In order to create long-lasting change you may need to change how you see the world a little. I’m going to ask you to put on your nerd glasses and start seeing the world through a different lens — the lens of a scientist. One of the first myths we need to overcome about our new years resolutions is the idea that if we make a mistake and have “fallen off the wagon,” it’s over.
Edison famously said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Behavior change is a little like creating the light bulb. You need to become an expert in the field of what works and what doesn’t for you! That takes experimentation. With this key assumption, lets don our nerd lenses and get into creating long-lasting change in 2018.
Following that feedback - and with several customers on the hook saying they would buy it as soon as it was ready - I returned to Scott with a very high level pitch of what the product would be. I had made some crude initial mockups, but this idea was beginning to take on a life of its own, and I needed someone that could take it to the next level! I shared what features customers felt were critical and which would be “nice to have’s.” Scott - as usual - made the idea significantly better.
The three vital behaviors these researchers identified are 1) know your stuff, 2) focus on the right stuff, and 3) build a reputation for being helpful (see “Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success”, pg. 138, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler). As I look back on my experiences with Carrie, and other admirable colleagues, I see the same consistent behaviors.
One of the first things we noticed was that consumers think in terms of moments. When they create a new savings account “Savings 1,” what they’re really doing is planning on buying a car or going on a great vacation. When these customers hit $1,000 in that account they were actually half-way to reaching their goal - they hit an important milestone. That’s cause for celebration!
A recent article from The Verge stated that Americans trust Amazon about as much as they trust their bank. Companies like #GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) were born in the age of software and the internet. The people running these organizations were technology visionaries and experts. Initially, #GAFA didn’t seem to pose much of a threat to the traditional financial institutions. How could a company that builds cool music devices called iPods impact a bank? How could a company that helps people find things on the internet hurt the financial institutions storing consumers money?
If you have an amazing solution to a painful problem for monks in the Himalayans that represents a market cap of $10,000.00 then you are wasting that investors time. They need to know the opportunity size from the get go...
If they don’t understand your problem then a solution makes no sense. Don’t move forward until you know they’ve got your problem down. People understand things best when they hear a story.
During a phone call one day one of our investors told me that “the purpose of the Seed round is to allow you to swing at every pitch.” At the time I was being a bit stingy with the way we were spending our money. He corrected me, and I am grateful for it. He taught me to see the Seed round as an opportunity to experiment and prepare for the Series A.
Josh James (co-founder of Omniture and current Founder of Domo) has done a great job of creating scarcity. Last I heard his product at Domo was still in “invite only” mode. He has hundreds of customers and markets a lot, but he maintains the “invite only” status for his business. By doing this he creates scarcity. He makes his current customers feel cool, and helps people not using his product to want it even more. If you’ve ever been in a relationship you have probably seen the scarcity principle at work!
One of the key concepts in starting a tech business is failing fast. We want to fail as fast as possible so we can iterate on our failures and find the right way to do things. I love this part of starting my own business. One of our early investors told me “Jordan, the purpose of your Seed round of financing is to swing at every ball. You don’t know what works and what doesn’t yet. Your angel investors believe you have what it takes to find what works, but you’re not going to find out without trying some things.” That same investor also said “The reason startups fail is because they run out of money. They don’t survive long enough to find what will really work.”
I plan on sharing the story of how we built our product, started our business, gained traction, and our biggest successes and failures along the way. I hope you are able to learn from our mistakes, understand our successes, and enjoy dipping into my journal entries to see our business and idea morph over time through this blog.
