Today, November 17th, is National Entrepreneur’s Day, and in celebration of all of the millions of entrepreneurs around the world chasing after their dreams to get to market and win, I want to highlight a few of the key lessons learned over the past ten years that will help you not only survive, but thrive …
This year has been marked by one of the most unprecedented, and challenging global economic environments of the last one-hundred years. Despite the aforementioned, startup investing continues to rip at a feverish pace, marked by technology, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and enterprise software firms. According to this CrunchBase report, “Overall, total global venture dollars for 2020 …
During COVID-19, the world of business has come to an abrupt halt – nearly every industry, sector, and business type (products and services) have been and will be impacted by the pandemic. If you are on the fence still wondering if now might be a good time to start your new business, I say, “Yes! …
Ad: One of my favorite past times is reading books on business, marketing and behavioral economics. I’ve recently come across a book over the holiday break that hit the nail on the head in today’s over saturated product world. Alchemy, by Rory Sutherland, https://amzn.to/2tnIU7Q, is not just a fun read (it literally had me …
Looking back on 2019, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with and advising many different entrepreneurs. I’ve compiled my list of the top 5 most frequently asked questions asked by founders: 1. Do you think this is a “good” business idea? What’s interesting, is that the most frequently asked question of “Do you think this …
WHAT? YOU DON’T LOVE MY IDEA? To Survive a Startup, First, Kill Your Ego If you’re the type of person, like I was in my 20s, who was seeking encouragement from others to continually reinforce your ideas, beliefs and path, get ready to get shook up when you start a company. Encouragement comes and goes, …
What truly sets an Entrepreneur apart? Her ability to imagine what could be, and more importantly, her unwavering drive to bring forth a new reality to ameliorate the world. This quote by George Bernard Shaw inspired me to become an #entrepreneur when I was 19 years old. Sometimes all it takes in life is one phrase, one …
Knowing what to work on when, is at the crux of successful startups. Well, no one ever told me that starting a business can be broken down into 3 key areas. It seemed like it was all happening at once, in a giant hairball of a process, and it was virtually impossible to figure out …
Can’t find your passion? Don’t worry. My Father used to tell me, “Do what you love in life, and the money will follow.” There’s some truth in that. For me however, I discovered a passion for the entrepreneurial journey, not just the product I was selling, the industry I was serving, or the …
Startup Tip of the Day: For most first time entrepreneurs, it’s fairly common that 98% of them spend months and months (sometimes years even) marinating on their “big” idea, but fail to get it going. How come? They write the 50 page business plan. They build the 5 year proforma statements …
Wondering if your marketing and sales activities are actually yielding a positive ROI?
Here’s a good breakdown on unit economics for #startups including customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and unit profitability by Hustle Fund.
#vc #cac #ltv #economics #entrepreneur
The Mechanics of Unit Economics
www.hustlefund.vc
The days when investors overlooked profitability in favor of hyper growth are behind us. It is crucial for startup founders to understand their business’ unit economics, not just to fundraise succes...Happy New Year to all of the entrepreneurs around the world building their dream! Let’s make you successful in 2021!!
This week, I sat down over Zoom with an entrepreneur based in Puerto Rico who is building a web-platform in a very crowded industry.
As a solo founder, he’s the waiter, cook, and dishwasher - having to multi-task to design the product, code, and sell it to the market.
A technical founder by nature, he understands the engineering side to running a web startup (having been through a few before), however, when it comes to Marketing, Sales and User Experience Design, he faced a challenging uphill battle to understand how to not think like an engineer, but instead, think like a designer.
In order to help him reframe his startup, I had him first walk through the competitive landscape and understand how they have positioned their companies to attract customers.
I had him break down the competition in simple, broad-stroke terms - “This company is helping people learn how to get started doing “x”, and this one is helping advanced professionals better monetize their content, and this one is helping them distribute their content to more platforms” he answered confidently.
I then prodded him next to see the content that their customers were creating, and define it in one phrase.
“So this appears to me, that the user’s content is being forced into very general categories like “business, technology, politics, etc., right?” I explained further.
“Yeah, so?” he replied.
“Well, it seems that every company is hovering over here, and what about if you have a niche piece of content that a select audience wants to engage with, how can they locate that with any of these companies?” I inquired.
“They can’t, I mean, it would be challenging to find that on those websites” he responded. A lightbulb going off at that very moment.
“What if, you focused your user-generated content on the ‘long-tail’ model to attract very specific audiences who simply can’t find that type of content on these general websites?” I asked rhetorically.
“Yeah! That would be amazing. I’d even use it!” he exclaims with a fresh, enthusiastic wave.
“And let’s go one step further...what if...you set a limit on the time of the content to create a sense of urgency so they want and have to engage with the content before it’s gone?” I further prodded his mind along the design-thinking journey.
“That could be interesting....they would have to visit my site or else risk never learning that new lesson.” he replies.
As we rolled our session into hour two, I asked to do a full walk through of his beta and provided honest feedback as if I were an actual user, often exclaiming out loud in frustration, “Ok. What do I do next here?! I’m lost.”
As an engineer, he knew all of the ins and outs of the beta, but in walking through it one thousand times before, he forgot what it’s like to walk through it for the very first time as a new customer.
“I guess I didn’t see that friction point there in the on-boarding process” he replies regretfully. “I’ve got my work cut out for me to fix that and remove that friction, and then look to reimagine the positioning so we are the opposite of what everyone else is doing today” he replies.
“Now you got it!” I say.
Entrepreneurs come in many different flavors and backgrounds, and while technical knowledge is very helpful in the building process, it provides a myopic view with which we view the design process.
By changing out the lens with which we view our product’s experience, we get a completely different lay of the land - pivoting from portrait to landscape mode, from black and white code to techni-color experiences that delight, intrigue, and engage users in a new way.
To me, founders who can zoom in and out between the detailed view and the big picture, to capture the full experience, simply take better pictures.
#startups #startup #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #growth #designthinking #ux #userexperience
📸: Paul Skorupskas
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