by W.C. Kim and R. Mauborgne

©Productivity Game

– Try not to compete with others at an established market
– Untapped market potential
– Find a frustration at the outside customer of the current market
– Value innovation, eliminate, reduce, raise, create
– Create a new product category

Conclusion: Strong desire

There are 2 types of people, success and failure. According to Dr. Kazuo Inamori, many people put on effort. Many people have talent. The border of success and failure is only determination. Successful people have never given up until achieve. In other words, resilient.

I would like to understand it someday.

Reference:

Y Combinator: Startup School 2019 Orientation
Y Combinator: Created a new model for funding early-stage startups.
TechCrunch: Startup and Technology News
Hacker News