Lean Startup Mentoring at UN's #Connect2Effect Hackathon

Loystar x World Remit

Counting 2016

Intro

My head has been trying to do a subconscious account of 2016 in the background. After doing a draft on my phone, I finally get to write this.

The year of the start. The true start.

After one failed start, Loystar takes off this year. Febuary 2016 I and my co-founders started the company and began working on our first product. By April we had a prototype ready and got the first paying customer same month. That was a great feeling.

The Team

Privileged to be working with brilliant minds who also have the courage to give us a chance to take a shot at this. I already have good pictures of the future in my head and hope we can build something we all can be proud of.

Telling the story

The pitch is all ours, we've got the ball to play.  That's a line from one of my power tracks.
While we developed the product, we also had to sell the vision. We had 7 pitch events including the DEMO Africa 2016 event  that held in Capetown - which I could not attend due to visa denial. The 6 other events held in Accra and Lagos and was largely successfully. Thankful for the opportunities.

Deal flow. 

Having launched our first product in April, and pitch Loystar at several times in the course of the year, this has resulted in various deal sizes on the table, all amounting to at least $60k and non-cash support worth over $10k from MEST Africa, DEMO Africa, Speedup Africa, Arise Invest and of course, our customers. Not bad for a early early stage company like ours and it goes on to give a sense of what's expected. Very well appreciate the belief of the various investors/partners.

Good people.

The good people of 2016. So many, ain't even gonna name a drop. But the top of the cream know who they are... and I may not have known them so well.. but they still are  very very good people.

Let's get Physical.

2016. Buffest year ever, even though it's almost all gone. Learnt to dance kizomba, a salsa variant. Went out to run 33 times with 43.71 miles covered (runs I tracked). Was out with nature: canopy walk, surfing, bot gardens. Shout out to the crew. Good times.

Let's get Spiritual

This was the year I discovered the biggest biggest desire of God is to be believed.
As a founder, I have experienced first hand.. countless times how it is not to be believed. For the number of people who believe you, there are also the non-believers. It isn't the nicest of feeling to not be believed; but when you are believed, you want to prove to your believers that they made the right choice.

So when I discovered God really wants to be believed, I could very well relate to it. It's kind of empathizing with God to some extent.
I think believing is really what (our) Faith is about. It's a very tangible force because it involves work. (You cannot believe and not take action, that's just a mere wish).

Cheers to Twenty17

So 2017 is to believing more. Believing God's Word (that has always been my impetus) and doing the work. Believing in my team and doing the work, believing more in myself and doing the work.

Thank you 2016, thanks to every one who was a part of it and Cheers to a grand Twenty17.

4 Lessons from the dotcom bubble crash via Peter Thiel's 0 to 1

How could I have not blogged about this.. the later part of this blog's tagline was inspired by Mr. Thiel.
My props for this man, just went higher.

! RT @markessien: Peter Thiel: what an investor!

— ayo Loystar ♛ (@tjwizking) November 9, 2016

Dude backed Donald Trump's election with $1.24million and won his bet. An investor indeed, his mouth is there.

The lessons:

1.  Make incremental advances, grand visions inflated the bubble,so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small incremental steps are the only safe oath forward.
2. Stay lean and flexible, all companies must be lean..which is code for unplanned, you should not know what your business would do., Planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead, you should try things out, iterate and treat entrepreneurship as agonistic experimentation.- Lean my people..lean! PS: It's doesn't mean cheap. People get confused.
3. Improve on the competition. Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.
   
   And number 4.. got me thinking. I've always known you should engineer your user acq, but the importance, I never really paid attention to.
   
   
4.  Focus on product, not sales. If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.

Focus on product not sales.

Goodbye. :)
Update: 17th April 2017

Give product 50%, and Sales/Marketing 50% (Your best option if your product lacks an internal growth engine)

Great product need great marketing.

My sugarcubes 2015 :)

Sugar cubes from this year's MESTmas

"Hey man!

Thanks for all the support. It's been nice knowing you." - Chidi

"Ayo!
Thanks 4 ur awesomeness & ever-willingness to help. Blessings! -Tabby
PS: Keep Jesus flame burning!"

"Ayo, I appreciate greatly your enthusiasm and spirit and everything you bring to the school"- Todd

"Ayo, you are blessed beyond measure much love, " -Mary

"Well done" - anonymous

"Ayo, I really enjoy our walks on Sunday!
You are awesome :) - Nyawira

" ayo - You are a creative mind! I appreciate your work ethic and unique perspective on things! Thanks for being you! Greatness is ahead! " - Emily

Merry Christmas :) - anonymous

"Keep being awesome " - Linus

Thanks all folks.
2015 was good.

Cheers

venue99.com - 2nd runner up at Airtel App store challenge GH

venue99.com is barely 3 months old.

Yesterday, we emerged 3rd position out of 80+ startups that applied for the airtel app store launch in Ghana.

It's a small victory, but we would celebrate it.

Funny thing is, a part of me did not want to attend the final pitch event, but I'm glad I did.

Cheers to the team and more victories.

26 - If there are words for Him then I don’t have them

So I turned 26 today.

I very thankful I'm alive and well - would let that sink in.

I like this Kari Jobe Forever song, especially the spoken word part.

Spoken Word Lyrics

If there are words for Him then I don’t have them.
You see, my brain has not yet reached the point where it could
form a thought that could adequately describe the greatness of my God,
and my lungs have not yet developed the ability to release a breath
with enough agility to breathe out the greatness of his love,
and my voice, you see, 

my voice, is so inhibited, restrained by human limits
that it’s hard to even sing the praise of…
You see… if there are words for Him then I don’t have them.
My God, 

His grace is remarkable, mercies are enumerable,
strength is impenetrable, He is honorable, accountable, favorable,
He is unsearchable yet knowable, indefinable yet approachable, indescribable yet personal,
He is beyond comprehension, further than imagination, constant through generations,
king of every nation. 

But if there are words for Him then I don’t have them.
You see, my words are few, and to try to capture the one true God,
using my vocabulary will never do,
but I use words as an expression,
an expression of worship to a savior,
a savior who is both worthy and deserving of my praise, so I use words.
My heart extols the Lord, blesses his name forever,
He has won my heart captured my mind and has bound them both together,
He has defeated me in my rebellion,
conquered me in my sin,
He has welcomed me into his presence,
completely invited me in.
He has made himself the object of my sight,
flooding me with mercies in the morning,
drowning me with grace in the night. 

But if there are words for Him
then I don’t have them.
But what I do have is good news,
for my God knew that manmade words would never do,
for words are just tools that we use to point to the truth,
so He sent His son Jesus Christ as “The Word”, living proof, 

He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation,
for by Him all things are created, giving nothingness formation,
and by His words he sustains, in the power of His name,
for He is before all things and over all things he reigns, holy is his name,
so praise him for his life… 

The way he persevered in strife,
the humble son of God becoming the perfect sacrifice,
praise him for his death… 

that He willingly stood in our place, that he lovingly endured the grave,
that he battled our enemy and on the third day rose in victory

He is everything that was promised,
praise Him as your risen king,
lift your voice and sing for one day he will return for us
and we will finally be united with our savior for eternity, eternity.
So it’s not just words that I proclaim,
for my words point to “The Word” and “The Word” has a name, 

hope has a name,
joy has a name,
peace has a name,
love has a name
and that name is Jesus Christ.
Praise his name forever!

I'm alive.

-----------------
One Random thing I thought I should start for the next one year is have a more healthy lifestyle.
So I decided I would like to stay off soda and fizzy drinks. Not malt drinks though :)

More of all these smoothie drinks. I have actually joined the fitfam people that religiously have smoothies. My last mix was a drink with Pineapple as base, and cucumber, the right chunks of ginger and garlic plus a tiny slice of raw green pepper (hehe). Green pepper for flavour and fragrance :D

If not for anything, but for the mind set that I am consciously aiming at a healthy lifestyle, that's powerful.

It takes a bit of time to make smoothies, but I should invest in my health, just as much as I in my wealth. Sounds awkward, but you get it, after all Health is Wealth.

So yeah... I'm alive.

My first smoothie, just orange and cucumber :D

PS: someone should just start smoothie subscription already, kent be spending one hour in kitchen cos of one glass of drink. Well.. I guess I can.

Startup, What Problem are you solving? I've found the answer

How do you come up with business ideas? Any very savvy person in the startup would point you to Paul Grahams startupideas.html document.
The essay points out that it's much more easier to get good ideas when you think of problems that exists in the world. Problems are bad things and people would always want to get rid of them, so if you have something that solves such problems, going into business would be quite straight forward.

Problems get level. Big problem = Big idea, choose your level.

In startup context, I see the value of thinking from a problem perspective to generate ideas worth chasing. That's very clear. e.g Dropbox helps with the mess of having to copy your files from one media to another, but what problem does a game like angry birds solve?

This is a classic situation newbie tech entrepreneurs may find themselves in -"what problem is your startup solving"?

To get around this, I like to think of it as 2 and only 2 things you could do as startup:

1. Solve a problem (pain)
2. Meet a need. (desire)

If you are not solving a problem as it were, you are meeting a need. In the case of a game like angry birds, the need for entertainment.

But just a few minutes ago, I found a better answer to the puzzle and I realized that the issue has been the way we were framing problems. See the answer in the quote below:

Everyone is in search of progress (outcomes/reaching goals) and it helps to think of problems in terms of the obstacles that keep them from achieving this progress

We tend to frame only the obvious problems as the problems worth solving. Whereas, anything that limits us from reaching what we want can be seen as a problem.

That's insightful!

http://leanstack.com/no-problems-in-your-business-model-is-a-problem/

Explaining a Tech term to a non-tech audience:MVP

So I have the task of explaining MVP to a non- tech audience. First, MVP is probably not exactly a tech term. Let's call it a buzz word. The term is an interesting one, so interesting, I can't seem to complete this post about it.

So yeah.. here is my 1 min layman explanation of Minimum viable  Product.

MVP is simply an abrreviation for Minimum viable product.It is the least thing you could do as a startup to provide or be of value to your customers. 

There has been so many arguments on the definition of a MVP, and just like the many other startup topics, there is no silver bullet, no clear cut answers, definitely no asking "How do you know what minimum is". 

Some folks have tried to bring understanding to the concept by coining their own version of the same concept. An example is MLP... minimum lovable product. but there is the question of if the love can translate to $$. 

In my humble opinion, I would say, forget MVP, MLP and do MSP. Minimum sellable product. I may have seen this somewhere, but I agree we should let sales be the final judge. Thank you.

Good enough? 

Inspiration overload! The meaning of life by 3rd Graders

I just had to have this on here.

You run the Show... This is your life..you're in control.... you gotta do what feels right in your heart..... The difference between  winners and losers is persistence....

The bamboo story..I always love it........ 

You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great. This is wisdom for startups. 

 

Post by via Facebook.

This is the one singular reason why 8 out of 10 startups will fail

One of the many tweets that sums up the fundamental principle of Lean Startup. Retweet if you agree with this.

[8] Most #startups fail because they try to find customers for their products, rather than finding products for their customers.
— ayo Dawodu ♛ (@tjwizking) February 3, 2015

You develop customers first. Not the product,not the app, customer development first. That's the riskiest part. It's hardly a technology problem, always a marketing one.

Don't sell what you can make, make only what you can sell, that's putting the horse before the cart - as it should be, Get it?

[Incomplete] Minimum viable Product. How to define what minimum is?

The concept of minimum viable product is relative. While this maybe an obvious truth, same may not hold for many newbie entrepreneurs (like myself). How do you determine what is minimum?

I think this would be based on at least 2 variables like the technology available to you and the knowledge of the idea available to you and you are sure off. Let's add a third one, your risk appetite.

Stepping back, the why of a MVP is to test. We think of it as an experiment and the outcome of this experiment is data.

Page 95 of The Lean Startup and read what Eric Ries says: “deciding how complex an MVP [Minimum Viable Product] needs to be cannot be done formulaically. It requires judgement”...

Still thinking about this... stay tuned.

ayo Dawodu's 2014 in Retro

A few accomplishments.

I started my first business officially. Here is the press release.


Successfully organized the first Lean Startup workshop in Lagos. Arguably the best startup workshop the Lagos startup scene has experienced in a while. Over 50 in attendance, for the 3 day period. Forever grateful to those who made it possible.

I added 7 more clients to 99digital.co with very little marketing efforts. Referrers, many thanks.

Failed with Quickchow, my mobile clock-in app and a proposal to a major mall in Lagos.

I literally traded Faith as cash, this is not your average "I have faith" situation. I should tell this story someday.

Got enrolled at Meltwater. Globally successful tech entrepreneur in the making. We are not joking here.

Went surfing.

Met everyone I met in 2014. You all are amazing. Thank you.

Lesson Learnt

I had goals and plans for the 1st quarter of 2014. Only accomplished about 35% of it. More or less, more of less.
It goes to say, no business plan survives first contact with a customer.
Whatever can go wrong, would go wrong. So why plan?

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

- General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Have a goal, be flexible how you get there, there are more ways to reach that goal than you know.

Secrets unlocked

If you think you can or you can't, you are right.
Speak what you want to see. Period.

To God alone be the Glory.

Cheers to a grander 2015! Clinkk!

THIS, MY FRIEND, WOULD CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT START-UPS

If you own a business start-up or plan to set up one soon, there is a good chance you have come across this statement: “Over 70 percent of businesses do not survive the first two years.”

Start-ups are challenging, and if we are focusing on the wrong things or applying mundane strategies, we are not just shooting ourselves in the leg; we would be using a semi-automatic weapon to do just that, thus crippling the whole thing even before the first step at progress is ever made.

So how do we focus on the right things? That question has so many valid answers and I am yet to discover all. However, I have a few and would like to share one that would help you understand what to focus on in your start-up sojourn.

Here is it: See your start-up operations as one of these two orientations majorly, transaction-oriented or engagement-oriented.

Transaction-oriented

Start-ups that fall into this category would want to worry about quickly sealing deals as it were, because that’s what actually brings in the revenue. Money doesn’t come from customers spending time interacting on your platform, money comes from them actually paying, so you would want to speed up processes that lead to paying and forsake any technology that slows that, no matter how “engaging” it may be .

Hotel booking online: a transaction-oriented operation

A simple example of a transaction-oriented operation is a hotel booking service. This is highly transactional; no time to beat around. I simply need to get somewhere nice and comfy to lay my head and perhaps have a few meetings. But then, a typical idea of hotel business meeting technology, of which online hotel booking is the most common, would miss this. This is because its executors would be more concerned about  engaging the customers via their great looking website (wasting time) rather than getting them closer to the goal (booking and paying ) as fast as possible – which is what brings in the dough.

You only win when the hotel wins. You do not win when online visitors look at the nice banner pictures of the rooms of different hotels, navigate around and read about this hotel and its facilities (so much of time wasting). Executing online hotel booking this way is a great ruin from my standpoint – it depicts an entirely different business model and should not be fused with online hotel booking.

Remember what started it: Customers that need to spend some time away from home, and have a meeting or two. How have they done it before you built your shiny hotel booking website? They walked into a hotel of choice and at the reception, they book and pay; they don’t check the rooms or ask about the history of the hotel (we assume they may know or may not; it really doesn’t matter).

They simply walk-in, book and pay. Transaction completed.

Replicate that model online, have the hotel know they have an extension of their business on the cyberspace and have them pay you for carrying out more transactions for them, then you can maintain doing loads of that and have a business; a tech business.

You’ll be getting paid for how many customers you bring in. Not how many of them clicked around.

Another classic example is a taxi booking service. It follows the same model as I have explained, but I would like to give it a bit more context as I have, in the past, thought of developing a mobile solution around it.

App for Metro Cabs?

Just like most techies today, light-bulb! What if people could get to book taxis online?

Yeah! Great idea.  Let’s do this!

I built the thing half way and I thought, “how do I even push this, how do I make money?” Now, this was a time when Red cabs, Metro cabs and co were all still shiny and new; they had just started business.

Eventually I discovered it was all a sham, since delivering value (getting customers to pay a cabbie) was going to be the toughest thing ever (My solution was mobile web back then, but it was pretty good).

Why was I going to fail hard if I had gotten crazy about it and continued with the development?

I was slowing down the transaction process via my app.

Most folks that need a cabbie would rather call or text one at best. Even the best apps that would pick your location via GPS and display a picture of the cab you have booked and even give you GPS tracking are not sustainable in my opinion. Online taxi booking service is not an engagement thing majorly; it is transactional, and it needs to be fast.

A sustainable solution would be phone call and SMS, which can deliver a good enough experience for less cost than a mobile app today.

My point exactly: For transaction-oriented start-ups, identify what delivers value and get that done ASAP and repeatedly.  Forsake “cutting-edge” technology and get it done the fastest way possible. Speed is the keyword in transactions.

Engagement-oriented

Start-ups that fall into this category are the toughest to develop into self-sustaining businesses, but when a good model is discovered, they return on a massive scale. Here, stakeholders deal with users mostly and not customers.  This is pretty difficult because users don’t pay. Only customers do.

So we find most start-ups trying to convert these users to customers, or trying to find another paying entity to sustain the business start-up.

Music services like Spinlet, Spotify, Jango radio, Deezer etc, all fall into this category. Stakeholders definitely want to worry about good interfaces for their applications and focus on things that would allow long lasting engagement with it. The aim is to maintain the interest of users and basically get them hooked.

Unlike transactional, it’s a much slower process towards capturing value so engagement is really the key here. In traditional business, I could liken this to a good customer service and experience.

Other examples would be instant messaging/chat services, social services and premium games.

In IM services or social services, users simply want to interact with other users, communicate, share photos and videos and gifs, comment, like, plus, tweet, pin, keek,  e.t.c. The ability of these platforms to do these things are what keep the users there, and because value is only created when users get on board, it does not sound right to make them pay. Without them your platform is dead. A social network cannot exist without people – this, my friends, makes it tough.

So how do these kinds of start-ups capture value that would be sustainable?

Most of them turn to advertisement, which makes advertisers the customers. Some offer extra services to users, in this case some of the users are converted to premium users (customers), and in other cases some turn to big data business.

The point here is start-ups in this category have to keep doing what they are doing to maintain the engagement between users. If the engagement stops, the show is over.

Whatsapp with a revenue model?

This is why I think Whatsapp may be having a pretty hard time monetizing its service. They have a good number of users which they are trying to convert to customer status; I am one.  I don’t know how far they have gone with that and since they are bent on not turning to ads, it may be really tough to make Whatsapp self-sustaining.

Paid advertisements, in some other cases, may be the sustaining model, since there is a good chance of making large impressions on the users. However it needs to be properly executed to yield returns, else they become intrusive and ruin engagement.a

By the way, ads are coming to Instagram soon. So far it does not generate any revenue. It would be interesting to see how that comes through.

Free games that have no in-app purchases clearly fall into this category and have potentials for very interesting money-spinning models.

Apart from in-app purchases or game currency, look out to Rovio (Angry Birds guys). Those folks developed a successful merchandise business from Angry Birds, and I hear there is a movie in the making – which just means more dollars.

There are some that fall in between; one need to apply a right mix of the way things work in both worlds to execute successfully.  e.g  E-commerce services.

So next time when you think about start-ups, try to place them in one of these two categories and hopefully it helps you understand how you should go about your execution and your potential for success.

I’m not exactly sure how this sounds to the average tech person, but if you see things in a different perspective, please let us get talking in the comment space below. Additions, subtractions, and feedback are also welcomed.

This article was published on http://connectnigeria.com/articles/2013/11/15/two-perspectives-that-will-change-your-view-of-start-ups and http://citewire.com/this-my-friends-would-change-the-way-you-think-about-start-ups/

My MEST Story

Prior to MEST I was a startup idea junkie.. hopping from one idea to another. Thankfully I have something I think is worth chasing after.

Choosing to enroll at MEST for a 2 year program was a tough choice, but the value was hard to ignore. I also realized that, if I was to succeed in any venture, I needed people. The hardest part of this whole puzzle was going to be people. Good people; building a formidable team and starting a venture together. I realized I had to think people and relationships as all in life balls down to the connections you are able to make early on - Your network is pre' much your net worth. Inside joke inside :)
Enrolling at MEST did not seem like the obvious thing to do. I would like to think the average person in my situation would not have chosen to signup for MEST, considering the duration, but I thought 2 years is worth everything. Seemed long, but heck...time flies really fast these days.

The goal is build a profitable company and MEST facilitates this greatly. Best of all, I get to do so with brilliant people.

Not many things are as good as a community of fine people who share a similar goal. By creating an atmosphere of knowledge, collaboration and learning made possible by the MEST team, working to facilitate your success, Meltwater increases the odds for reaching your goals. Just want I needed.

Having proven their value over the past years by evolving mere mortals into software entrepreneurs, some featured by the world's most prestigious startup event, TCdisrupt, you cannot but expect that this is a big deal. From MEST I expected the BEST entrepreneurial training anyone could find on the continent.

Day 47 and the challenge is on. It's been like ball juggling and the balls are in my court, It's left what I do with them. The experience so far has been challenging and fun, in a right mix.

What is quite amazing at MEST is the collaboration culture. This was very reflective during the selection process. The team were out for the finest individuals, those with the greatest potentials. Sieving out these people was a collaborative process that involved the people themselves, that, in itself emphasizes the value the organization places on collaboration.

"It starts and ends with people" - Jørn

I love people, I #lovemest .

Would keep you posted. Ciao!

Want to fast track your startup? start building a Community

This post was first published on 99digital.co

If this startup game was a matter of how cool or awesome what you are offering is, then a lot of folks would have conquered that word “Startup”; but it’s not – It’s essentially how you get the bucks to roll in.. cool or no cool.. just show us the money, then we know you are ready for business.

Joseph Barisonzi has this to say

The title of this blogpost, was the title of a talk by Community building authority, Richard Millington of FeverBee during a tech meetup event at Google campus London. The main content of this post, however are my processed thoughts on the subject. Though I will share 6 snipping points from the talk.

1. Build communities, not audiences.
2. Talk about the community, not the brand / product
3. On how to initiate discussions: Ask a Question, don’t just give information.
4. Build relationship with key people
5. We interact in Niche groups. Friends and families first, then people with common interests –that’s a strong one.
6. There is a difference between a [social] network of people and a community, one has no common interest and the later does have.

Our everyday living as humans thrives on Communities and if we can apply some principles of communities to technology startups in this digital age, we would have much better results.
Today, Technology allows us to create communities that have more diversity than the offline communities we create as humans. Notice the subtle irony in that. It’s powerful!

To the core of the matter – Fast tracking your startup, a.k.a Triggering Traction.

You have to totally dig that this is a marketing game.
Here is my point exactly: You are starting a technology business, a startup as it were, understand that the most critical thing to your survival is getting your customers to pay. You must find them and get them to pay. Hard stuff.- This is why advertising is worth A LOT.

Finding your customers and getting them to pay is the most critical thing – If so Why not do it FIRST.

The convention today, especially for technology startups,  is to have the idea, do some research and all gather all what is needed to begin execution and then begin execution.
The mind is naturally focused on getting the obvious work done. Without considering the most critical thing -the reason why you will be in business, if you ever get paid, that it: the paying customer.

This is the whole point of the Lean Startup-Get-outta-the-building-Customer-development chants you probably may have been hearing.

Tackle your riskiest issues first. The goal of a startup is to de-risk your startup ASAP.
Sigh. God bless Ash and co.

Bringing this back to community building, with a mind of having your first customers – you don’t make that so obvious by the way.
You’ll have to  discover a common interest that would resonate with the members and that your startup idea can relate with.

A few examples.

Felix: Edge of Space Jump

Redbull has a strong community and they rarely talk about the drink. The common interest is Extreme sports and that's what they really focus on. We all remember the Felix dude that jumped-off the edge of space.

Nike, the sport brand, has a solid community too. The common interest here is running.
The goal with the community is to foster engagement and interaction around that common interest. - That is like gold.
You will discover insights basically. A perfect platform to "customer develop" the members, but the aim should be to sustain and guide the interactions as much as possible to the point where-by the discussion nearly focuses or focuses on a point where your offering can solve a problem or meet a need. These are the moments you don’t want to miss.

By doing this the members discover the need for your product almost by themselves, you really did not bring it to them in their faces – which when they notice you are marketing, they activate their marketing guards, then it becomes tougher to sell.

By them discovering it as a result of committing their thoughts to something they are already interested in, selling would be easier, you would spend less on marketing, really.
However, community building is a skill on its own.

At this point, you have early adopters within reach. You can now offer the minimum viable product/offering, which becomes a way to demonstrate traction and begin business, weather by bootstrapping or via investment.

That, versus completing the product and them blasting everywhere with ads- “Hey this is a product x that does magic y, you will like.. bla bla bla” -You may likely do that for a while before anyone answers you. Reason being that, the process of selling is in stages.
You as a person don’t just see a new product and say “Chairman, take my money, I like you already” – rarely happens.
The process involves you getting the message clearly, then getting interested, then thinking about it, e.t.c

You don’t face that hurdle using the community way, they are passed naturally and quickly since interest exist.

The community way to building startups offers much more. If it is just for the feedback, that’s valuable enough. With the feedback, you involve those you are building the product for in the building process.
They would naturally accept it when they see elements that reflect their thought patterns or personality, that again, versus you and your team building the product from only your own thought lines and assumptions, and pushing it unto user. You are pretty much saying “This is what we think you need, this is what you must do and this is how you must do it and you must do it this way” and most of the time we are wrong.

Your community can be online or offline, the point is fostering the interactions – However you do it, really doesn’t matter.

So yeah.. ! That’s it on fast tracking startups via community building, I expect some thoughts would oppose to this, it would be nice to know what you think instead 

-Is there anything more critical than finding your paying customers?
If any, someone please enlighten my thinking.

PS: This post is supposed to be a follow-up post to this piece about 2 interesting ways to think about startups, I lost the points that connect them. Still a good piece to read.

The Gospel According to Lean

It is quite amazing the resonance the Lean Startup community outside Lagos is effecting.
A bit of thanks to LSM people – I think this is finally catching-on here.

I actually had 2 people ask me in church today to know more about Lean Startup. I really did not expect to talk lean in church, but then I had to do an explanation to one of them right there, He seemed to get the idea about the whole #custdev feedback loop.

I had another person give me a direct call yesterday, spent 5 minutes 23 sec explaining Lean Startup to him. Also posted comments on Facebook to give little explanation as to what Lean Startup is.

Just so we are clear in understanding, here is a bit more detail to it, not exhaustive I must say – which is why you should get Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Book at least for your first Lean Read. It is available here.

Would talk about 3 concepts in Lean and how they tie up.
First, a bit of general information about Lean Startup.
The Lean Startup way of doing things is radically different.
It in a way goes against the norm of what you expect in traditional business, enterprise or anything that involves spending resources.
It speaks for eliminating chances for waste -waste of time, money, skill, cognitive power and resources in general.

It is not a cheap way of doing things and then, it involves creating a system of experimental and validated learning.

Assumptions

This argues that whatever ideas we have is an assumption, an assumption that is invalidated- Period.
You got the idea in the shower or anywhere, consider it an invalidated idea.
This means you can’t place a huge bet on the outcomes.  You simply can’t say exactly what would happen if you executed the idea. So goes any knowledge in relation to the the idea –invalidated.

A quick example. The weather is so hot now, and I assume children in the neigbourhood would love iced lolly or ice cream to chill them, so I get the needed ingredients and I make Iced lolly.
Time to sell, and I get no sale, or few sales.
This could be the cause – Say about half of the children the neighborhood could perhaps have recent history of tummy upset and mummy thinks no sweet stuff until you are good to have them.
The other half, perhaps buy Ice-lolly at school and mom says “you can only have one a day” or some silent hidden reason.
These are very very hard to predict scenarios which one would never know except you validate your assumption by developing your customers before starting out.
That sounds a bit basic, still some folks still assume a whole lots and miss it.

Customer Development

Delivering products and services people want is linked with good customer development.
The term may be new, but it in fact means interacting with your customers. Some folks may mean it to be market research, or survey but it is not – at least not in that sense.

Surveys and the likes aim to get you information which you don’t know.
Customer Development aims to get you information anyway, whether you know it or not, it is an assumption in the first place, remember – and it gives you more – it is in the facial expressions, the emotional reactions, the pupil dilation, (if you can catch that), the voice tone e.t.c.
In essence, customer development validates or invalidates that piece of assumed knowledge via the feedback you get –which is not biased.

Back to the Ice Cream guy. Let’s call Him Sam.

He stood a chance with good customer development. Had he done it, he would have gotten useful information (Feedback)  and apply it to re-strategize.
The women tell him “Our children have tummy upset” and he could go back and make plans to include non-sugar/low-sugar Ice-cream/lollies in his options.

 I imagine him coming back to the woman saying “No worries madam, I have non-sugar Ice cream that has Vitamins A, B1, B2, B3 and C.. Perfect for you Children, infact it would stop the tummy upset :)” – He stands a good chance.

For those who buy at school, upon discovering that through customer development, he could spend half the time at school.  The Children, seeing Uncle Sam their neighbor who sells Ice Cream would want to buy from him.  The Feedback would have eliminate the possible waste of resources.
In the case he is unable to meet the demands, that would be known early-on before investing into the venture.

Feedback

Feedback is gold. It must be crafted into the whole system of your business. It is  like the compass of your business-ship. If your customers says no. It’s a no- no. They say yes and nod with it. Move fast.

But come back soon and ask again.

The average person would conclude (assume) uninformed that Ice-lolly/Ice-cream doesn't sell well in his neigbourhood, but with feedback, adjustments could be made and the true potential of the market is realized.

By the Way.

If you look at the concepts of  Lean Startup from a business plan standpoint, you may realize planning so long into the future is high risk. 3,5,10 years+  business plans are probably a sham. The rate of change these days is just crazy. Have what you want to achieve in view, but be flexible on how you get it. Experimentation is the new planning.

Yeah, that’s it – the Gospel according to LeanStartup – Enjoy the Journey

Cheers.

#WhyStartupsFail

“#whyStartupsFail
Because you can do everything doesn’t mean you should do everything.   - Do 1 thing…. at first. Focus is key.” - inspired by fab.com

“#whyStartupsfail
There is no such thing as the perfect [business] plan. Do it, if it works, repeat. If it doesn’t, adjust. Experimentation is the new planning.” - Inspired by a post on Forbes

“#whyStartupsfail
… because you don’t want to fail. -Fail fast and learn!

 

What we can all learn from my shopping experience with Konga - 9/11/2013

I feel bad somehow. It felt like I was troubling. All I wanted was a vacuum cleaner.

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. Sun shining, Palm whispering. It’s still fresh in the day, but I needed to do a bit of cleaning/dusting. "I could make use of a vacuum cleaner", I thought.

Finally, a real need that an ecommerce store could help meet. I finally get to shop online. Was excited.

Logged on to konga.com from my Mobile phone, my favourite Nigerian ecommerce store, even though I had not used them before.

Searched for the item, found it. Oya, place order now.. ha.. no link or button like that.
Ok, no worries, the site provided a phone number to call and asked that I called to place my order.

Me: Hello . bla bla bla bla…
....
Lady Operator : blab la bla, you need to have an account to place order.
Me:  Ok. *in my mind - but you said I should call to place the order. :/
....
Call ends.

Understandable. I need to have an account to place an order. (by the way.. experience getting ruined. Why couldn’t we create the account on the phone)

Logged on to konga.com again. Wey create account/signup link now?

There was none friends. I could not create an account or log-in even if I had an account. (Note that this was Konga.com's mobile site. )

But the “Call the Place your Order” was as bold as anything.

But I was not giving up . I needed to get the item, and it had to be from Konga. I mean, I like Sim.

Logged on to twitter and found this tweet just at the top of my timeline, so I replied it

Can't create an acc on your mo site. Its says call to place order. Called. She says create acc 1st > Can't create acc on mo site. @shopkonga
— ayo Dawodu ♛ (@tjwizking) November 9, 2013

It was a dead-lock really.

got talking, and eventually sent my phone no to receive a call from a customer rep.

Someone was going to call me from Konga. Cool. Nice. At least you care. That’s a good sign of good Customer service. Thought it would end well, and I would have my order placed,  but little did I know.

*Phone rings
Me: Hi
Another Lady Operator: I understand you .......
She collects my details and creates account.
.... cool.

Me: Can I place my order now?
Her: Yes.
Me: ok. It’s a (reads specs of vacuum cleaner).. then I paused to listen…she was saying something

Me: Sorry…(I did not hear well...)
Her: She repeated...YOU-HAVE-TO-PLACE-THE-ORDER-YOURSELF.  Each word was now stressed. I could perceive the scorn in her voice.

Me: Alright Cool. (Now I gave up.)
Drops call. (bad taste in mouth)
I felt bad somehow. It felt like I was troubling. All I wanted was a vacuum cleaner. :(

Dropping the call.. I realized this was a deader lock situation.
The Problem had been that there was no provision to log-in or create an account on the mobile site.
The first lady had said I should create an account to place my order, even though the site had boldly written "call to place order" Got on the call with the second lady, yet it was "impossible" for me to place the order via telephone.
And she said it with such scorn that I couldn't help but end the conversation ASAP. I was burnt.

My morning was ruined already.

I guess I would just wait till I have access to my PC.

The whole thing is sad actually, but it got me thinking hard and spurred this piece, in which I churned out lessons to learn from the experience as a budding technology entrepreneur.

Lesson Learned

Technology!

Irrespective of my background in technology, I was a typical customer.
I am quite sure I am not the first person to meet that deadlock situation,
and for it to have existed until after my experience, could mean a lot of potential customers having hassles but not caring to point it out. (The mobile site was brought down later that day or that week)

TECHNOLOGY | PEOPLE | PROCESS

That chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

There was a technology flaw, no doubt, but the people (customer care) could have easily made up for it nicely.

People are everything.I can't say that more.
Without the other 2, you can still have a good business -  weren't we selling and buying before e-commerce?
But without people, there is no show.

Customer care service is largely a people thing. And in this part of the world, you have to go the extra mile on making it excellent.

The average customer is probably already sad/stressed from thoughts of traffic or fueling gen for light or any other random sad thing.

If you can make them happy they would love you for it and tell the world.

The people within and without, staff and customer. They are everything!

I don't know if this is a case of a disgruntled staff, whatever the case, the business is responsible.

I have learnt from this.. and really, the experience isn't that much of a big deal, but but the lessons within is valuable.. At least to me. I know how I felt. I would not want a customer of mine to feel such.

Another insight is dawning on me as I write this. This is a case of the 80-20 pareto principle.
It played out here, I think.

It just took the very last moments for the whole experience to be a ruined. The 20 affected the whole 80. Just that moment she said go and place the order yourself. That's just by the way

This lady had just highlighted a very critical point of failure for businesses, and the lessons I captured from this could be summed-up in this post by Sam.

People!

Post by Iso Sam.

So I eventually got on a pc that day and placed the order. *facepalm. Konga needs to checkup on some things. Here is what happened after placing the order. I was sent a order verification link to my phone as sms, and I actually had to type out the url on my pc browser to verify my order.

Process!

I can't even begin to elaborate on what that means.

Konga should just fix all these.

Wish them the best. 

How Customer Development can help identify your market cheaply

#custdev can help reveal your #custseg #getOutOfTheBuilding
— ayo Dawodu ♛ (@tjwizking) July 30, 2013

If feedback was human, he would be my best friend. - purely me.

I would share 2 instances about how customer development can be very helpful.

The first instance was about 3 years ago, I had not heard about the term “Customer Development”.

I was engaging the driver of a yellow taxi cab for the purpose of getting feedback for the idea I had coined “clickacab” as a name for - A taxi booking service that would connect cab drivers with passengers.

There were 2 categories of cab services. The Yellow ones which are privately owned, and the taxi agency owned ones, which were new at that time and more expensive -Red Cab and co.

It was presumptuous to say every cabbie, irrespective of whether they owned the cab or not was going to be a customer, but this wasn't the case. I was biased towards the taxi agencies, the springing up of the new business inspired this idea and it was only right for the service to revolve around them.
I saw them as the main customer.

I was wrong.

The cab agencies did not need help finding customers, there was a system in place already, and besides, the bureaucracy that existed within would not support the model. The time spent crafting the solution around the agency guys was going to be a waste.

Traveling from a Mobile Monday meetup, I and a friend decided to "customer develop" the cabbie, that owned a yellow cab we had boarded. We all spoke for the entire length of the journey, and the feedback was useful. The cabbie welcomed the idea and was willing to pay a fees to have a customer come through the service when asked. That's something the cabbie of a cab agency would likely not want to commit to, because he lacks the flexibility.

The second instance was for validating customer loyalty solution for small stores. Again my presumption was that every small store would need this. This time I had learnt about the lean startup and customer development, so I consciously set out to do custdev before any sort of execution.

It was rewarding.

"Every small store" did not fit my true customer segment. In the custdev session I had with a store owner, she saw the value within, but she simply did not see the need for her subscribing to such service. I observed the environment and discovered she was alone, she had no competitors. This meant everyone would patronize her anyway.

Automatic loyalty it was for her. I told myself - "This woman isn't my customer"

Thanked her and went away happy.

Learn-able Lessons: It is not enough for your customer to fit the "Customer Segment" - e.g Women getting married soon". They may meet some of the criteria of that segment, but those are not enough. The truest qualifier of a customer is the feedback/behavior of the customer when they understand the value you are proposing.

You don't really know your target market until you ask/interact with/customer develop them.

Launching a solution to your "target market" without really knowing them through cust dev, is like serving meat to room filled with hungry people. Some of them may be vegetarians and would not eat the meat prepared.

Leading to waste.

Wastage of time, efforts and resources used in preparing meat for them.

This is what lean start-ups and customer development is all about, eliminating the chances for waste, setting out to meeting the right needs and solving the right problems.

Share your thoughts in the comments space below. Thanks for reading.

By the way, it would be interesting to know if veggies default when there are no other options. :)