Last year I began to write a business plan for a company that would "revolutionize" how we find professionals. One of the most challenging and stressful things for me as an entrepreneur who wrote an award winning (so i thought) business plan, did my research, and started to build my (A+) team was finding the person who could put this all together for me; a technical co-founder who would slave away on the computer while I patted myself on the back for my great idea and plan. I searched high and low, went to networking events, posted articles, blogs, and ads......begged. And I did this for months. Meanwhile running into countless other founders who were in the same boat. The feeling like my plan would collect dust became more and more inevitable, but I continued to search.
Not only did I begin to realize what I was doing wrong in my "pitch" to these programming geniuses, but I learned that all that searching was a waste of my time. There are two things I credit to this epiphany. A meeting with Corey Haines who shed light on what programmers are interested in and what they yawn at hearing, and reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
The main thing I would love to go back and tell myself and others who were in my position is "get off your ass and start building." But as I may have replied back with "How? I cannot program." I would advise myself to start to A) learn, and B) in the meantime find other ways to build a portion of your end product. Build a minimal viable product (MVP). Whether it is a templated website, gathering up enough money to pay a developer or firm to create a basic website or page, using spreadsheets and manually build and track data, or making phone calls and emails the "old fashion" way, get to work.
Through my research I found that I could launch a social networking website for about $35! Now was my main project a social networking website? Not really. But it provided me with a cheap way to start testing and building. I was ready to give away equity and spend thousands to begin building a website that I had no sound proof would even make a dollar. Now that I have my $35 website I can test assumptions, talk to future customers/members, and then when I am ready, show a developer what I have done so far and make his ears perk instead hearing the latest Lady Gaga song play in his or her head.
Some founders and teams get in the thought process of staying in "Stealth" mode to prevent competition from building your idea and making millions from it, or because of the feeling that we have to do it big and right the first time or users won't use it. I was one of you. But now I give you a great quote from Reid Hoffman (Founder of LinkedIn): “If you are not ashamed of your product when you launch it, you launched too late”. And in doing so you probably wasted valuable time and money to do so. And to those who think there are people out there who will look at your MVP and steal your idea is to visit my website Physioconnection.com and then steal away my big idea. Take all the research and planning that took me a year, try to discover my plan, and build it now. I didn't think so. (Great read on the topic: "The Hacker Way: Minimal, Viable, Viral")
So as I sit now, I am continually trying to find ways to perform the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop to validate my assumptions, stop wasting my time, and push forward with my project. And now I have over 250 professionals from across the world signed on to my site in less that 2 months who I can test my theories on, learn what they will respond to, and either directly speak with or email in order to find out real customer insights into my "game changing, billion dollar" project. Not only am I now obtaining valuable feedback, I can also easily pivot or continue my efforts with minimal time or money wasted.
If you are a founder that is spinning your wheels and getting nowhere or about to spend a lot of time or money to build something YOU are only sure of will work is to stop, find your MVP, test theories, and research the Lean Startup methodology.
- Michael Phillip
Founder, Physio Connection (my MVP)
Follow me on Twitter: @Mphillippw
