"Video Lecture _ Lecture 8 How to Get Started, Doing Things that Don't Scale, Press”
In this post, I'm going to talk about the main
points of the 8th lecture 'Doing Things That Don't Scale, PR, and How to Get
Started' by Stanley Tang, Walker Williams, Justin Kan. The first lecturer is
the founder of 'DoorDash' which is a restaurant delivery service. The second
lecturer is CEO/Founder of ‘Teespring’, an e-commerce platform that allows
entrepreneurs to launch products without risk, cost, or compromise. The third
lecturer is a founder of ‘Kiko’ and the Justin.tv which became Twitch. They shared
how they came up with the idea and get started. They started to implement the
use of the idea without having a complete infrastructure but hypothesis.
When Tang and his team had a great idea it
was strange for them why others did not do it yet. Firstly, they thought that
some people had already tried and failed as there was no consumer demand.
However, the team’s passion to build technology for small business owners made
them do some steps/experiments. The first action for their experiment was to test
their hypothesis. For several hours they launch their own local food delivering
website 'PaloAltoDelivery.com' with their personal phone numbers on the site.
So, the principal was if they got enough calls, then maybe their idea deserved
persevering. Interestingly, on the first day, they received a phone call with
an order. The next day they got two more, then it became five, and later even
ten. Therefore, they came up to a conclusion that people need their service.
What had happened next? Stanley Tang and his team entered in a prototype stage.
They had a minimal resource so, at the beginning, they were the drivers; they
managed both classes and food delivery. They were customer support. They gave
out fliers around campus, used Square to charge, 'Google Docs' to keep track of
orders, and Apple’s 'Find My Friends to keep track of drivers. These actions assist them to become experts
in their business. What did they gain from the experience? Driving helped them
understand the delivery process. Moreover, it became a chance to talk to
customers and restaurants understand the issues that may occur. They also cared
about their customer by manually emailing each new customer and ask how their
first delivery went and how customers heard about them. So for them, it's just
about finding a need and just focusing on serving that demand. In the viewpoint
of Tang at the beginning, competition doesn't really matter. In conclusion, he
suggested paying attention to hypothesis and attempt to do the experiment,
launch fast as they did, and take easy things that do not scale.
The next lecturer W. Williams somehow
continued the previous lecturer and said that doing things that don’t scale is
a startup biggest advantage. He refers such things as fundamentally
unsustainable. So, how you can spread your product. First of all, you need to
find first users/customers. Making the first users is the hardest, but as you
go farther and farther it gets easier. You need to make sure that users value
your product. After this, you should do
steps which will help to spread information about your product by your first
users. However, for that, you should be sure that the product you offering is
necessary and needed. Moreover, consider to run customer service yourself to
find out what’s not working with your product. Hence, you also should remember
about product-market fit and its optimization. Eventually, you will need to
move as fast as possible in development, but don’t give up.
The last lecturer is Justin Kan who talked
about Public Relations. First of all, he mentioned that before you think about
the press, one of the things you really want to consider is who you want to
reach, as well as your actual goal. For instance, with 'Exec' one of his goals
was to get customers. It was a local cleaning service, and the goal was to get
people in San Francisco to use it. There's fundraising; for whatever reason,
the press loves to write about fundraising even though it's not very
interesting. Sometimes, you don't actually
have to be very original - your press doesn't have to be original. It just has
to be what I like to call "original enough." So one of the actual mechanics of getting the
story which is tactical if you want to get your news in the press: Think of
getting press like a sales funnel. You're going to talk to a lot of people but
not all of them are going to convert. The second thing is you want to get
introduced to any reporter or multiple reporters who are going to write about
your thing. It's much easier, just like any business development, to get in
touch with them through someone, rather than cold emailing them. Another
important thing is to go to entrepreneurs. Therefore, the main idea is to have
reporters which will write about your product and there are different ways you
can meet them and understand what both of you need. Conclusively, a golden rule
or more of like a "pay it forward:" You should help your fellow
entrepreneurs get coverage because they'll help you get coverage.
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