Seen.co's Lean Story: Revisited
(ft William Pietri)
This is the second of an experimental series where we ask a mentor from the LSM network to share some lessons based on a lean startup case study. William Pietri is a serial entrepreneur and has coached the likes of Kiva and Mozilla on implementing Lean principles. William will be critiquing the case study on Seen.co.
Enter William.
Tarikh's story is a great use of the Lean Startup process. There are five things I'd like to see entrepreneurs take away from it. Red flag - starting with a technology Starting off, there's a big red flag: they began with a technology, automated video collection, and a domain, concerts. You have to start somewhere, so having the idea isn't the problem. But they had invested a fair bit of time with little idea who they were building for. Companies like that can get into trouble, developing a lot of momentum in a direction that ultimately makes no sense. Saving grace - challenging assumptions Luckily, they had a compensating advantage: they were unusually good at challenging themselves. Instead of staying in their bubble, they came to Lean Startup Machine eager to test some assumptions. Better, when their first test succeeded, they didn't take it as a green light. They looked again and said, "Hey, that was too easy!" Their next test was much fairer; they looked hard for the kind of superfan who would really use their product, and were honest with themselves that one wasn't enough. Awesome for somebody beats adequate for everybody Part of what made that work was their hunger for specificity. In their first round, their proposed customer was concert-goers under 30. That's very broad. They narrowed that using four criteria: A) 18- to 24-year-olds B) active on social media, for whom C) music is a big part of their identity and D) who caught up on specific shows after the fact. Tarikh's team correctly got more specific about the person, their motivation, and their behaviors in relation to the domain. Novice entrepreneurs, wanting to serve the whole world, often first try to make a product that suits everybody. But when you buy something, you're never just a generic somebody; you're a unique individual, with very specific needs and motivations. If you're going to end up happy enough with something to put down money and tell all your friends, the product has to meet those very specific needs. Having a very focused initial audience makes it easier to design that great product. And, even better, as for Tarikh's team, it makes it much harder to fool yourself. So be specific, and be ready to be wrong as you hunt for the right audience and product. Remember: you'll never have a million customers if you can't wow your first hundred. Don't avoid the lows, but don't get stuck in them The hardest and best moment for any startup is when you realize that you don't know anything. Tarikh's team never really understood who their customer was. But they only discovered that when they challenged themselves to find real live customers. And failed miserably. It took that failure to make them really look at what they could deliver and exactly who could benefit. That moment where you recognize your past ignorance is brutal; you feel lost and foolish. But that pain is the sign of an enormous opportunity: for the first time you're not blinded by your preconceptions. You can see what's really going on. Tarikh's team responded beautifully, casting a wide net for people they could serve. Cheat to win, but follow up I admire this team's last-minute, hail-mary switch to event organizers. You've got to love a scrappy response to adversity. Is it cheating to come up with a product for event organizers at an organized event? You bet. Does one 20-dollar bill in hand validate a new direction for your company? Hell no. But many startup origin stories involve a happy coincidence like this. The secret to making that work for your startup has two parts. One, create lots of opportunities for coincidence: when looking for potential customers, search widely. And two, vigorously investigate every potential opportunity. Some won't pan out and some will be fool's gold, but some will, as in Tarikh's experience, lead you to rich veins to mine.