You really have two forms of payment here given that you can't be paid out of the small sum of money the founder has. The decision as to what to accept depends on the idea the person has and your belief in it. 1. Equity It's called sweat equity for a reason. If the person you've been approac...
I would try selling it to 10 customers (without changing your pitch) and if you don't get 3 customers to buy, then adjust. It's less about time and more about # of learnings. I don't like interviews, I like asking if they have the problem, showing them our solution (verbally or with a visual) a...
Conversion at the page level is often impacted by who is showing up - and could be indicative of a mismatch between the ads you are running, the audience they attract, and the messaging on the landing page on arrival. You're also asking for both a phone number and an email address - while offeri...
"Right action, right time" Eric Ries The key is to invest in the parts of the product that need that attention. In the early parts of a startup (MVP) then it's all about building something to put in front of users. As that scales, then you can spend some time paying down the technical debt by ...
You know what would be great... A platform exclusive for Marketplace experts ;) I would answer this in short by saying you don't attract them simultaneously. To elaborate; The Chicken and Egg problem is solved (historically) by attracting and retaining the top providers of whatever service f...
Khuram's reference to what I call the "gap technique" is spot on. Few people will rate something 10/10 or A+. This gives you the opportunity to ask them how to achieve that highest rating. Once you do that: "Shut up and listen!" :) -- One of the worst mistakes is to get a participant talking (an...
I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever...
I'll first answer this from a product and development perspective: This answer is written assuming you have done everything right to launch a product that has already established product/market fit. First, you want to fix the "leaky buckets." Brett Martin wrote a post-mortem of his startup and w...
There is certainly value in starting customer discovery interviews. And no reason to wait for the delay that creating a landing page and waiting to collect emails would take. I would just advise that you get clear on your hypotheses about who your target customer is so you talk to the right kind...
Steve Blank has already covered this in depth in his book 4 Steps to the Epiphany, as well as a video here: http://startupweekend.wistia.com/medias/tao3s8hf7l My approach is based on his outline, with a twist. 1) I try and conduct the interviews at the customers office or place of work, at minim...