In the past few days alone, half of my office hours with startups have resulted in exactly the same feedback, in a critical but advisory way:
- I don’t care
- You’re telling me about the product, the solution
- I have no idea how to help you, stop selling me
8 different startups fixated on telling me what they’re doing, and how they’re solving the problem they perceive; failing to inspire me to agree with them.
The consistency in all 8 of those startups, the consistency distinct from the others met?
Sole, technically oriented founders. People who build solutions.
In far too many elevator pitches and pitch decks, founders fail to appreciate that no one cares WHAT you are doing nor even that it solves a problem when we don’t yet agree that there is a problem, an opportunity, and that your *team* can capably address it.
You *think* your idea matters. You think your pitch is intended to explain to people how your idea is a good one, that it’s feasible, and that what you’re building will solve the problem. But if you alone lack the skills to build an enduring, competitive company, WHAT you are doing is irrelevant. If you lack the knowledge of the market necessary for your solution to be feasible as a venture, I assure you, you have nothing.
And I don’t use the word *assure* lightly; I guarantee it, you do NOT know that you have a valid idea and that it’s feasible. No amount of showing me your product will convince anyone otherwise – the idea and the solution aren’t what matters.
Many founders exude overconfidence that they KNOW their market, the problem, and the customers. Too many founders claim that their solution (patented no less), will work.
No one has ever known.
If you know it, do it, go be a trillionaire.
Startups and successful ventures are NEVER about the idea and the solution. They are about the people capable of accomplishing things no one else ever has. And you can’t *know* something that hasn’t yet been accomplished.
If you had an idea for a restaurant (a new business), I’d give you the benefit of the doubt that you could know it should work because we can practically know how to run an existing type of business. But if this is a new model for an innovation, you can’t know – you don’t know. It’s not possible to *know*
Thus, it’s not feasible. Your pitch fixated on a product solving the problem is irrelevant because we’re not first convinced that there is a problem you can capably solve. Not only can you not know that it’s feasible, but you also think it is, and yet you (alone) can’t do it – thus, you’re wrong.
Now, I’m being a bit harsh on purpose.
People with ideas (and particularly tech or research-oriented people who are certain of themselves), need to stop wasting their own time, money, and as a result, everyone else’s time and money. Your idea is worthless. The solution or tech is worthless. There is an immeasurable amount of tech and good ideas stuck away in minds, offices, IP, and even patents – all worthless.
Worthless because the ONLY thing that matters, what makes things valuable, is the market: demand, your ability to compete, and your ability to scale it to create value.
That’s it.
You could have a functioning cure for cancer in your mind, and while you claim it’s feasible, if it can’t be made, produced, paid for, and delivered, it’s worthless.
Change your Perspective and Priorities
- Go talk to hundreds of random people, not customers! Tell them about it. Listen. Hear. Your audience should be comprised of children and your grandmother, or you’re doing it wrong. In fact, start right now, reply in the comments with your idea – go ahead, use the audience here to freely promote what you’re doing. If you’re unwilling or afraid, because you think your idea is special, you’ve already lost.
- Stop fundraising or selling and start finding the people who CAN do it and who want to do it with you. Particularly, market-oriented people who can validate and establish that there is one.
- Decide how much of your idea to give up. To give away. Either you start a company and share ownership, or give away the idea… Either way, you have nothing without 1 and 2, gained by 3, so stop spinning your wheels trying to get your certainty sold.
[photo: Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash]
Love this picture! AND the words are great too ? ?
There is a hard truth creatives need to accept and best expressed by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
https://youtu.be/F26aWUN1DVI
“Don’t think creativity is such a good thing, it’s a high-risk, high return strategy.” Perfectly stated.
re: “They are about the people capable of accomplishing things no one else ever has. And you can’t *know* something that hasn’t yet been accomplished.”
This ^^^ was great. But the last three bits (i.e., Change your Perspective and Priorities) is pure magic. I think you can trick them out a bit and they could apply to any biz / org / team. That is, get out of your bubble, listen, give your mindset and team a makeover, and don’t be stupid and/or greedy *if* you want to raise your ceiling.
I often tell my clients some of these ideas (but most are not in a tech space.) Nonprofits Especially need to exercise number 1 because I am not convinced that the “problem” they think needs solving is something others also perceive of as a problem. Often the target audience needs educating first and that is a long haul and the key to marketing to them at all. It is not an easy or quick road.
David, I see how it is, you just love me for my looks
I don’t disagree with this but a lot of these problems are caused by pressure on entrepreneurs to come up with billion dollar ideas as a result of the media circus surrounding VC, which naturally gives rise to empty and forced blue sky dialogues. Personally I don’t see too many real problems being solved and despite all the technology and sophistication most people are still struggling or close to broke and in many cases probably worse off than they were 1,000 years ago.
Love the.. whatever a charitable word for constructive rant.. sounds like some painful meetings!
What I pick up on to help the reader:
* know if you’re a red tide or green field / blue ocean project
* if you’re tech first your struggle is getting anything to market, build your business operations apparatus first (a system for displaying content, create a call-to-action, collecting payment), then figure out how to get out from a services mode and into a really low-scale product
* i think Paul is saying that you might think you’re a special snowflake but you’re sadly not.. the tech to use image recognition to sort recycleables from waste (rather than use bins) has been an idea for a while.. and yet we still have these issues.. Zucky dropped billions on his crapverse and it still looks like a bunch of Wii stuff from 2010
* if your end-game is to be a pretty technical poney to poach a biz person to be the CTO for, at least be using a standard cloud and stack and then pretend you’re an agency to do it
* the true cost of technology (to me at least) is something like $300k to get a working prototype of anything that looks like a system, so your microfinance strategy should account for the true cost and treat everything else in the bucket of unknown unknowns (unless you’re doing exactly something you’ve done before or piecing together only modest unknowns from almost replica things you’ve built)
* if you’re technical and you’re deep in the land of crypto, i suggest considering that any bridge could be built out of solid rock to hold the weight but engineering means the least-cost solution to a thing, because you could probably build a space elevator made of toothpicks but you wouldn’t be alive long enough to make the pig fly
* most of the lean startup advice out there is for 5% R&D businesses, so if you can’t offload a significant amount of what you’re doing to an existing SaaS you ought to be exploring different models that capture what you’re doing, but it’s likely not VC or even lifestyle-business compatible
Cheers Mike! Honestly, they’re not painful or me, they’re inspiring – inspiring that we all can do a better job of mentoring, teaching, and advising founders. So frequently pitched startups focused on a Product that doesn’t yet have any traction, are a reminder that countless entrepreneurs are being misled. We have to work to end that.
“most of the lean startup advice out there is for 5% R&D businesses” YES!
I’m constantly trying to unwide or clarify Lean Startup advice.
Such as, “Product Market Fit” has led people to think you start with a product and then find or fit it into a market. It should be called Market Product Fit – study the market and fit a product into what the market needs.
Ouch. Tell us how you really feel Paul ?
Very much so! The whole point of tech is that the product build and delivery is the easy part.
Sales, now. Sales is still hard.
Also as an investor, the math works – put money in to sales and marketing, get market share and money out. With product, you have thresholds apart from which building more or less product has (its true) very little effect on what and how much you can sell.
I just tweeted this article because I KNOW solo founders who are struggling. You’ve done it again, Paul, thanks for sharing your insights!
Helps to cut to the chase and share the harsh reality
An old printed out post I still have on my wall is Bill Gates saying to “frame the problem” and says to answer these questions:
-Who’s the customer
-What are their needs and priorities
-What’s happening in the market
-Who are your competitors and what are they doing to try to solve
-How do you differentiate
-How is tech changing
-What are your priorities
Great points, Paul!
I started as a solopreneur and quickly discovered you can’t work in and on a business you want to scale.
BRS is enterprise SaaS for oversize durable good rentals.
BRS is a spin off based on years of experience building the right team through many rounds of feedback and iterations. BRS works for most heavy & large durable goods and evolved from an integrated long term rental solution for fitness equipment.
The front end provides easy online ordering with recurring billing.
Back end enables the processes & logistics of ordering, shipping, assembly, delivery, collections, retrievals, inspections, repairs, warehousing & prepping the equipment for multiple rounds of rentals.
If I may offer a reaction to that pitch? It’s a good example of my article.
Why would *I* care?
What are durable goods?
You did a great job of WHAT and HOW. Which is fine for someone who wants it. How would you pitch everyone, so everyone is interested?
Yup, I have the same conversations.
Sometimes I offer this: hey, If it’s a finished product or solution Mr founder go test your new venture by partnering with a complimentary existing business…offer your new product as an upsell, add on or cross sell with a profit share.
The founder can do the same if it’s a tech enabled widget by integrating the tech within the same target market complementary business.
This can be a low risk way to test the market and have proof to raise capital itch VCs.
Paul, I like your brain or the way you think.
We gotta meet for lunch or HH someday soon.
Richard Stanford would you consider combining AI, with VR to teach financial tech protocols to be “pharmaceutical research level stuff”? What if as the Founder, I’m the main “unproven” member of the team, at least when it comes to delivering to market at scale…? Can I make up for my own lack of proven experience IF the idea, the plan, and the rest of the team are strong enough?
Michael Louis Ovsen are you spending 8+ figures with no guarantee of an outcome? If not then probably not.
Just look at it from the investors point of view. You’re likely pitching that something a few people build for $1-2m will be a significant barrier to entry once you’re actually in the market. That’s unlikely.
Also you need to be able to get more customers, charge more money, or reduce your costs vs the competition. Now if you’re in the learning space, I could see arguments for both AI and VR marking an impact, but both sounds a little thin – in general, innovate in one area and leverage existing solutions everywhere else.
Same general advice applies to sales as well – an innovative sales model would be applied to a tried and true product, and a new product should be sold in a very approachable way.
You woke up with violence today, huh?
Joi Chevalier rather, I’ve also had a series of meetings in which founders have been grateful that I’m not pulling punches. People are getting tired of pandering or generic advice.
Figured I’d roll with it more ??
Paul O’Brien i hear ya…
Why talk to random people? If I’m building a widget for a superconductor that will allow me to time travel, how does it serve me, the idea or the outcome talking to an 8 year old? Seems like you’d be better off talking to folks that can give you relevant feedback. Thoughts?
Deepak Suthar great question because in fact, no. Not as a startup.
Only talking to [perceived] relevant people is how founders get confirmation bias (you should because people who think so, tell you so), and fail to get broader perspective, and advice about how to pitch it more meaningfully to more people.
“Talking to customers” at an idea stage is actually shitty advice. If you know what you’re doing, what the hell are customers going to confirm? Besides, as a startup, you can’t genuinely know who the customers are yet (and if you can’t secure *some* then you need to find the partner who can). You might think you know who the customers are (should be) but maybe you’re wrong.
Taking to a child, and your grandmother, teaches you how to explain what you’re thinking to *anyone* – a much more important discovery at this stage ??
Totally agree on the communication piece. I usually tell folks to communicate at a 4th-6th grade level, which for technical founders is a monumental task, but a critical one. I also agree, that if you can’t communicate that well, find a partner who can. Yes, at idea stage – it’s worthless, like you said, everyone and their mom’s dog has an idea. That being said, if you have a product that can solve a problem today, I’d advise founders to talk to *potential* customers to not only get feedback, but to find customers that will see your vision and help fund the project. If you can turn a prospect into a customer AND an investor, that’s a win.
80+% of businesses recognize the need to accept bitcoin as payments by 2025. Having been operating personally and professionally as a native speaking satoshis as my language of value for years now, I’m uniquely qualified as a translator and tour guide for those new to the realm. Coming from a residential general contractor I understand how to coordinate teams of specialist to use the best tools and materials available to build structures that endure. My networks accumulated by living natively on bitcoin for years now have all the skills necessary to integrate bitcoin banking arrangements into businesses at scale.
Michael Louis Ovsen not being mean, trying to be critically helpful (the point of my post).
“80+% of businesses recognize the need to accept bitcoin as payments by 2025.”
I don’t care.
You see why? You start with that, and it may be true, but I don’t yet give a damn.
Then you tell me you can do things, but not in a way that is directly meaningful to your first statement other than your last point. Contractor and tour guide has what to do with businesses accepting bitcoin?? Merely that you’ve had businesses? What do you know about bitcoin and all the tech involved in effectively accepting it?
Besides, aside from my I Don’t Care reaction, “80+% of businesses recognize the need to accept bitcoin as payments by 2025.” I don’t agree.
And I can offer advice to that end because I work with startups through programs, so I see hundreds a year – I’m not aware of any that think they need to accept bitcoin (certainly not 80%)
And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, I don’t agree. So, nothing else you say matters.
We can pitch that better ?
Try it again. Don’t try to sell me nor convince me, start in a way that’s going to make me curious to hear what you have to say and learn more.
Thanks, Paul.
Why would someone care about offering rentals for large durable goods such as exercise equipment, office furniture, appliances, generators, physical therapy equipment to name a few?
Because BRS promotes the circular and subscription economies; benefiting consumers, companies and the planet. The circular economy provides a:
– 3X to 5X reduction in shipping & packaging. Ship it and unbox it once and use if for years across multiple consumers.
– Reduction in landfill usage. Many manufacturers currently tell people to throw away oversize products in lieu of return or repair.
– Reduction in manufacturing. Subscription recurring revenue allows for greater income generation while using fewer resources by making less.
– The circular economic model continually reuses products promoting higher quality production, longer lifespans and more efficient recycling.
There is a meaningful side of shipping and manufacturing that changes the world in the various ways that society is today struggling with – environmental impacts, higher product quality (instead of those appliances from Home Depot that start breaking in 2 years), and affordability.
These benefits serve customers, companies, and even the planet; we refer to that as the Circular Economy.
One aspect of this part of the economy that remains woefully underserved, it’s not at all innovative, is the market for renting the larger things you might need at home. Have you ever tried to rent yard equipment from Lowe’s? Why is it so challenging to rent an outdoor home movie setup for your party this weekend?
Hi, I’m Kyle May…
Well done, Paul! That sounds just like me. Can I hire you as my copy editor?
TRUTHBOMB
No, IMO part of this is wrong. Do not talk to your “children and grandmother.” You must have conversations with the very people who suffer the problem you expect to address and who are personally distant from you. Family will want the best for you and will often not tell the truth. Some will say it is a good idea when it is not and others will tell you it is a bad idea simply because they do not want to see you take the risk and suffer the possible consequences. In fact it is best to have people who are one step removed from you to be the ones who go and do this work. The problem is tin having a combination of a clear solution to propose to these people and then getting honest feedback about it, otherwise it is too easy to go astray.
Excellent
Andy Sorensen don’t take it out of context. I said, “Go talk to hundreds of random people,” and that includes children (not necessarily yours) but yes too, “your grandmother”
At most that’s a few family members out of 200-300?
Agree to disagree
Because yes, if your grandmother doesn’t understand what you’re doing and why, you can do better. Your grandmother isn’t an example of family, it’s referring to someone 70+ who likely doesn’t understand or use any of of today’s technology.
Say, “we tokenize digital images of monkeys to create NFTs of the blockchain so that artists can make money through cryptocurrency,” to your grandmother and she’d go, “that’s nice sweetheart” Hopefully, helping you as a founder see why that’s a crappy pitch.
A+ content
Nick Soman one might say it’s decent?
(sorry not sorry)
This is the exact test I make clients go through for media training…if it can’t be explained to a grandmother within one paragraph, then it won’t make most mainstream media. Crowing achievement of the year was getting academics turned business people to explain particle physics this way.
Megan Botha !! Precisely why our first class explains how pitching investors is the same as pitching investors, and everyone for that matter. Thanks Nicolia Wiles ?
Great points, Paul
It’s always a struggle. If it was easy would it even be worth persevering at? Embrace the struggle – it’s the only thing there is. And think of alternative ways to derive value from your venture- beyond positive net P&L – the least assured part of the whole endeavor.
Paul O’Brien,, streaming money for streaming content is disrupting monetization models for all forms of content. These new tools require coordination and discipline across the entire vertical of any business looking to take advantage of this never before possible incentivized engagement. My unique background, networks, depth and breadth of knowledge of these newly evolving technologies position me to exercise information arbitrage to lead 1st movers seeking advantage in their own specialized fields.
Is that better? I am exactly the type of Founder you have been describing and no doubt I do not understand the perspective of the investors I have been talking to. So I have indeed been wasting my time and theirs on those conversations.
I do NOT “know” exactly how these solutions will be implemented by those using these new tech solutions. I simply have a rare understanding of the waters, the vessels, and the weather on the horizon allowing me to have a rare understanding of the storm that’s coming. I also have a boots on the ground perspective as a builder, not ivory tower theoretical ideas as most from the tech and financial realms in this industry do.
That statistic I put out there was not my own and I have not verified it myself. I will now perform my due diligence to confirm that number and reference my source.
Thanks for sharing even what you already have. I do not know what I don’t know and I’m now looking to “punch above my weight class”, coaching is essential to keep from getting knocked out in the 1st round.
Michael Louis Ovsen Better. I think you’re being buzzwordy though and not necessarily saying much. “My unique background, networks, depth and breadth of knowledge of these newly evolving technologies position me to exercise information arbitrage to lead 1st movers seeking advantage in their own specialized fields.”
That’s basically saying, “I know a lot and a lot of people so I can work on the gap in information to help customers do something about that.” Which is just word dumping.
How about?
Varied cryptocurrencies is causing an explosion of the various ways in which streaming content could be monetized. It’s no longer as simple as taking paying with Stripe or accepting Bitcoin alone. To enable creators to make money online now requires platforms and integrations that make it easy for a small business to accept any form of payment. Hi, I’m Michael Ovsen, I have a past in [something relevant] and my experience with [a, b, and c] has our focus developing the platform businesses will use to easily monetize in any form imaginable.
At least, that’s what I gather you’re trying to do… and if I’m wrong, you can see how your pitch is missing the mark ?
Hello, I’m an outsider and long lost friend of Michael who found this thread and thought I might throw my two cents in.
I would start asking yourself:
1) What is the one specific problem businesses are running into that you feel most qualified to help solve?
2) What evidence can you use to compel me to understand that some majority of businesses have this problem? This needs to be something tangible I can verify with my own research. Perhaps polls or statistics from studies by some organization, using citations? Use phrases like “According to [source] [fact]” and re-inforce that with any other supportive evidence.
3) Now take me through how you solve this specific problem now that you’ve now compelled me to believe is real.
Hope that helps. Hope all is well, Mike. All is well here. If you get a chance hit me up again.
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