13p5

13p5 is a source for start-up founders, early employees of start ups, or anybody who can use a place for an exchange on how to grow a successful business around a great idea.

[13p5]

How to Find the Right Price for Your Product

You would think that after all the hard work of building a product that slapping a price on it would be the easy part. But the truth is that finding the perfect price is difficult, and it can make or break your product’s success whether you’re pricing too high or too low. So let’s be like Goldilocks and try to figure out how to find the price that is just right.

To start, it’s a mistake to think that price is something you should only bring into the conversation after the product is made. It’s a very natural impulse. You can’t know how much something is worth until it exists, right? In reality, the logic needs to be flipped. You can’t know what your product is until you know how much it’s worth.

In FirstRound’s latest piece on product pricing, they put a heavy emphasis on price before product. They highlighted the point that “new products fail for many reasons, but the root of the problem is the failure to put the customer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for a new product at the very core of product design.” You can’t just hope that something will make money after you’ve made it. You have to know it before you even start the process of design.

Start by speaking to the people you’d like to reach and asking them if they’d buy the product you want to make. Chances are if you don’t tie a specific number to it, they will probably just say yes. So follow-up by asking if they’d buy it for a very clearly defined price point and see what happens.

In our daily lives, we’re always making these sorts of cost vs. benefit calculations. “Is it worth buying lunch today or bringing something from home, etc.” Putting a clear price point in front of someone should bring things into sharp focus quickly because we’re all pretty experienced at judging whether something would add value to our lives.

But willingness to pay is just one factor to consider. You’ve also got to assess actual profitability with respect not just to the monetary cost required to create each individual product, but the time and energy it would demand too. Throw pricing effectively against your competitors into the mix too, and it can be difficult to land on a number that actually works.

More often than not, startups are vulnerable to underpricing, rather than overpricing. We all want whatever we’re making to sell, and it’s very easy to make profit the least important part of the equation as long as you’re getting the product out in the world. Surely things will change once you’ve established yourself, right?

Many companies take it to the extreme end of the scale. They sell their app for free to try to build an audience with the hope of welding some kind of revenue stream into it down the line. Sure, it works for some, but there are so many cases of companies who created something that was clearly valuable to people and still failed to make money. It’s because they had no idea what their product was worth, and it’s exactly the fatal mistake that even a huge brand like SoundCloud fell prey to.

Audience building is great, and getting your name out there is better, but ultimately this stuff needs to make money if it’s going to succeed. Your time and energy are valuable and a failure to profit because of a poorly thought out price is just a waste. At least if you don’t adjust accordingly when you move into your next venture.

Over-pricing has its own set of pitfalls, but at least it sends a clear message that you have confidence in your product. Sometimes the story that a high price tells is enough to get people to buy it. Some people are even willing to shell out $8000 for an umbrella because of the sheer status and prestige its price tag accords.

While you can’t rely on dazzling people with price, there’s still much that can be gleaned by overpricing your product. If people just aren’t biting, ask them why. Ask them what would make this product worth the price of entry, if anything. If you don’t learn anything valuable, maybe that means you need a new product.

If nothing else, don’t get yourself in a situation where you hate working on your product because the energy you are putting in is so much more than the output. You’re not putting yourself in a good position to make your product better if you, yourself, don’t see any value in it.

It’s always hard to walk away from any kind of money or the knowledge that someone out there is using what you made even if it's free. But to succeed in the long-term, you need to be able to make those kinds of tough choices.

Pricing is hard. There’s no doubt about that, but everything changes when you land on the perfect one. Don’t be afraid to be bold with price. No one will believe in your product until you can say confidently that you do too.

— ZK

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A Reminder that Culture Means Everything to Your Company

If there’s one thing that recent fiascos at Uberand at Google can teach us, it’s that culture make a difference. Culture can help your company and the people in it succeed, or it can destroy everything you’ve worked to build. The big question is: how do you gain some semblance of control over the way culture grows and changes?

Culture is a fickle thing and slippery to control. It’s not something you can force with slogans and motivational posters. Rather, culture takes shape naturally as your team and your business grows.

So why even bother with culture if it’s ultimately out of your hands? That’s a typical response to the “you can’t force culture” statement. However, forcing something and guiding it are two completely different things, and you absolutely can guide culture as your company grows.

You do that by leading by example and demonstrating the core values you feel should define your business. Rather than stating and commanding what you feel your company’s purpose should be, express it in your actions. This strategy, in turn, will help to influence the actions of everyone on your team.

These days, nothing is more important to people than a sense of purpose in the work they do. Everyone wants a job they feel genuinely matters. For companies that don’t necessarily fit the mold of work that is traditionally considered substantial and important, everything comes down to how you build your culture.

That culture and attitude is so often a reflection of the people at the top. Whether you like it or not, your every move as a leader will echo through the company. In the case of establishing meaning, clearly demonstrated passion for the work that you do can very easily spread to every single member of your team. At the same time, apathy and disengagement trickle down just as quickly if they become the standards you set.

We talked last week about how important meetings can be. They aren’t important because they are a space to militantly declare your company’s mission statements. Rather, they are nexuses of energy — gathering places to communally establish why all this work matters. It doesn’t have to amount to some lofty, world-changing purpose. Just knowing that you are part of a team collaborating to do badass work can be enough. But that only comes across if you, as the leader, are enthusiastic about achieving that purpose.

There’s no doubt that it can be a lot to ask. No one person should be expected to carry the torch of purpose every single minute of every single day. The good news is that this kind of single-minded and constant dedication to culture building doesn’t have to rest firmly on your shoulders. If the message comes across, your team will start doing the work of instilling purpose and keeping morale up for you. All you have to do is listen to them and be aware of what they have to say. The same is true if the message isn’t sticking. Staying connected to your team is the best way to ensure that your culture doesn’t get off track.

The second piece of good news is that culture really does make a difference, and it’s worth the time and effort required to build it. Uber and Google are case and point that a failure of culture can do irreparable damage not just to internal dynamics, but your brand itself.

Because at the end of the day, your culture is your brand. It’s the story of your business inside and out, and it’s a story that’s being written every single day. Don’t try to force it, but don’t lose sight of it either. And above all, make sure that you are working everyday to craft a story worth telling.

— ZK

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Why Meetings Really Do Make a Difference

It’s easy to hate on meetings. They can turn so easily into exercises of futility as you and your team spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get on the same page. Sometimes it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere at all, and precious hours of productivity evaporate into thin air. But meetings aren’t simply about planning and organizing work. They actualize the most essential element of your business: its culture.

In truth, we have every reason to love meetings. It’s bad meetings we can’t stand. Those soul-sucking exercises where it feels like everyone is talking in endless circles. Good meetings, on the other hand, energize everyone in the room and get them excited about returning to their work.

So then, the obvious question to ask is how you make all your meetings good, right?

Maybe you can improve every meeting by establishing a clear direction, ensuring everyone is prepared in advance, or setting rigorous time limits. Those are very typical examples of how you can make your meetings way more efficient and productive. But the truth is that they completely miss the point of why meetings are so important.

Meetings aren’t about maximum operational efficiency. Trying to hack them into that shape only diverts them further from their true purpose, and just pushes them closer to that unproductive disaster that we so desperately want to avoid.

The true purpose of meetings has very little to do with efficiency. Instead, they are where you make the culture and the story of your business a real thing.

We love to talk about culture in the abstract. So much so that it can sometimes feel like something the company is just aspiring to, rather than actually being in the day-to-day. Meetings are the stomping ground to turn all those ephemeral concepts into something proven and real.

Humans love stories, and whenever we get together — even if it’s just for operational realignment — we tell stories together. We weave context into even the most basic of interactions.

That contextualization is where the real magic happens with meetings. When the team is siloed in their individual duties and grinding away at everyday tasks, it’s incredibly easy to lose sight of the purpose that’s driving it all. When your team focuses on the mundane only, their place in that greater story ceases to exist.

Meetings are where you make that story palpable again. They’re where you show every member of your team that their work really does matter. They’re where you translate the originating myths that made your company what it is today. Above all, they’re where you turn a group of workers into a community united by common purpose.

Now more than ever, people work for that sense of purpose. It’s how you keep your team onboard, and it's the key to unlocking their potential. If your team is genuinely tapped into that greater ambition then they will work harder and stronger than ever.

Meetings are the place to reaffirm all of that. It doesn’t even take much from you as a leader to make it so. Meetings — these gatherings of people — naturally create the kinds of stories you want told. All you have to do is make the space for it.

It can be hard to put your faith in that kind of effect when you’re paying with precious man hours. It may seem like your startup simply can’t afford any wasted time, but if meetings mean empowering and exciting every single person on your team then they’re worth any price.

— ZK

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What Work Smarter, Not Harder Really Means

We live in a culture where working yourself to your absolute limit is valued above all else. It sounds great until that intense work ethic develops into extreme burnout. As good as hustle can be, the real way to be productive in the long-term will always be to work smarter, not harder.

It’s an easy thing to say, but so much harder to do. Working smarter and not harder is generally described simply as eeking out every little efficiency you can. In other words, putting input toward what gets the most output. But the truth is there’s much more to it than that.

As much as working smart is about identifying and prioritizing the tasks that matter most, it’s just as important to acknowledge your own emotional, physical, and mental well-being. Working past your limit and burning out can be far more destructive to your long-term productivity than a few inefficiencies here and there.

What often leads to the most problems is our skewed perception of the “work” that we should be spending most of our time on. It’s not always as simple as putting nose to grindstone and doing all the mundane tasks that we’re told are important.

Part of the answer is to think critically about what work genuinely stands a chance of impacting your personal success or the success of the startup you are working with. But it’s just as important to understand that success is about much more than the work you do in the traditional sense.

Let’s take spending time with your friends for example. If we’re accepting the conventional wisdom on hustle as gospel then time with friends is one of the first things to get axed. But the truth is that making those relationships a priority is absolutely essential to your emotional and mental well-being. The value of that cannot be understated when it comes to your continued productivity.

The same goes for the relationships you cultivate at work. There’s nothing more debilitating to your productivity than a negative environment at the workplace. Taking the time to build a positive rapport with your teammates makes everything else you do so much easier. It can also improve collaboration and lead to a higher quality of work in general.

Not to mention the limitless potential of every genuine connection you build with another person. We like to talk a lot about how it’s not what you know, but who you know. You can’t cultivate those kinds of valuable contacts if you spend all your time buried in a computer. Not only is relationship-building good for your emotional health, but it may open the door to the next big step you’re hoping to take in your career.

If your startup is experiencing high levels of turnover, it may be worth considering if you and your team are getting the opportunity to do more than the pure travails of day to day work. Sometimes the best work takes shape when you have nothing active on your plate. When you get a moment to take a breath and start think why you are doing what you are doing. You may be surprised what you can uncover about how to do your job better.

If your startup can afford it, it’s worth budgeting time for reflection and creative thinking. Not only will it help keep yourself and your team happy, but it may be all that’s needed to discover that game-changing idea to make your business all the more successful.

Working smarter is about giving yourself time to recover when you know you’re approaching your limit. More than that, it’s about giving yourself time to think.

Change only happens when we let ourselves escape the loop of work and truly imagine how things could be better. Give yourself abundant opportunity to do just that.

— ZK

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Defining Your Limits as a Leader

No one person can do it all. It’s a hard lesson for every leader to learn, especially those that have built a startup from the ground up. When you first get started, you think that you can have a hand in everything your company does. But inevitably, that is not only unhealthy for you, but harmful to the continued growth of your business.

It’s a very natural behavior to fall into, and it’s not necessarily a bad one when you first start out. Everyone likes a leader that works hard. A leader that is always there for you; a leader who can do it all. We have all heard the mantra of leading by example, but there’s going to be some point along the road where that won’t work the way it used to.

Eventually, your startup is going to grow to the point that you just can’t physically be involved in every single piece of operational work. If you try, you’re only going to stretch yourself thin and burn yourself out. You’re not going to be able to manage your team like you used to which will only create more complications and difficulty moving forward.

We all have a limited supply of emotional, physical, and mental energy. It might be okay to push it all recklessly at first, but you need to start being more selective as your company continues to grow. It’s so important as a leader that you are always operating at a high-level of performance and handling the tasks only you can.

None of this to say that you can throw the tasks you used to handle to the team and expect it all to work itself out. When a business is growing, the most important role of the leader is to install a process and structure that doesn’t require your constant input and attention.

There needs to be a rhythm your company can follow again and again that doesn’t rely on your involvement. Those are the structures that are not only going to help you scale, but build the culture of your company. They don’t just define the way you work in the moment, but will become an essential part of your company’s DNA for years to come.

But the truth is that even those structures can’t do all the work alone. Invariably, problems and complications will come up that the process simply isn’t equipped to handle. And yet, you can’t always be there to put out every fire. Your team needs to be able to handle it on their own. That is perhaps the scariest leap that every leader has to make.

Your capacity as a leader can no longer be gauged by how many problems you are able to solve. Rather, your most important job is to build a team that can defeat problems on its own.

The expectation should be set from the very beginning that your team should try to solve problems on their own before escalating it to you. Conversely, you need to have the confidence that you have given them the tools they need to do that effectively. A leader can’t jealously guard their techniques for problem-solving in a company hoping to scale. Being the person with all the answers might have made you a hero before, but it also suggests to your team that you are the only person capable of solving problems. That’s just not sustainable.

The same culture and philosophy should be passed down to every manager you add to the team. They can’t just be the new target for every problem going forward. They need to be just as well-trained to teach their team members to solve problems on their own and to grow their personal roles in the company.

This process of building up your team members to succeed on their own not only helps your business succeed, but it helps the team succeed too. No one wants to feel like they are stuck in the same position forever with no opportunity to grow. Letting them solve their problems and build up their role in the company will help them improve with it.

Maybe you can do it all as a leader at first, but it’s not going to last. At some point, defining your limits and enabling your team to succeed their own will be the most important work you can do to build a startup that’s going to last.

— ZK

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Design Your Product to Do One Thing Really Well

San Francisco tech companies are obsessed with an orthopedic shoe brand called Allbird. That audience liked the shoe because it spoke to exactly what they want: something comfortable made from thoughtfully chosen materials. It does that one thing really well, and that’s how it differentiated in a highly competitive market.

Last week we talked about Instagram and how Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger carved out a niche by focusing on the one thing their audience really liked: editing photos with filters and sharing them with their friends. They started out with a product called Burbn that was only motivated by trying to be a better Foursquare. They weren’t doing any one thing particularly well; they were just trying to do what Foursquare had already locked down.

That is until they found the one feature that differentiated from the market. It was a simple thing — something that didn’t require some stroke of innovative genius to create. The true masterstroke was in recognizing the opportunity in that one thing they knew people liked and building an entire product around it.

Too many new products these days get bogged down in feature creep. They want to do everything and don’t end up doing anything particularly well. Even worse, they present an app that is more incoherent than it is useful to any kind of person.

In that last article on Instagram and stagnating growth, we mentioned Barry Schwartz and his theories on choice — the so-called ‘paradox of choice’. His argument is that when we are given too many choices, it becomes overwhelming rather than empowering. Ultimately, we are paralyzed by the vast stretches of options available to us.

The same logic applies strongly to product design. People don’t want to wade into an app loaded with complicated features and slowly work through comprehending it. They want a lot of apps that they know will do one thing really well.

Whether or not you agree with Barry, there’s no doubt that highly targeted design and messaging is quickly become the norm. Look no further than the progression from TV packages to online streaming services for that proof. We don’t want to buy something that offers the one thing we want bundled with all the things we don’t want anymore.

If we want HBO, we get the HBO app. If we want to share photos, we get Instagram. TechCrunch calls this new phenomenon the Unbundling of Everything, and there is very little doubt that we are living in a sort of age of unbundling. Highly specialized products are quickly becoming the norm and they are the key to unlocking success and carving out a place in the market.

What is the one thing you do well? What is the one thing that no one else is doing quite as well as you could? Most importantly, what is the one thing that a specific audience out there really wants? You don’t need to try everything anymore — just do one thing really damn well and you’ve got it made.

Be an artisan — a master of a single art. It’s just not worth being a jack of all trades anymore.

— ZK

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How to Adjust When Product Growth Stagnates

Before Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger created Burbn. It was an app designed in the mold of Foursquare, allowing users to make plans, hang out with friends, and post pictures. What they found was that of anything the app did, people enjoyed posting pictures with filters by far the most. They pivoted into that space and the rest is history.

The journey of every startup is rarely without some complications and necessary adjustments along the way. You may even be lucky enough to find product to market fit, sustained growth, and still hit a brick wall at some point. Most companies don’t even get that far.

There are a few typical responses that people attempt when growth falls flat, no matter what stage in the process they may be. Whether it be optimizing the onboarding funnel or boosting SEO, these reactions are usually a step too late in the game.

Before you can refine the process of getting your customer to the buy-in stage, you have to know who they are. More importantly, you have to know what they want. That is exactly what Systrom and Krieger did to build Instagram into what it is today. Not everyone is going to have a success story like that, but there’s no reason why we can’t take that general practice and apply it broadly to any business.

The question of course is how you do that. There’s a lot of general wisdom out there when it comes to finding your audience and tooling your product to fit. You create case studies, personas, and customer journey prototypes. You narrow your focus to some kind of niche and you figure out what need your product fills.

But so much of it is easier said than done. You may have been able to create something that everyone wants, but discover that there are already 15 other companies eating up the market share. Instagram found a blue ocean of a market and took over, but what if all the oceans have dried up?

Well the good news is history suggests that there will always be new markets to fit into. If your idea is innovative enough, you may be able to create one of your own. The market is always shifting and always growing. People are always going to want something new. Nothing stays stagnant forever and neither can you if you want to find the right space to live in.

To do that, there is one mantra that rises to the top. It’s what Instagram, Netflix, AirBNB, and so many other companies did to great effect. Pay attention to your users. But don’t do it by asking them for feedback or surveys necessarily. The old Henry Ford adage about faster horses still applies. Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

Start by looking at top-line metrics, those Key Performance Indicators that will actually tell you something about how your users are engaging with your product and more importantly what they want to get out of it. They are not one-size-fits-all. Take the time to learn what KPIs are relevant for the kind of product you are building and take a look at all the tools out there to help you measure and visualize them.

And understand that the best response isn’t to overload your product with features to see what sticks. In fact, the opposite strategy makes much more sense. Instagram is essentially a stripped down version of Burbn with the one core feature that Systrom and Krieger saw people engaging with most.

Follow Ben Schwartz’ wisdom about choice and make sure you don’t paralyze your users with so many options that your product becomes overwhelming. It is almost always better to focus and sharpen what you are trying to build. As long as an app does one thing well that people enjoy, it doesn’t need anything else.

Be prepared to strip away the features that just aren’t getting traction. It can be a painful thing especially if it causes a temporary shortfall in growth or revenue, but it is almost always worth it in the long run. Focus precious time and energy on the things you do best. More than anything else, that’s the way to create differentiation.

Many startups suffer from something called mission creep — a term normally applied to nonprofits that want to accomplish too much and get lost in the process. In the startup space, it usually happens because you see some feature or product idea that can quickly generate revenue and you lose track of what you wanted to accomplish in the first place.

This is almost always a bad idea if you want to grow in the long-term. It sounds a lot like pivoting, but it is actually the opposite of what that word really means. Systrom and Krieger didn’t chase the short-term revenue that they may have gained by riding the coattails of Foursquare. They turned away and focused on what they did best.

That’s how they found their blue ocean, and there’s no reason why you can’t do the same.

— ZK

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Why It’s Okay to Fail (And Learn from It)

Omer Goldberg burned his first startup to the ground. 12 months later, his new startup Mindflow.ai graduated from Y Combinator’s startup school and is approaching its alpha release. Recently, Omer shared the story of his first startup—the trials and tribulations of creating a business out of an idea, and his eventual acceptance that failure is okay as long as you learn from it.

We put too much pressure on ourselves to get it right the first time. Whether you’re opening a new startup or starting a new job, it’s inevitable that many mistakes are going to be made along the way. No one starts out an expert at anything. What separates the best is the ability to accept failure, to learn, and to adapt.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of that process for many people can simply be accepting the failure. But there’s a good reason for that. Failure is scary. We are conditioned very early on to do everything we can to avoid failure and we are taught largely that it is a terrible thing.

Failure can be discouraging. It can make you lose confidence in your ideas and yourself. It can stop you from believing that you have the ability and potential to build something successful.

But it’s all bull shit. Failure is only a bad thing because people say that it is. We can stop telling ourselves that failure is the end all, be all whenever we want. It’s what the greatest innovators in every age did. They rejected failure and they kept trying.

No matter how talented you are and no matter how good your idea may be, failure is an inevitably at some point unless you are the luckiest person alive. We are only doing harm to ourselves when we fear it because in truth, failure is the only way that we can learn and improve.

Omer had no idea how to run a startup and build a product that people wanted, but that didn’t stop him from trying. His business failed, but that didn’t stop him from trying again. It’s not easy to get out there and fail, but it’s a lot harder to take anything away from the experience.

It’s much easier to lash out and blame others for any stumbles on the road. It can really hurt to be genuinely self-critical, but it’s one of the most productive things that we can do. Recognizing where we went wrong and taking the time to correct that mistake is essential to any kind of progress — and it is perhaps the most important attribute of success.

But it’s also possible to take it too far. Too much self-criticism translates to self-doubt and the same kind of paralyzing effect of a fear of failure. You can be critical without being overly hard on yourself. It’s a waste of time beating yourself up over mistakes. Simply acknowledge them and keep moving.

Letting go of that fear of failure and all that conditioning is the first step. It’s something that’s a lot easier to say than it is to do. There is no small amount of societal conditioning out there that gives us every reason to fear failure — may it be financial uncertainty or social judgement. We’re very rarely given the space to go out and try to accomplish whatever we want without fear of the consequences.

But it’s a much rarer thing to succeed. At some point, it will become clear that you’re better off making the leap than treading water. We only have so much time to make our mark in this world. You may stumble and you may fall, but that’s okay. You can always get back up.

That’s what Omer did. His first foray as a startup burned to ashes, but he rose up and tried again. Now, he’s on the path that he’s always wanted because he took the time to learn from every single mistake. There’s no reason why you can’t do the same.

— ZK

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Uber's Fall From Grace or Why You Need to Create a Company Culture Everyone Can Believe In

Everyone is churning out think pieces aimed at diagnosing what went so wrong with Uber. The juggernaut of a tech company has been showered with bad press lately, culminating with the resignation of its CEO Travis Kalanick. And practically everything that went wrong points back to a complete and utter failure to build a successful company culture.

It’s not exactly a bold statement to say that Uber has a serious culture problem. It’s even something that the company openly acknowledged. What’s important to understand about Uber is that it was culturally doomed from the start.

Not because it had someone like Travis Kalanick calling the shots or because it embraced Silicon Valley fraternity behavior to the nth degree. The problem with Uber’s culture was born out of the very business model and product that made it explode in popularity.

Benjamin Edelman of the Harvard Business Review argues that the company’s cultural dysfunction is a natural consequence of its fundamental illegality. And while those other factors may have contributed to the disaster that it’s now dealing with, every single one of its problems stems back to the simple fact that they chose from the beginning to ignore the law.

And in many ways, we ignored it with them. We all like Uber or at least the idealized form of what Uber promises as a piece of disruptive tech. It’s also true that a culture of casual and inoffensive lawbreaking or at least an agnostic view toward the law is fairly common in today’s world. Uber is not exactly operating beyond the pale in that respect.

But Uber is case and point that this attitude — especially when it is pervasive throughout a whole company — can quickly become something toxic and destructive. It’s a slippery slope and may invariably lead to deserting other values like respectfulness and integrity.

When you can break the law flagrantly without any worry of being punished, is it really any wonder that you would start to believe you could do anything and everything you wanted?

The good news is that the promise of Uber doesn’t have to go away. Edelman uses the example of Napster to prove that a company that is fundamentally illegal can have successors — Pandora, Spotify, iTunes — that promise the same kinds of innovations only inside the law.

But in the meantime, what can we learn from this story more than anything else? Above all, it’s that you must always be thinking about your company’s culture, even from the very start. And that includes thinking about how your business model and every other factor of growth may influence that culture.

Culture isn’t something you can force. Inevitably, it’s going to take shape before your eyes as you build a business and work with the people that are going to drive it forward. But it’s important to always recognize what’s happening and adjust accordingly if you can feel yourself going off track. It’s important to always keep your developing culture at the forefront of everything you do.

It sounds like such a simple thing, but many companies lose sight of this fundamental principle before they know it. And a big reason why is because the process of growth can quickly start to erode away any semblance of culture before it even had the chance to take shape.

FirstRound recently published a piece where they spoke to Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson about the process of scaling while growing. Or in other words, how to avoid letting your company grow out of control. Her main point: take the time to hit pause and see what’s happening to your business.

She says that “for a long time, your actions pull your company along, and then all of a sudden it switches — your existing business starts pushing your behavior.” Basically, you find a profitable niche that works for you and you let it decide who you are as a business even if it’s antithetical to where you started from the beginning.

And it’s easy to see why. Making any business work is incredibly hard these days. Why wouldn’t you seize onto any chance of profit and ride it for all its worth? The answer is that you don’t let yourself do that because inevitably it will catch up to you. Inevitably, if you let your company define itself according to a purpose and a culture that no one believes in, it will fail.

People want to believe in the work they are doing now more than ever. We spend so much of our lives at work or thinking about work. If it doesn’t mean something to us then engagement starts to deteriorate — and it starts to deteriorate quickly.

Nothing is more important to the success of a company than an engaged team. A team not just devoted to their personal growth, but the growth of the company as a whole. If you bring them in promising one thing and your company radically shifts as it grows, they might not stick by you — at least not with the same level of dedication.

It’s easy to ignore culture in the face of the more practical challenges that every new business has to deal with. But Uber and so many other companies are proof that you can’t forget who you are and who you aspire to be. If you can believe in it, the ongoing story of your company will always be there to guide your every move toward success.

— ZK

[13p5]

Engage Your Team in Reshaping Your Startup for the Better

In the world of startups, there’s no such thing as a sure thing. That’s just as true of figuring out what to sell as it is the day-to-day operation of the business itself. No two startups are the same, and you need to work constantly to figure out what exactly you need to do to get your own working at the highest level. Where better to look than your own team for the answers to those questions.

As with all endeavors that take more than one person to accomplish, a successful startup is by nature collaborative. Everyone needs to contribute at their best level to create any kind of sustained success.

While there is no doubt that people should know where they stand—with defined roles and a strong sense of personal responsibility—it’s critical that everyone feel like they have a voice no matter where they stand in that framework.

This can be to the great benefit of team health and continued productivity, as you would probably expect, but maintaining a clear dialogue with your employees can also be the best source of inspiration when things aren’t going the way that they should.

It may not always seem like it, but your team wants to be a part of that process of renewal and change. If they are working in a space where they feel like they can make meaningful contributions then ideas and feedback will feel like a natural extension of the work flow—not an overload of their already taxed bandwidth.

In fact, the simple process of taking a step back and evaluating where you stand can be a great rejuvenating force for everyone involved. It’s so easy to get caught in the tedium of the day to day and lose track of what it’s all for. That opportunity to really get together and brainstorm a path to the future is sometimes all that you need to just get excited about working again.    

We all want to believe really and truly that we are building toward something—that our work is going to mean something bigger. It’s the responsibility of the leader to pave the path for everyone to follow, but not to lay down every single brick.  

The Harvard Business Review recently published an article about how Zipcar doesn’t ask its employees to innovate, it shows them how. It’s worth a read on its own, but the essential truth here is in how you can set very clear expectations. It’s your job as the shaper of this business to identify the culture that you want to build and the kind of goals you want to work toward.

Once those expectations are out in the world—once your employees can clearly read the behaviors that you want to see emulated every single day, they will take the initiative and tailor their working attitude and their feedback toward that ideal.

This practice by Zipcar is really the perfect schema for a business where everyone is working on common ground—where everyone knows what they need to do to improve the startup and also their own personal position. What more can a team member ask for than that kind of clarity?

Lay the path and they will follow. Don’t be afraid to let everyone in on the process. They will reward you for it and your startup will be one step closer toward resembling that perfect image you’ve always dreamed of.    

— ZK

[13p5]

How to Manage Yourself When Times Get Tough

Being an entrepreneur, a business leader, or founder is undoubtedly mentally taxing in even the best of times. There are so many responsibilities that can come across your desk, everything from product development to team management.

And for a founder, chances are the ‘best of times’ won’t be happening very often. So with all that in mind, let’s take a look at some best practices to get that potential stress and challenge under control.

Jonathan Long wrote recently for Entrepreneur.com about 5 ways to power through when times get difficult. One of his fundamental points was the idea that you should have a larger purpose behind all the work that you do. We as human beings are always searching for meaning to define what we do and the things that happen to us.

There’s an incredible benefit in internalizing that kind of motivation and strength, and it goes beyond simply hitting success benchmarks for your business. That purpose can take many forms--it could be leaving a lasting mark or simply accomplishing a level of hustle that you didn’t think you could before. The exact form that motivation takes doesn’t really matter, so long as it is something you are passionate enough about achieving that it can continue to drive you through the good times and the bad.

Jonathan also keenly points out something we’ve talked at 13p5 before: the importance of knowing when you need to take a step back. Successful people always want to push beyond their limits and achieve more than they ever thought they could, but they also understand when it’s time to take a break, reassess, and recharge.

If you let yourself take on more responsibility than you can handle, chances are you won’t be doing work to the kind of quality that you and the people around you expect, and you’ll just end up disappointing yourself and the people that count on you. It’s worth taking a step back when you know you don’t have the bandwidth to take it all on.

Another valuable piece of that recharge time is that it can be the genesis of new and great ideas. When you’re in the trenches non-stop, it can be very difficult to let yourself stretch out and consider new opportunities. That break time may be the source of the next game-changing idea that will take yourself and your business to another level.

One last point to consider is to partition time dedicated to taking care of yourself. This seems so simple, but it’s also one of the quickest things to fall by the wayside for the intrepid entrepreneur trying to leave their mark and find success.

There are only so many hours to work, and it can sometimes feel like you could spend 40 a day on making your business run smoothly. But the truth is that you stand your best chance at working consistently at maximum capacity if you’re living a happy and healthy life while you do it. That means sleep, exercise, and fulfilling non-work behavior.

So take a step back when things stop feeling good and start getting overly stressful. Assess what you need to do to make it right, and be confident that everyone around you will be supportive of that decision. If you’ve built a team that you truly believe in to pick up the slack, there should be absolutely nothing to worry about. And if they ever come to you with the same concerns, be prepared to extend the same courtesy because they’ll probably working as hard as they possibly can too.

— ZK

[13p5]

How to Capture Interest in Less Than 5 Seconds

With so much content available online these days, there’s no such thing as a captive audience anymore. Gone are the days where you could buy people’s attention with TV ads or supersized roadside billboards. People have so many choices of where and how they choose to consume the information that will help drive their decision-making, and that’s a wonderful thing, but it also makes the job of the marketer increasingly difficult.

Attention has increasingly become the most valuable form of currency, and you have mere seconds to capture people’s attention before they decide to look elsewhere. Many websites use what’s called the five second test to determine whether their homepage is eye-catching and quickly consumable enough to communicate value and capture interest before visitors look elsewhere.

The most important piece of this is clarity. Designers are increasingly favoring minimalist and simple layouts, and there’s a science behind why they are making that decision. People judge a website’s appearance just as quickly as anything else, and in a 2012 Google Study, visually complex websites were consistently rated as less beautiful than their more simplistic and minimal counterparts.

As humans, we don’t want to waste precious time and energy wrapping our head around something that doesn’t intuitively make sense. A website that is unclear and hides or disguises valuable information will turn people away before it even has a chance to leave any kind of lasting impression. Instead, all the info that people need to become interested should be front and center and presented in a clean and clear format.

Your value, the problem you're solving, and how exactly you plan to enact it (in the form of clearly articulated products and/or services) should headline your site. Details like pricing, FAQs, and about pages can follow, but only after that critical first impression is made.

More important than specific information is the all important answer to the “why” question. Why should a visitor care about you and your product? Why should they be spending precious time on your site? If you can’t answer that question in a satisfying way then you’ve failed the test.

The best way to communicate the why of you, your product, and your website isn’t as cut and dry as it seems because it actually has nothing to do with you, your product, or your website. Instead, the absolute best way to make people care about you is to make it all about them.

Your site and your product should simply serve as a form of validation for something your audience already believes. They are the center of the universe, they are the hero of the story, and they need your help to make their life better in whatever way you know you can provide.

That’s the message that should be at the very heart of your website, and your marketing at large. That’s the message that’s going to get them to to take notice and buy into your vision. Every piece of your web copy, the images you display, and the structure behind it all should put to the customer, and how you can make their life better in a big (or small way).  

[13p5]

Idea vs. Execution: What should you be valuing more?

It’s a debate that always comes up in the startup space. Does execution or the idea itself matter more? Like most binary issues, the best answer is usually somewhere in the middle. Investors want to know that your idea could be valuable to people and different from what’s already out there. But actually taking action, making a change, and knowing how to turn that idea into a product is just as crucial. 

In many ways, the word “idea” doesn’t account for how the process of development actually works. An idea in the startup context should not be understood statically. Ideas are iterative, they change and grow as they are developed further. There’s a school of thought that says that ideas are “a dime a dozen,” gimmicks that can only take you so far. It’s important to embrace and celebrate new ideas that make valuable changes, whether they’re ideas for a new product or new ideas for how to run every little part of your business. Ideas are the lifeblood of startups and what sets them apart. 

So great ideas have incredible value. They disrupt the space and they are the stimulus for solutions that no one could have imagined, but people who value execution argue that it doesn’t stop there. Steve Jobs had two very important things to say about why execution is so important and should never be brushed aside.

“To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”

The strength of your idea will define the scope of your success, but whether or not you succeed at all is predicated on your ability to execute. An idea doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can’t sell a lightbulb unless you have the capacity and the resources to package and sell it as something people want.

“You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.”

Execution is craftsmanship. Creating a successful product is a lot of hard work and it’s going to take a prolonged and dedicated effort with the right people to make it possible. Maybe this isn’t always true. Maybe you can strike gold with something basic and simple. It’s happened before, but it’s not something to rely on unless you choose to take that risky path. You’re not necessarily wrong in doing so. In many ways, being an entrepreneur is all about taking risks, finding answers no one could have guessed, and unprecedented success stories.

You Decide

It’s up to you to judge your space, see what you require most, and make a decision. If the investors you’re targeting are all about game-changing ideas then you better be prepared to provide some. If they want to see a sound strategy and plan to turn that idea into a scalable business then that’s where your emphasis should be.

Maybe you’re in a business environment that’s running, but isn’t changing and iterating as the world changes around it. It might be time for some new ideas. Maybe your team is incredibly forward thinking, but doesn’t have the resources to turn dreams into reality. It’s all about identifying deficiencies. That’s the key to a successful business in any context.

– ZK

[13p5]

Why Audience Building is the Key to a Successful Startup

The real, tested value of building and engaging with an online audience

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers was able to make $46,398 in 10 days. How did he do it? By building an audience. There was a time when advertisers with big budgets could buy people’s attention and get them to buy any product. These days—in this digital era of ours—that is no longer true. And that’s great. Any startup can take over the space with a great idea, but that also means that there are an incredible amount of ideas overloading the market at any given time.

With so much information flying around, people’s attention is more valuable than ever, and it’s not so easily bought anymore. You need to build an audience and you need to do it by providing content that people love to engage with.

Derek’s audience is huge with hundreds of thousands of subscribers to his blog. You can’t really anticipate that kind of success, especially when you’re just getting started, but luckily you don’t need anything remotely like that to make your audience the most powerful part of your business. Your audience is more than just an engaged customer—though that element shouldn’t be discounted. They are the lynch pin that will help you create products that people want, retain and find new customers, and build a brand that has lasting impact.

Your audience can help you build a better product

The much-discussed lean startup methodology leverages your audience and their feedback to help you build a better product. The concept of creating the “minimum viable product” (MVP) and getting it out there as quickly as possible is central, but this idea is just as applicable when it comes to creating the “minimum viable audience” (MVA). To have that all-important feedback loop, you need people to bounce your ideas off of, but it doesn’t take an audience the size of Derek’s to make that possible.

An MVA is more than just a source to know what your customers want to buy. For digital entrepreneurs in particular, finding your MVA gives you a number of distinct advantages if you know how to recognize them and put them to work.

Some of those benefits are very much in line with what the lean startup methodology promises. Your MVA can serve as the most organic form of market research imaginable. You are communicating with real people with real opinions by way of your product and they will help to you get a better sense of what the market wants. They will also help you build a better product faster. You can be more transparent with your MVA, who are those early adopters that want to see you succeed. With your goals and intentions clearly expressed, they can help you tune your product quickly and efficiently without unhelpful criticism.

Your audience can help you find new customers

Your MVA can also help to locate new customers and continue to build your audience further. If your audience is engaged enough that they are giving you feedback to improve your product and interacting with your content, then they become invested in the success of that product and your content. Leveraging that feeling and making them as much of a part of the experience as possible will turn your already engaged customers into evangelists for your brand. That kind of word of mouth marketing is your most powerful resource for spreading the word.

Your audience can you help you build your brand

When you start out with an idea and some sense of what you want your business to be, all the details aren’t always clear. You learn a lot along the way and adjust accordingly and that’s great, but you can’t do that without the all-important MVA and the feedback they provide. If you let yourself get trapped in an echo chamber then you’ll have no sense of how your audience sees you. Their opinions are crucial when it comes to identifying what your company does and what it is. They can clarify your vision, help you identify the values that matter most to your business, and keep your mission on course. In short, your audience is the key to building a strong brand if you invite them in.

Your audience can do so much more

The power an audience can have on business doesn’t even stop there. If you are committed to building an audience, you engage them every day, and you create excellent content that speaks to their interests, then the possibilities are infinite. You can follow in Derek Halpern’s footsteps and monetize them directly. Audience growth often leads to user growth and that leads to a better valuation and the chance at getting investors attention. So long as you are putting audience building first, success is only so far away.

[13p5]

6 Ways to Gain Respect as a Young Entrepreneur

The great thing about the startup space today is that anyone with a great idea can break in, but if you want to build a long-term, sustainable business, it helps to have the respect of everyone around you. Your customers, your team, your investors, and your clients all need to believe in your ability to do the best possible job for them.

This is especially tricky for young entrepreneurs who may be perceived as inexperienced in a position that they haven’t “earned.” Whether any disrespect you might receive is fueled by jealousy or other negative emotions, it always pays to defy expectations and put your best foot forward. If you want to be the kind of business leader that people believe in, here are 6 ways to make it happen.

1. Be Prepared

Once it’s clear that you will be leading a team, you should start preparing immediately. Demonstrate a keen awareness of the field you are working in as soon as you walk through the door. They’re not lying when they say that the first impressions are key. Be prepared to dress appropriately and speak politely in any given business situation. Many work environments are casual and there’s nothing wrong with encouraging that as a leader, but always be prepared to adjust to whatever a customer or investor might expect. Respect others and you will be respected in turn.

2. Build relationships with your team

You might have some desire to be the enigmatic entrepreneur, secluded and eccentric. That sounds cool, but doesn’t lend itself to a friendly and productive work environment. If you want your team to believe in you then you need to take the time to get to know them personally to build a good working relationship. Show an interest and dissolve any misconceptions that you have an ego before they take root. This not only leads to better communication and workflow, but more respect and people that you can trust in turn.

3. Know your customers

Developing good relationships is just as (if not more) important with your customers as it is with your team. If all your customers know about you is that you are young and relatively new to the business then they might form false conclusions about you. Spend as much time as you can afford on the phone and on email with customers and clients and make sure they know that you can satisfy all of their concerns. This will not only build trust, but it’s also a great way to get a better sense of who your audience is and what they want most out of your product.

4. Listen & Communicate

Don’t let the experience of your team members go to waste. Listen to what they have to say and learn. When you’re just getting started, make sure that you are taking in as much information flow as you can. If there are any blind spots in your knowledge (and chances are there will be a few) then this is an easy fix. This is also the best way to earn the respect of your team. If they see that you take their contributions seriously then they will feel the same about what you have to offer. They will also recognize and respect your quality of character and your willingness to learn and grow when you show genuine interest.

5. Lead by executing

Your team needs to see that you’re ready and willing to get your hands dirty. Show them that you’re capable of executing in every part of your business and they will follow your example. This is also a great way to develop the kind of experience you’re going to need before you can begin sending your team off on their own to do the right kind of work for you. Build a culture of hustle by showing your team how hard you are willing to work. When you make a commitment always follow through and your employees will do the same.

6. Innovate the space

You are uniquely positioned as a new business leader to be a force for change. If people wanted the same old thing then the veterans with years of experience would be better placed to do that job. Respect old strategies, be thorough in your arguments for why a change will make things better, and follow it up with strong actions. Always stay curious, always try to innovate. That is exactly what it takes to stay relevant, push the industry forward, and be a thought leader in your space.

Earning respect isn’t easy, but it’s an incredibly valuable trait to develop that will help in every business pursuit for the duration of your professional career. You might as well start early.

– ZK

[13p5]

Transparency Matters for Startups. Here’s Why

A look at how transparency can bolster your business beyond a simple marketing tactic. 

Transparency is a tricky word with many conflicting associations. Business owners may think of it as nothing more than a buzzword, pushed as a label purely for PR purposes. There’s a school of thought that looks at transparency and sees restrictive measures and an unprofitable business strategy. For these people, transparency is a marketing tool to brand yourself with honesty in mind, but barring that, it doesn’t do anything helpful for your business.

There are others who disagree. There has been a growing movement in the startup world over the last few years that takes transparency seriously and sees real value in applying it to many different component parts of a strong business.

So let’s take a closer look at how these people define it and three core ways to empower your business with a strong commitment to transparency

Feedback when you need it most

Many startups see real value in making transparency a part of their business model. Being transparent with your audience is a core tenant of an incredibly popular and successful business development methodology. The lean startup, the strategy behind some of the most successfulinnovations of the day (Facebook, Spanx, Uber, and AirBNB), encourages companies to invite their audience to be a part of the development process.

Rather than hiding your efforts behind a screen and waiting for feedback only after you’ve released your final product, the lean startup is all about an open-ended development process working within an iterative cycle of building, gauging response, learning, and going back to the drawing board. This degree of transparency leads to better products tailor fit to what your audience is really looking for.

Strong Leadership

A good leader inspires trust and the best way to make that possible is to have a policy of aggressive transparency. The workplace runs more smoothly when uncertainty is eliminated and everyone is working on the same page. Transparency culls rumors before misinformation can confuse and distract. If your team has clear sense of your expectations and what they mean then they can act more quickly and more efficiently.

Companies like Yesware have even found that sharing the concerns of executives to the rest of the team managed to cut down infrastructure costs dramatically (from 60% of their top line to as little as 17%).

Building a culture

Being transparent in your internal comms and your leadership as a whole will help to build astronger company culture as a whole. When team members have a context for what they are doing and a sense of how meaningful their part is in the greater whole then they are more invested and ultimately more productive. Communicating a strong sense of what that whole is, what it will do for your customers, and what part each individual has to play is an incredibly powerful means of uniting your team and getting the kinds of results you want. 

How much is too much?

It’s important to keep in mind that there are limits to transparency and what you should and should not be sharing. For example, sharing compensation levels is usually more harmful than it is helpful. A good rule of thumb is to look at whatever you are being transparent about and identify ways that it has a positive impact on your business. If there aren’t any, then it’s probably not worth sharing. At the end of the day, this is about results and making your company run better, not worse.

Everyone doesn’t need to know everything at all times, but they should have access to information if they want it.  That’s the key factor. Overloading your team with information is far less useful and more distracting than providing them with what they need to know when they need to know it.

How can you be more transparent?

It’s good to know that transparency is a powerful tool in your toolbox, but it’s better to have specific strategies to put those tools to work. Here are some of the best actionable directives for a more transparent and more successful business.

Hold Q&As where team members can get the information that they are looking for.

If you’re having an issue staying afloat, share the data that you have and what the strategy is going forward, not your guesses at the future.

Decentralize the strain and the responsibility. A benefit of transparency is that, if done in the right way, you can delegate and create new leaders to share the load.

Source feedback from your audience as a part of development. There is definite value in checking out the lean startup strategy, especially for tech-based products and services.

If customers see an issue then it’s important to take that feedback seriously. People are better than ever at detecting BS, so an honest show of your intentions and your plan to make their lives better is usually the best way to go. A transparent business model that leverages your audience to build the best kind of product is a proven strategy for great results. Your team works, delegates, and interacts better when you emphasis transparency from the top down. Transparency in your business dealings isn’t just about putting on a good face. If managed the right way, it can lead to real, quantifiable success.

[13p5]

The Power of Presentation and the Value of the First Impression

How you can empower your brand and your story with strong online presentation

First impressions are a big deal. This is no less true of websites or emails as it is for people. In fact, for the startup with one chance to get attention from your prospects, they are even more important because you’ll never get a chance to repair that relationship before the visitor clicks away. For web designers, you have a scant 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) to make a good first impression, so you’d better make it count. 

This isn’t about pulling people in with clickbait or flashy images, but instead about always presenting quality content in an engaging way. You might get more traffic if you go with the first option, but it doesn’t have any real value and people can recognize when they are being sold to. When you present something genuine and compelling, they will recognize and appreciate the effort it took to build that. That’s the kind of response you want. If you’ve built something that people care about and present it in a powerful way that they can relate to, then you have your brand and your story. That translates to leads, sales, and loyal customers. 

Website

A distinct presentation doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to design in a way that no one else has before. Google’s own research on the value of the first impression actually found that users tend to respond better to low complexity and high prototypicality (how consistent a design is with a specific category of websites). Simple with a clear theme that people can recognize is the name of the game. Overwhelming or cluttered designs quickly lead to lost interest. 

The Blog Post

More often than not the blog post is the kind of content you’re going to be pushing as your bread and butter. In terms of the first impression, the headline and feature image are most important. A majority of visitors will only read the headline before clicking away. Kevan Lee of BufferApp believes in a “6 words that count” policy. People scan headlines just as much as the actual body of a post so you need to be able to present something compelling in a few words.

Feature images are important because good visual content is vibrant and aesthetically appealing, but also because from a formatting standpoint it cuts down on the number of characters per line. This is important for readability, but it also just looks way better. Again, this isn’t about snaring people with clickbait or eye-catching fluff, but about having a strong sense of what your audience cares about presented in a way that isn’t boring.

Landing Pages

You can’t talk about first impressions in a startup context without giving landing pages some thought. There’s a wealth of advice out there in terms of what to do and what not to do when it comes to landing pages. So much so that it can be overwhelming, unnecessarily restrictive, and occasionally contradictory.

While it’s impossible to take in all the advice out there, for most designs it pays to heed a few key rules of thumb. First, don’t distract people with information that doesn’t matter to them. Be clear about what you’re offering, how it will help them, and why signing up will get them one step closer to getting that help. This can all be achieved with a strong call-to-action and clearly defined benefits for signing-up. Cut back on buzzwords and highlight the most important information so that it sticks out. Detail is fine if it’s not overwhelming, but always make sure that the core, engaging elements are front and center.

Social Media

What about social media? There’s no doubt that in the process of building your identity online, you’ll have to get on sites like Twitter and Facebook at some point, but there’s a right and wrong way to go about it. The name of the game here is engagement. A Twitter page with sporadic updates and links to your website won’t do much for you in the grand scheme. A social media outlet that interacts, builds interesting conversations, and centralizes all the information that your audience would want to hear will generate positive buzz, word of mouth advertising, and solidify your brand identity.

Your exact social media strategy will depend mainly on your particular audience. Targeting what your audience is interested in is best accomplished by taking a close look at metrics (keywords, follower profiles, competitors) and trial runs of different tactics. Does your audience respond better to giveaways or compelling links to relevant content? These are the things you should be trying to figure out and the best way to do that is to try everything, analyze, and react accordingly. This process of finding yourself on social media will not only build your following, but also help you better understand and then present your brand and story.

This can all seem like a confused balancing act, but at the end of the day, you’re just trying to find the best way to reach people. Make something that looks impressive and people will think your product or service is impressive. Strong presentation in every aspect of your business is just one more part of your effort to build a great brand and story. A confident story that isn’t trying to misdirect or bury details has a clear identity. If you portray yourself confidently then your prospects will be confident in you and believe in your ability to deliver whatever you’re promising. They will also recognize your honesty: that you believe in them just as much as they believe in you. If that’s the kind of story you want to tell and the kind of business you want to be then let it show. Your audience will take note.

– ZK