Startup Ideas

Links

• ycombinator
• failory
• crunchbase
• pitchbook
• firstround

How to Get Startup Ideas

Idea Quality Scores

• How big is this idea? How big could it be? (1-10)
• Founder / market fit (1-10)
• How sure are you that this is solving an acute problem? (1-10)
• Have a new insight? (1-10)

Get the overall score.

• You're making something you personally want
• This only recently became possible
• There are successful companies that do something similar

Bad reasons to reject startup ideas

1. Hard to get started
2. Boring space
3. Seems too ambitious
4. Too many competitors

Having startup ideas organically

• Know what a good startup idea looks like
• Notice what's missing
• Become an expert on something valuable
• Work at a startup

Recipes

1. Start with what your team is especially good at
   • Go through every job you've had
     • What are the unique skills you learned?
     • What seemed broken?
     • What did you develop in-house?
2. Think of things you wish someone would build for you
3. What would you be excited to work on for ten years
4. Look for things that have changed in the world recently
5. Find companies that have been successful recently and look for new variants of them
6. Ask people you know for problems they want to be solved
7. Look for industries that seem broken

How to Talk to Users

Five great questions that everyone can ask during their early customer interviews

1. What is the hardest part about [doing this thing]?
2. When is the last time you encountered this problem?
3. Why was this hard?
4. What, if anything, have you done to solve this problem?
5. What don’t you love about the solution you already tried?

Three critical phases to a early-stage company – Talking to users is extremely beneficial

Idea stage

1. Find first users with problem
   • Friends, coworkers, intros
   • Drop by in person!
   • Industry events

Prototype stage

1. Identify your best first customer
2. Framework to identify your best first customer Find numerical answer to:
   • How much does this problem cost them?
   • How frequent is the problem?
   • How large is their budget?

Launched stage

1. Market Fit
2. Tips
   • Ask for phone # during sign up
   • Don't design by committee
   • Discard bad data

How to Pitch Your Startup

• Probably the biggest thing people don't understand about the process is the importance of expressing yourself clearly.
• Don't sell, they'll sell themselves.
• Before anyone can remember, they have to understand.
• Conversational, No Jargon, No Preamble, Reproducible
• Lead with what. Not why or how.
• The best way to help investors evaluate your idea is be CLEAR and CONCISE.

Questions investor ask

• Do I understand idea?
• Am I excited by idea?
• Do I like the team?

Questions founders should ask to themselves

• What are you making?
• What is the problem?
• Who is the customer?

Examples

• Airbnb is the first online markeplace that lets travelers book rooms with locals, instead of hotels.
• Dropbox synchronizes files across your/your team's computers.

How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders

• It takes 7 to 10 years to build a company of great value.
• More equity = more motivation.
• If you don’t value your co-founders, neither will anyone else.
• Startups are about execution, not about ideas.

Vesting

• Time-based vesting and one-year cliffs; the standard four-year time-based vesting schedule with a one-year cliff, 1/4 of shares vest after one year. After the cliff, 1/36 of the remaining granted shares (or 1/48 of the original grant) vest each month until the four-year vesting period is over. After four years, fully vested.

• Milestone-based vesting; it is when you earn your options or shares after a specific milestone. Other than IPO, milestones could be completing a project, reaching a business goal, or hitting a certain valuation.

• Hybrid vesting; it is a combination of time-based and milestone vesting

Additional resource can be found in Carta

How to Work Together

Once you decide ownership, determine success and failure.

Usually, CEO has final say. Board has real final say.

Decision Disagreement Framework

• What is your attachment style? More importantly what is your co-founder's attachment style?
  • secure
  • avoidant
  • anxious

Four things to avoid when fighting

1. Criticism
2. Contempt
3. Defensiveness
4. Stonewalling

When [observation], I feel [emotion] because I'm needing some [universal needs]. Would you be able to [request]?

How to Deliver Constructive Feedback in Difficult Situations

Goals

• What are short term goals for the company?
• Are we using the right metrics?
• Are we hitting our goals?

Roals

• Is it clear who is responsible for what?
• Do we agree that the current dividison makes the most sense?

Performance

• Is our workload distributed in an optimal manner today?
• Do we all feel a high level of dedication and motivation?
• What mechanisms are in place for providing feedback to each other?

How to Work Together

• Everyone fights, so make a plan.
• Figure out roles, goals and a process before emotions get involved.
• Start having hard conversations now.
• Use non violent communication to share honest feedback without
• Pay down emotional debt regularly.

How to Plan an MVP

Goal of a pre-launch startup

• Launch quickly (MVP)
• Get initial customers
• Talk to customers and get feedback
• Iterate (improve the product)

Expected Growth Rate

How to Lunch

• Silent launch
• Friends and family launch
• Stranger launch Online community
• Request access launch
• Social media/blogger
• Pre-order
• New feature/product launch
• Press

Online Communities

• Introduce your company
• What are you building?
• Who are you building it for?
• Why?
• Interesting insights?

How to Prioritize Your Time

1. Create a list with columns of Task, Impact, Complexity

2. Manage your time correctly

   

• Primary KPI (Actual vs Goal)
• Biggest obstacle to growth
• Tasks accomplished + impact
• Big learnings

How to Set KPIs and Goals

• Represents delivery of real value?
• Captures recurring value?
• Lagging indicator?
• Usable feedback mechanism?

1. Build something lots of people want
2. Reach and serve all those people
3. Set weekly % growth goal

Possible metrics you may follow

• Retention
• Revenue Churn
• CAC
• Payback period
• NPS
• Email conversion
• Organic vs paid users
• Referral rate
• Contribution margin
• Gross margin
• GMV
• ACV
• TCV
• Burn rate
• Monthly Recurring Revenue

What is Loss Aversion?

Loss aversion is a cognitive bias that describes why, for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. The loss felt from money, or any other valuable object, can feel worse than gaining that same thing.1 Loss aversion refers to an individual’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Simply put, it’s better not to lose $10, than to find $10.

The Founder Dating Playbook

📖 Article
🔗 Questions for Co-Founders PDF