Is Anyone Else Having Trouble With Launching Questions Right Now

How did you fail at launching a business or startup?

I think failures are quite individual and based on circumstances so please take these as anecdotal stories from someone who’s failed.I would say I have failed with quite a few ideas, for various reasons but I’ll share three that gave me three different lessons.Just start: In University I went to school with kids from over 100 countries, in London, this meant most spoke good english in addition to their native tongue. This is back in 2004 when we didn’t use Google Translate but Babelfish which left much to be desired, especially when it came to grammar. I came up with the idea to offer translation services with students at a discount. Did a homepage and talked to a few people who could translate and some businesses, it seemed like a good idea. But in the end I never pulled the trigger and let it die because I thought, who am I to start a business. What I learnt? Just do it, do whichever activity launches the business and is not merely planning, you’ll learn most of it alongRein in your MVP: As a founder, and if you’re anything like me, you have a thousand and one ideas for your business, this means your canvas of the potential product / service is really big. But many of the ideas are for 3–5 years down the line, just that the mind races there. For me I understood the concept of MVP but as I had a massive canvas I thought that the small piece that was MVP was way to small in relation. I learnt long after that when you are a founder, you need to understand the full product canvas and separate it from your vision, because if you use your vision, the MVP will seem too small and you will spread your resources too thinly trying to increase it.Solve a problem for one customer well than 10 poorly: As I was focused on the adressable market, I thought that if I increase the customer base, I increase the size of the adressable market, however, as we had limited resources (which startup doesn’t right?) all we did was increase the number of people we had a mediocre solution for. Start small, solve the need of a fairly niche customer and build on from there.I’m still learning and I lost a lot of money and time in these lessons but I wouldn’t change it for the world, because they have allowed me to become much better at the businesses I am developing right now.No one wants failure, but if you dare, you will fail, the best thing you can do is to reflect and learn from it.

What should you ask yourself before launching a startup?

When we started to think about Skillshare, we asked ourselves "is this something I want to work on for the next 5+ years." It was more of a mental commitment than anything else. It allowed us to really think about the big picture and break it down into tangible goals.What risk have you minimized for the startup? We spent about a month writing down every single reason why Skillshare would fail. Then we talked to everyone we know about the idea and asked them why it would fail. Then we spent an afternoon writing down ideas to solve all those problems. This allowed us to minimize as much risk as possible heading into it.Lastly, do you have 6 months of savings for your living expenses? Most people, often forget that launching your own startup is very expensive. I set aside 6 months of savings to ensure that I would focus on our startup 24/7 and not get distracted.

We've soft launched our online business, and got our first 10 customers/users. Hooray! Now what?

Hooray! That's fantastic and I'm sure you're all floating a bit with excitement :)Now, get to work! LOLSeriously - did you get contact information for potential customers at the expo? Do you have an email list? Do you have a YouTube channel? Social media profiles? Are you a member of a homeschooling association or parent group?Get interviewed by homeschoolers on their channels...blog, video, podcast.Write blog posts on other sites.Get written and video testimonials from your current customers. If they get stuck on what they should say, have them answer these two questions:1. why did you choose Sparketh?2. how has it helped you to help your child/children?Create an email campaign to those who aren't customers. The email will invite them to view your videos on YouTube, join your social media profiles and share their home schooling experiences. Emails will also showcase 1 point each time about the benefit of using your program. Showcase in terms of tell a story of how Mrs. B was able to save money by using your program...Mr. C's child was blossoming in other areas now that he was using your program, etc. Create your own explainer videos. Short (30 second to 1 minute) videos of you answering a frequently asked question...Q. what age group does this serve? A. an often asked question we get in person and by email is the age group this program is designed for. It was designed for XXX to XXX because...Create as many videos as you have questions. When a question appears on your social media profile, answer via video and respond directly to the questioner..."Mrs. B, you asked such a great question today! ...detail about question then answer...Thanks, Mrs. B...and for everyone else please don't hesitate to ask a question about our program!"This is an excellent way to build community.

Is launching a Startup in Sillicon Valley just a talent advantage or is the "inside the valley" word of mouth also very valuable?

There are a lot of advantagesLet me talk about some unusual ones-I thought I would edit this with some updates -Tolerance of failure....If your start up fails, you can present at FAILCON, a convention to discuss lessons learned - http://failcon2010.com/Any other place do anything like that ?Your friends, neighbors, and potential spouses will not think you are "odd" "unsound" or "artistic" for trying to start a company....Just by being here there is a halo effect that makes you more credible.  Really.This is one of those fundamental errors in thinking, but why not have it on your side ?There are competitive markets for support services like banking, lawyers, etc. You won't have to spend hours explaining what your Web 2.0 company does, you can say "It's like a Groupon for teenagers with mobile phones" and every gets it.  That way you don't get billed $250 per hour for trying to explain your business.Gossip can help you assess your competition.  If five people have left your competitor X to go to a new start up not in your field, that can be useful info.Close friends will often "bend" NDAs  to let you know about key developments.Business Development opportunities will be all over.  You spend all your money developing software, now you need some more money for launch. Solution:  sell your software as a "whitebox"  for someone doing a Spanish LATAM version of what you do, or an Australian version.  Your lawyer knows the CEO of the Spanish company, he will be in town in two weeks.  The Aussie guy ? Your CTO was the roomate of the CTO for the Aussie company.You have friends that blog, they can mention your company.  You and your friends will know many of the writers and editors of key technology publications - makes it easier to get your story placed.  Note that Quora doesn't even have / need a PR firm yet.One problem is that there is so much stuff in the Valley - you may be doing a Web 2.0 consumer startup, most of your business friends might be in enterprise software, or even semiconductors.Other downsides: people talk business all the time, and it can get boring. Housing prices are sky high, high school kids get whipped for B grades, traffic is terrible, taxes are high,  etc.

How can one determine the minimum launch features in their product/app?

The point of a minimum viable product is to answer questions / validate assumptions. So the way to figure out what a MVP looks like is to come up with those questions and figure out which questions/validations are most important to the success of your product.For example we recently launched secretgoals.com as a MVP. We wanted to figure out if the idea/story was compelling enough to get anyone to sign up. We knew there would be a lot of value if we could get a lot of people to sign up, but we weren't as confident about how much time/money it would take to get to a critical mass. So we focused our MVP on the raw aspects of the story and left out a lot of stuff that we were thinking you could do after registration (right now there's not much you can do after registration and you can't even edit your account).Approaching a product from the perspective of the user can be very helpful. Figuring out where the pain points are going to be can focus your attention. The first is usually the landing page (do people bounce right away). Registration is another one that comes up quickly. Focusing your energy on those two things when launching an MVP can help you ensure that you're not going off in the wrong direction before you get any validation at all.