The core theme is a practical guide for entrepreneurs on how to develop a successful product by focusing on rigorous problem validation, market understanding, customer discovery, and business modeling before investing heavily in product development.
Mind Map
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คลิกเพื่อสำรวจ Mind Map แบบอินเตอร์แอคทีฟฉบับเต็ม
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so previously at LED product and go to
market functions for the healthcare
division of LexisNexis as well as
leading roles in corporate strategy and
mergers and Acquisitions at the company
prior to that he was in Consulting with
Bain and Company serving clients across
multiple Industries with a focus on
growth strategy processes Improvement
and Customer Loyalty he has also worked
for several startup companies in sales
and operations roles at holds an
industrial engineering degree from
Georgia Tech and an MBA from Harvard
Business School I'm going to hand it
over now to at to continue our conversation
conversation
great well thank you Risha for having me
here excited to uh talk things
entrepreneurship and product development
I've made uh many mistakes and have lots
of learnings over the years so happy to
share a few of those with you here put
together just a short presentation
um so let me pull that up here
make sure folks can see that
yes all right
well great so
so
really you know as Risha said talk a
little about how to develop a product
and how do you do that simply uh and
build something that customers want and
so I'll get into that in a minute but
let me just give you
um a little bit more color uh from so
you understand why I'm talking about
some of these things and experiences so
a little bit just for just further
background grew up in Florida I came to
Atlanta to go to Georgia Tech and loved
Atlanta since then
um but as I was telling Richard earlier
was involved in some startups in college
uh but back you know when I was in
school that was frowned upon it was well
why don't you go work for Home Depot or
coke uh and and so there weren't many
resources so I'm glad to see there's
some more resources uh around like that
Risha and her team team have for that so
dabbled in some startups as an engineer
though and I realized I knew nothing
about business and so that's what's led
me uh to do some Consulting with a
company called company
and then being there ended up being
there close to 10 years before and after
business school just love the people and
learning but always still dabbled in
startups on the side I think once you've
got some of that itch uh to be in
control and build a startup it's hard to
let that go so always loved doing that
and then when I left Bain I got a unique
opportunity to go be part of a team that
was building a corporate startup it's a
little bit of The Best of Both Worlds of
a company that was a big data analytics
company and they were starting a
healthcare business within that
so you get a little bit of those Best of
Both Worlds if you get to act like a
startup but yet the financial backing of
a parent company and not having to go
out and raise money on a shoestring
budget so that was a neat experience got
to be part of the team that worked with
the CEO to set the strategy LED some
Acquisitions ran some of the product
lines uh for a couple years and so we
took that from nothing uh to 100 million
dollar business uh in four years so it's
a neat little ride to see a lot of
different stages of the startup you
would see because it's it's very
different at Zero versus you know 5
million versus 50 million versus 100
million and so I got to see a lot of
different things
there and so that led me to come join
Atlanta Ventures a little over five
years ago uh just helping support
early stage entrepreneurs and we do that
in three areas the first is we have a
studio where we co-found our own
businesses from scratch with
entrepreneurs so we're all entrepreneurs
ourselves we love starting businesses
we've got a spreadsheet of over 100
ideas and it's just meeting with great
entrepreneurs who are passionate about a
space uh and doing Discovery and going
to build together
the second area is we support
entrepreneurs with early stage investing
and software recurring Revenue
businesses to help them with you know a
couple hundred thousand up to a couple
million dollar checks uh that have some
early passionate paying customers then
the third area is just lots of resources
and events for entrepreneurs I'll share
those at the end we've got blog posts
founder stories podcasts tools and
templates uh one I'd encourage you all
to check out there's a weekly one called
five and Thrive literally five minutes
it highlights three or four startups in
the Atlanta area doing something
interesting whether it's a new product
launch or a exit or a raise or hiring so
it's a great way to stay connected uh
with folks and then last thing I'll say
in the upper right I've got uh three
three boys at home so that keeps me busy
on the home front and endless learnings
on uh how to talk about entrepreneurship
uh and be a part of that being part of
their lives as well so all right enough
about me you guys are probably tired of that
that
so you jump in here got a couple areas
and this may be a little
counter-intuitive but I'm going to spend
a fair amount of time about how to build
an effective product that has nothing to
do with actually building the product
and the reason is I think this is one of
the number one mistakes that I've made
and that I've seen entrepreneurs make
all the time is they rush to go build product
product
and why is that it's normal it's natural
as an entrepreneur you're all doers
right you just want to go see it and go
build it and show progress right and
when you're building a product I can
show progress I can show research hey
look at my app look at this version of
this look at these cool features I can
show that I'm making progress
but our experience is most entrepreneurs
build too soon and so I'm going to talk
through what are some of the steps that
help you really vet that idea before you
build anything and why that's so
important so I'm gonna start there and
I'll jump into a few things of how you
tie the product into the go to market
because product is a part of a broader
go to market motion go through a couple
examples and then we'll wrap up but as
questions come in uh Risha or anybody
feel free to call to call them out foreign
foreign
all right
so first area here
is this is a framework that we use in
our studio as we're starting a business
an idea and this is one that spends a
lot of time it's very iterative but I
think this is Mission critical to
finding a great idea that's even worth
building a product for and so I highly
encourage you to spend time going
through a process like this there's
other Frameworks and tools out there you
know feel free to use one that makes
sense to you but let me talk you through
how we think about it and I'll give you
some of the examples and Lessons Learned
so this framework revolves around the
problem the market the customer and the
business model so I'll start with the
problem this is the first thing to do
if I see 10 entrepreneurs especially
early ones and ask them what problem are
you solving they don't have an answer
I've got this product that has this
these cool features and look at this
thing it can do or I've got this AI
blockchain crypto insert buzzword startup
startup
but they don't really understand the
problem they're solving and this is so
critical because at the end of the day
you could build the coolest Tech but if
it's not solving a problem nobody's
gonna buy it and so what does it really
mean to understand the problem you've
probably heard of the term customer
Discovery but it's a term you we use
where you're going around and you're
literally talking to potential customers
and you start that process
in an unbiased way
and you're literally just asking people
hey what are you working on you know
what's going well what are some of the
projects you're doing you know what
challenges do you have
um oh you have this challenge here you
know tell me more just lots of why
questions going deeper and really
understanding some of the things like
how often does it happen man this
happens every day and and we have to
deal with it we're like yeah this
happened you know several months ago
like how frequent is the problem
then I like to look at
what do they do about it
they'll be going through those saying
this is the problem well what did you do
about it oh well it happens all the time
you know we just let it go and do it the
next day or it's like man we're up till
three in the morning trying to fix it
because it's Mission critical for our customers
customers
and so you're looking for some of those
signs of a problem that's frequent
that they're already trying to solve and
I think that's an important one is to me
if they're not already trying to solve
it it's probably not a big problem
there's a lot of things in life that are
what I call annoyances
they're an annoyance but not worth my
time to do something about it versus a
problem that somebody's already trying
to solve is a great sign that it's a
real must-have problem
and so as you find that it's something
they're already trying to solve I don't
care if they're trying to solve it with
pencil and paper or an Excel spreadsheet
or a phone call or Post-it notes the
level of tech doesn't matter but it's
the fact that they're already trying to
do something and so that leads to
another set of questions you ask well
well tell me more about what your
solution is you know why do you use
Post-it notes why does that work why
does that not work why do you use an
Excel sheet did you ever look at
software to try and solve this or tools
out there yes oh well what did you look
at what did you like what did you not
like why did you purchase it you know
yes or no if you used it you know how
was the experience right or like why did
you never even look to try and solve the
problem so lots of questions really
around the problem
in in the last piece I'll say on the
problem is
something that's mentioned unprompted
and you hear from multiple people and so
what this means is that there's a lot of
biasing you can do in the customer
Discovery process
I can go say hey Risha you know it is
such and such a problem and she may say
yes but I've already biased her by
asking her about that specific problem
versus I ask her hey Risha what are you
working on you know what are some of the
challenges and she mentioned something
and then I talked to Denise and Bob and
Michael and they all say the same things
unprompted those are all great signs
that I'm on to a problem
this must have Mission critical part of
their everyday life and workflow
and as I'm doing this problem customer
Discovery if you've noticed I haven't
mentioned anything about pitching a
potential solution or building a product
I'm just talking to potential customers
about what their problems are and
looking for some of those ones that are
must-have and that are mentioned across
multiple folks
so that's sort of the the problem area
the next area is on the market so I'm
starting to feel like I understand
there's a problem around you know this
this this theme well now let me move
into a little bit of some of the market research
research
so what does this mean one of my
favorite tricks to do is just go Google
some keywords about what the problem
you're thinking of and see what pops up
sometimes you'll see a list of 10
competitors all pop up great go look at
each of their websites how do they
describe the product or what they're
doing what's their problem you can
probably view demos online do you notice
some commonalities or differences is
there a white space does it look already
saturated or you start searching some
keywords and nothing comes up that's
relevant hey maybe this is a brand new
market or opportunity uh to go do
something so you can do some things like that
that
and then there's some tricks around just understanding
understanding
this Market where has it been and where
is it's going like if I look back
what sort of happened in the last you
know five to ten years on this space
what's happening today you can read some
industry articles or you know folks who
are experts in their blogs or thought
pieces and then where do I believe it's going
going
um because one of the things around the
market is I see a mistake I see a lot
entrepreneurs make is they build
something that could be a great business
but it's just a small Market or a market
that doesn't have these what I call
external Tailwinds to grow and you can
build a great business in that but your
upside is capped and it takes just as
much time or effort to build a small
business as a big business
and so I encourage folks to spend the
time when you understand the problem how
big is this problem not just today but
how big could it be in five to ten years
from now because you could be in a
little small Niche that has an
opportunity to expand over the next five
to ten years
or you could be in something that's
already got some Tailwinds in growing
and so one of the things I like to look
for you know we use in our studio is the
concept that what is something that five
to ten years from now it's a no-brainer
it's going to happen but it just hasn't
happened yet today for certain reasons
whether it's regulatory or consumer
sentiment or the product Tech's not
quite there yet and so looking for some
of those signs that this Market could be
a good one to get and that has some of
those external Tailwinds you know it's
like take
um you know nobody could have predicted
covid but obviously remote work was
happening before covet
but when those Tailwinds kicked in it
really accelerated a lot of remote work
things right or you know obviously the
the rise of the internet you know 20
something years ago or smartphones 10
years ago there were those external
Tailwinds that accelerated something
that was already starting to happen so I
look for some of those and then lastly
around the market I think through
how am I going to be positioned in the
market to win versus competitors and so
I care less about what they're doing but
more about where am I going to be
positioned am I targeting a different
customer segment
um is my product going to uniquely do
something different that theirs doesn't
do what is my competitive advantage and
there could be lots of reasons why but
what is my advantage going to be
so and there's an iterative process
there like I might start doing some
market research and have to go back to
the problem
but now or I've I've got a good handle
the problem
I've got an understanding this could be
a good Market to be in the next thing I
go to uh is down on the customer side
well now I'm going back to some of those
same people I've started the customer
Discovery with
and really diving deeper into
now tell me a little bit more about so
you've tried this problem before and
this didn't work why this what about
something like this now you start
introducing some potential Solutions or
ideas to see how they react to the
importance of that solving the problem
and again I'm looking for consistency to
the point where I've got a unique Target customer
customer
and a Target customer is not it's for
everybody a Target customer is very
specific go as niche as you can on
whether it's demographic psychographics
geography you know stage what how
specifically can you identify a Target
customer that's got one problem that you
can deliver 10x better
and so this stage of the process is
really honing in on I got this problem
in Market but like how do I really hone
in and focus on this customer and this
problem to know how to go build the
first version of the product and so I
still built nothing at this stage
one way I know that I've now as I'm in
the customer stage I'm looking for what
I call authentic demand and that's a
term that you've probably heard from
from folks before but one way I think
about authentic demand is
people are already leaning and ready for
this problem to be solved so when you're
talking to customers and this is an art
versus a science
you're asking lots of questions and I've
been on those those customer Discovery
calls where I'm asking questions and
they're literally just answering my
question yes oh that's an issue yeah we
have that yeah that sounds great
and they're not really leaning in versus
there are others they're asking
questions like when is this ready how
much can I buy uh you know work where is
this available at and so you're looking
for some of those signs of authentic
demand that they're leaning into those conversations
