Prince Rahul's Key Ideas from The $100 Startup
by Chris Guillebeau

To start a business, you need three things:

1. A product or service,
2. A group of people willing to pay for it, and
3. A way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional.

Ask three questions for every idea:

1. How would I get paid with this idea?
2. How much would I get paid from this idea?
3. Is there a way I could get paid more than once?

• The secret to a meaningful new career was directly related to making people feel good about themselves.
• You can pursue freedom for yourself while providing value for others.
• Value means “helping people.”
• The more a business can focus on core benefits instead of boring features, the more customers will connect … and purchase.

Strategy 1: Dig Deeper to Uncover Hidden Needs

Strategy 2: Make Your Customer a Hero

Strategy 3: Sell What People Buy

• If your business focuses on giving people more of what they want or taking away something they don’t want (or both), you’re on the right track.
• Businesses that help their customers be happy are well-positioned to succeed.

• Give people what they really want, not just what you think they should have. Give them the fish!
• (Passion + skill) → (problem + marketplace) = opportunity
• You just have to find the right passion, the right audience, and the right business model.
• The first $1.26 or first sale is the hardest, so find a way to get your first sale as quickly as possible. Then work on improving the things that are working, while ignoring the things that aren’t.

1. Impact : Overall, how much of an impact will this project make on your business and customers?
2. Effort: How much time and work will it take to create the project?
3. Profitability: Relative to the other ideas, how much money will the project bring in?
4. Vision: How close of a fit is this project with your overall mission and vision?

• In the battle between planning and action, action wins.
• You need to show people how you can help remove or reduce pain.
• Mission statement: We help [customers] do/achieve/other verb [primary benefit].
• “Plan as you go” to respond to the changing needs of your customers but launch your business as soon as possible, with a bias toward action.

• KEEP COSTS LOW
• GET THE FIRST SALE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
• MARKET BEFORE MANUFACTURING
• RESPOND TO INITIAL RESULTS
• MAGIC FORMULA: THE RIGHT AUDIENCE, THE RIGHT PROMISE, THE RIGHT TIME = OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE.
• Work “on” your business by devoting time every day to activities specifically related to improvement, not just by responding to everything else that is happening.

• If you’re not sure where to spend your business development time, spend 50 percent on creating and 50 percent on connecting.
• The difference between a good offer and a great offer is urgency (also known as timeliness): Why should people act now?
• The message you want to communicate is: “This is why this project will be a game changer, here’s how people will benefit, and here’s why you should care.”

• Style without substance = flash (No one respects these people.)
• Substance without style = unknown (Everyone who knows these people respects them, but not many people know them.)
• Style with substance = impact (This is the goal.)
• Remember that most core needs are emotional: We want to be loved and affirmed. Relate your product or service to attractive benefits, not boring features.

• Spend as little money as possible and make as much money as you can.
• Spend only on things that have a direct relationship to sales.
• Borrowing money or investing a lot of money to start a business is completely optional.
• Maintain a practice of regular rate increases so that it becomes normal and expected.

1. Price your product or service in relation to the benefit it provides, not the cost of producing it.
2. Offer customers a limited range of prices.
3. Get paid more than once for the same thing.

Also, having a high-end version creates an “anchor price.” When we see a superhigh price, we tend to consider the lower price as much more reasonable … thus creating a fair bargain in our minds.

We tend to default to talking about features, but since most purchases are emotional decisions, it’s much more persuasive to talk about benefits.

Example: A feature is descriptive (“These clothes fit well and look nice”) and a benefit is the value someone receives from the item in question (“These clothes make you feel healthy and attractive”).

• The not-so-secret to improving income in an existing business is through tweaks: small changes that create a big impact.
• If you operate a service-based business, consider how you can introduce a “productized” version of the service.
• Providing both a product and a service helps with your marketing as well.
• To get an unfair advantage, provide remarkable service.

• Horizontally, by going wide and creating different products to apply to different people. Horizontal expansion involves going broader by serving more customers with different (usually related) interests;
• Vertically, by going deep and creating more levels of engagement with customers. Vertical expansion involves going deeper by serving the same customers with different levels of need.

……“A successful partnership (or any type of collaboration) should create a combined business which is at least 33 percent larger than the sum of what the two individuals could achieve on their own.

• Big problems create big opportunities.
• Our future is tied to what we do, decisions we make.
• Be sure to get the paperwork done first.