Build a company around a problem that you yourself have.

To 10x your chances at startup success: Fix a problem that you yourself have.<ul><li>Make a list of 15-20 problems in your life </li><li>Rank them by the most painful </li><li>Build a product that solves one of them</li></ul> This is crucial because: <ul><li>You’ll have a familiarity with the problem which will help you design a solution</li><li>You’ll have knowledge of existing solutions and what they lack</li><li>You’ll know about the space</li><li>Youll know about your target market and customers</li></ul> Building a company for a problem you have is better than building a company for financial reasons.

10X Your Chances Of Startup Success

When building a company, launch earlier rather than later. By launching early, you’ll get feedback from customers sooner and will be able to make adjustments to improve the product.Refine and refine your solution to better solve the problem your customers face

Building A Startup

When looking for your first hires, you need to find people who are as passionate about solving that problem as you areIf you’re trying to build a startup in the software space but don’t have any coding experience, find a cofounder that doesNot every company has to be a venture-backed startup. You can build a successful small company that’s an awesome cashflow machine.

Recruit An Amazing Team

At a certain point, your company will be too big for you to do everything. That’s where delegation comes in.If you’re too much of a control freak, you won’t let others blossom and you’ll limit the growth of your company.When you delegate, you won’t get 100% of the results you want, but you will get 90% of the results with only 5% of the work which is an excellent tradeoff.

When To Delegate Work

Why did James move from San Francisco to Los Angeles? <ul><li>James felt there were more creative individuals in LA than SF</li><li>SF was an engineering-focused space that was very financially driven</li><li>The relationships in SF tend to be more transactional than anything else</li><li>The culture in SF was a serious city that didn’t value humour in people</li><li>In SF, there are 200-300 investors for every great idea which lowers returns and makes it harder to get into a deal</li><li>James believes that in 5 years, LA will become the creative capital of the world</li><li>LA already has a lot of amazing companies such as Snapchat and Honey</li></ul>

Find A Better Playground For Your Creativity

Founder quotes and tricks for building a great product.

https://bit.ly/Go_BelowtheLine  Hit the show hotline and leave a question or comment for the show: 424-272-6640, email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline James opens the show giving the #1 piece of advice he would give to founders to multiply their chances of startup success 10 fold. He then takes answers voicemail questions about how founders should decide how to to delegate their time and the strategy founders could take in the early stages of their companies. He closes the show by expounding on why he moved away from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles, despite the large network effect that exists for founders in the Bay area. Support Our Sponsors Magic Mind https://magicmind.co Tech Meme https://www.techmeme.com/ Tiny Capital https://www.tinycapital.com/belowtheline   About your host, James: James Beshara is a founder, investor, advisor, author, podcaster, and encourager based in Los Angeles, California. James has created startups for the last 12 years, selling one (Tilt, acquired by Airbnb), and invested in a few multi-billion dollar startups to date. He has spoken at places such as Y-Combinator, Harvard Business School, Stanford University, TechCrunch Disrupt, and has been featured in outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and Time Magazine. He’s been featured in Forbes, Time, and Inc Magazine’s “30 Under 30” lists and advises startups all around the world. All of this is his “above the line” version of his background. Hear the other 90% of the story in the intro episode of Below The Line.  “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Another Podcast Network.

Stashed ideas

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Like investors, reporters crave proof that your story is worthy of their attention. If you’re solving the next big problem in fintech, martech, or fill-in-the-blank-tech, you need to pony up with the statistics that show why this problem needs your solution. You don’t need to invest all your money into market research to get this kind of data. Many times, it’s just a matter of looking at your pitch deck and selecting the stats that will stand out.

Data and stats are your allies

Founders who experience success in the media are often the ones who have a strong perspective on the market their business is competing in.While every founder undoubtedly has a company story they wish to share, it’s imperative to be able to address the bigger market picture.

Market point of view is critical

Every leader has a personal story in addition to the problem their company is solving. The savviest founders understand that showing their human side will help them be more relatable to others. Whether it’s highlighting lessons learned along the way, or a particular challenge overcome, showing vulnerability and connectedness can help persuade reporters that you have something important to share—beyond just the business case.

Don't be afraid to highlight the personal

It’s critical for founders to be able to explain their technology in simple terms. Sticking to easy-to-understand terminology and delivering focused messages can go a long way in attracting the attention of reporters. As tech becomes more complicated, reporters can’t possibly have an in-depth understanding of every product or service; it’s up to founders to make this information easily accessible and engaging.

Dial-up the simplicity

Make sure that your story is actually newsworthy and ties in with the current news cycle. By connecting your point of view to the stories that already have the public’s attention, your point of view will automatically become more relevant and interesting.

Refresh to the news cycle

Every founder likely dreams of being featured in global news publications. But the savviest companies know that this kind of coverage doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time to form relationships with reporters and build up to it.
They know that there are a variety of outlets and channels that provide important audiences for their story. By including smaller, target media outlets and leveraging platforms like blogs and LinkedIn, or self-publishing in Medium, companies can build momentum and credibility, which will help convince the bigger outlets that they are worth covering.

Look across multiple channels

Ways to tell a good business story

Naivety welcomes innovation and opportunity. 
<ul>
<li>Share learnings you’ve gained from past jobs that will support you in the business.</li>
<li>Talk about how you’re associated with your target market and why you’re the perfect person to be building this. </li>
<li>Selling to customers you understand is a strong advantage.</li>
<li>Share your story about what led you to founding the business and why it’s meaningful to you.</li>
<li>Talk with so much enthusiasm for what you’re building that people walk away feeling like they have to be a part of it.</li>
</ul>

Frame your fresh perspective as a competitive advantage

Be open about the challenges you see for your business. Acknowledge what keeps you up at night, but show confidence in your ability to face obstacles head-on. You may be learning as you go, but when it comes to de-risking the business, you need to show clear planning and forethought.Admit what you don’t know. Understand your own restraints, and be up-front about what skills or expertise you need to develop. Have a plan for how you’ll learn and the strategic hires you need to make.

Be open about challenges

Collect and share customer testimonials. This is the greatest endorsement for what you’re doing. Talk about the work and research you’ve done to validate your idea, and the hype you’re seeing in the communities you’re part of.Show a deep understanding of the category and other players in the space. Acknowledge the competition you’re inspired by and examples of founders or brands you think are doing it right.

Let your product do the talking

Jaime Schmidt started an indie personal care company in her kitchen with no money and no network. That didn’t stop her. She eventually sold it for 9 figures to Unilever.


Advice for founders: When building something you believe in, nobody can sell it better than you

Work isn’t supposed to be fun. It can be fun, but trying to optimize for it from the beginning is only going to hurt you in the end.<ul><li>Choosing to work on “fun” projects at the expense of avoiding the hard, gritty, tedious ones will end up hurting your infrastructure, piling up your technical debt and stalling your growth.</li><li>Prioritizing the fun approach over the difficult, disciplined and results-focused one will hurt your business, it will hurt your team, and most importantly, it will hurt your customers.</li></ul>

Fun as a core value is a lie

Too many influencers build their brands on “making work fun” for this post not to be controversial. They’ll say things like “life’s too short to not have fun at work”.But fun is a deeply short-sighted priority. Consider having your short life filled with periods of hard work punctuated by intensely fun wins, rather than front-loading small bursts of fun and then paying for it with failure.

Focusing on fun is short-sighted

Why We Dropped “Fun” as a Core Value

Pivots are often seen as a setback, especially for a startup. But pivots can become great opportunities.
If your goal is to succeed in the long run, it&#39;s more important to get there than to count the difficulties along the way.

Pivots on the road to success

<ul><li>Maybe your perspective and vision have shifted after you've launched your brand. Redoubling on your original goals may be the wrong move.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><li>Or you may find that researching a niche and becoming part of it are two different things.</li></ul> Customers and investors value credibility but also effective action. As long as the pivot is done gracefully, your customers will value the transparency.

A pivot is a chance to evolve into something better

If you're noticing a levelling-off period in growth and development, it may be a reason for change. <ul><li>Try to identify the reason for stagnation, for example, an unmotivated team or lack of customer engagement.</li><li>Decide what could be the biggest catalyst to push your brand from the plateau. It could bring fresh energy into your company that may lead to significant growth. </li></ul>

Pivot can be a catalyst for growth

A business plan should be unique and specific enough to solve a problem but not so narrow that it fails to leave space for growth. Many entrepreneurs get too precise too quickly. The important part is to recognise it early on and change to a less rigid, big-picture model.

It forces you to focus on the big picture

Pivots are full of growth opportunities, but the key is to be consistent. Before you dive into a pivot, consider how it can fit into your brand's big narrative. Employees, customers and investors are more likely to be receptive to a pivot if it is in line with the company's overall mission.

Let your pivot signal an overarching aim

The business world has mixed feelings about pivots.

Why Founders Should Always View Pivots as Opportunities

Samantha Ettus founded Park Place Payments in 2018. She was not a typical startup founder. Her goal was to transform how financial services are sold to small businesses. As a best-selling author and host of the women-in-business podcast, she built a career around supporting women pursuing their dreams. Then, at a speaking conference, she saw a gap in the market that could attend to the needs of small-business owners and create jobs for women.

Breaking into a new industry

Kara Goldin founded unsweetened flavoured-water company Hint in 2005. At the time, unsweetened flavoured water was not even a category. As an outsider entering a well-established industry, she discovered that consumers and buyers are more interested in a story. It's one thing to have a brand name, but consumers buy your "why".

Breaking into a new industry - Kara Goldin

Companies that survive are the ones that are able to get sticky with the customer and offer more. Third-party testimonials of people who have used the product are powerful especially if you have tried to connect with someone and they're just not responding. It's about knowing when to add another story to get them to respond.

Becoming successful as an outsider

The little guy coming into an industry can disrupt and innovate. They solve problems differently from the norm because they don't do things in the way "it's always been done". When you get into an industry, you need to get close to your customers and focus on solving their problems. Sooner or later, you'll start to grow.

The outsider's advantage

How to Thrive in a Competitive Industry With No Experience, According to Hint Founder and CEO Kara Goldin

Where I find the most benefit of T-shirt sizing is they give an easy, clear understanding of relative sizes. This can be especially useful if you are working with a new team, the team is totally new to Scrum, or when trying to move away from estimating in hours.While I prefer Story points they can take some getting used to. For introducing a team to estimation I have found anyone can quickly grasp the difference between a Medium and a Large story.

Effective use of T-Shirt sizing to quickly plan out releases as a PO

Here's how I work with T-Shirt sizing to generate estimates quickly and effectively to plan out releases as the Product Owner.

How I use T-Shirt sizing as a Product Owner to estimate delivery

The Product Life Cycle is the set of commonly identified stages in the life of commercial products. The stages which a product cycles through during its lifespan are: Development, Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline.

Product Life Cycle

The Product development stage is the first part of the Product Life Cycle. This stage is not only about building the product, it includes carrying out research and testing too.Market research and competitor analysis are the main part of the research for the development stage. These are done to get an idea of the potential growth for the product and to build a business case to validate the product.

Product Development stage

This is the stage in which the product is initially promoted. Public awareness is very important to the success of a product. If people don’t know about the product they won’t go out and buy it.There are two different strategies you can use to introduce your product to consumers. You can use either a penetration strategy or a skimming strategy. If a skimming strategy is used then prices are set very high initially and then gradually lowered over time. This is a good strategy to use if there are few competitors for your product. Profits are high with this strategy but with risk.

Introduction stage

The Growth stage is where the market share of product starts to grow. Often at this stage a large amount of money is spent on advertising. You want to focus your advertising campaigns at your target audience and existing customers, and sell the benefits of your products to them. There are several channels to advertise your product. The advertising channels you choose to take will depend on your product, industry and advertising budget you have.

Growth Stage

The third stage in the Product Life Cycle is the maturity stage. If your product completes the Introduction and Growth stages then it is likely to spend a great deal of time in the Maturity stage. During this stage sales grow at a very fast rate, then gradually your market share will begin to stabilize. The key to surviving this stage is differentiating your product from the similar products offered by your competitors.

Maturity Stage

<ul><li>This is the stage in which sales of your product begin to fall. Either everyone that wants to has bought your product or new, more innovative products have been created that replace yours.&nbsp;</li><li>To stay competitive, and keep your market share, you will need to reassess your existing product and iterate on it’s features.</li><li>&nbsp;Ideally, between the maturity and decline stage, you would restart the product development cycle, to continue the success of your business.&nbsp;</li><li>Some companies decide to withdraw their products completely from the market due to the downturn.</li></ul>

Decline

The product development cycle is a part of the product life cycle.The product development cycle focuses on the planning, development and evaluation of a product. The product life cycle looks at the performance of the product in the market and its market share.The product development cycle consists of the following stages: Plan, Develop, Evaluate, Launch, Assess, Iterate or Kill.

Product Development Cycle

To begin Market Research and Competitive Analysis should be carried out, to get an understanding of the market, and the key players in them. This research will need to answer questions such as:<ul><li>Who are your target audience?</li><li>Is there a need for the product? Can it be validated by thing like surveys, customer interview or consumer spending figures?</li><li>Who are the competitors in the market and how will the product be able to compete with them? What is the potential market share for the product?</li></ul>

Plan

Simply put this is when the product be it software or hardware is built.You will need to management resources and development to deliver a working product, that contains the core features for success in a timely manner. This will ensure a great product release, and will enable you to evaluate the product and it’s features quickly, once it is live.Once the features have been defined with user stories and specification, they should be ranked by difficulty and priority.

Develop

Use Key performance indicators as metrics to measure the success of the product. Key Metrics Measure For Product Success:<ul><li>Cost of Acquisition</li><li>Revenue</li><li>Rate of Revenue Growth</li><li>AARRR Metrics:</li><li>Acquisition</li><li>Activation</li><li>Retention</li><li>Referral</li><li>Revenue</li></ul>

Evaluate

This stage is very much the same as the Introduction stage of the Product Life Cycle.Launching the product involves letting your target audience the product is live. This can be done with Press Announcement &amp; Interviews, advertising, creating public launch events etc.Soon after launch, you should assess your performance.

Launch

Assessing the product entails collecting metrics and analysing them, to gather insight in to the performance of the product. A/B testing, challenging how to improve a return on investment, testing what makes a returning customer are a few possibilities for assess and analysis.Similarly to the Evaluation stage, each feature of the product will need to be tested and evaluated to see if a feature worth keeping and iterated on or being doped from the product completely.

Assess

Once assessment and evaluation of the product features is complete, a decision needs to be made on which features to keep and upgrade and which to remove.For the features that prove not useful for the customer, and don’t generate engagement or revenue, those should be removed. This should be done in a well planned manor, with customers should be informed of the removal of features.

Iterate and Kill

A few years ago I this article about Product Life Cycle & Product Development Cycle. Now that some time has passed I wanted to revisit this topic, and use all the comments, feedback and knowledge I…

Product Life Cycle & Product Development Cycle

Every product begins with a hunch. Don't confuse your hunch with divine inspiration or get unnecessarily attached to it. More importantly, find a customer. <ul><li>The first step is to find out where that customer hangs out on the internet. Look in places like Reddit and Quora, or relevant message boards, user-submitted review websites, support forums, Facebook groups and Slack channels. </li><li>Identify and document "customer pains". Look for "How do I do X?" or "What do you use to do Y?" and copy it into your spreadsheet.</li><li>Drill down to find patterns. This will outline a hypothetical product.</li></ul>

Prospecting for Pain 🤘

Once you have a large amount of research, your next step is writing a pitch using the language that you found in the research phase. The pith format:Evoke the pain(s) <ul><li>Demonstrate your understanding of your reader/customer in your pitch. This can easily be done by using the pronoun "you".  </li><li>Start your pitch by evoking the pain's you uncovered. In three bullet points, demonstrate your understanding of these pains by using your customer's language. </li></ul>Imagine the dream <ul><li>Tell how your customers quality would improve. "What if"</li></ul>Introduce the fix<ul><li>Describe what your product does and how it does it.</li></ul>

Writing a pitch 🤓

Put your pitch in front of your customer. Introduce yourself in the message boards that you mined for research. If the reception is positive, you're ready to start building. <ul><li>Start small. It should not be difficult to come up with a minimum viable product (MVP). Focus on solving the most important pains first.</li><li>You can further validate your idea by taking pre-orders and doing one-on-one interviews with subscribers. </li><li>Build a feedback loop with your newfound community of customers. </li><li>Be transparent. Show off your design work, discuss your funding, make product discussions publicly available.</li></ul>

Show your work 💎

“Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers.”

When designing a product, most people skip the research phase. Products are created with a hypothetical customer or no customer.  Clients often shield designers, developers and product managers from the reality of the market. As a result, many engage in product development for its own sake. However, there is a method you can use to build products that real people want.

Building products for real people

This method will help you avoid spending a bunch of time and money on something that nobody wants.

How to Create a Side Project that Customers Actually Want

Visibility in UI:<ul><li>Entry points: A common first step when designing a new feature is to dive straight into creating mocks that show how this feature will work. However, the entry point is more important.</li><li>Menus: It's tempting to hide a lot of options behind menus. Instead, show the option if it's important for your users to know about the option.&nbsp;</li><li>On giving people options: 80% - 90% of users will pick the default option.</li><li>Contextual actions: When people look at something, suggest similar things to look at.</li><li>Make use of existing contribution channels as that's where people already are.&nbsp;</li></ul>

UI and visibility

If you want something to be seen and used, don’t make people look for it. Put it in sight. Put it where they’re already looking.

The power of visibility

A few summers ago, I had the opportunity to live in two separate units of a loft building in San Francisco. Given this was the same building, you’d expect the units to be quite similar, and they…

Denise Fox
@denisefox

JAMES BESHARA

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Data and stats are your allies

Ways to tell a good business story

Frame your fresh perspective as a competitive advantage

Advice for founders: When building something you believe in, nobody can sell it better than you

Fun as a core value is a lie

Why We Dropped “Fun” as a Core Value

Pivots on the road to success

Why Founders Should Always View Pivots as Opportunities

Denise Fox@denisefox

JAMES BESHARA

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Data and stats are your allies

Ways to tell a good business story

Frame your fresh perspective as a competitive advantage

Advice for founders: When building something you believe in, nobody can sell it better than you

Fun as a core value is a lie

Why We Dropped “Fun” as a Core Value

Pivots on the road to success

Why Founders Should Always View Pivots as Opportunities

Denise Fox
@denisefox