Many entrepreneurs want to create the perfect product with all the features complete. Unfortunately, this perfectionism often results in fatal delays getting to market. It is more important to focus on what minimum viable products you can release now to begin generating revenue, customer feedback, and proof points for future development and fundraising.
Most entrepreneurs know about raising money from venture capitalists, angels, friends and family, and even from governments and strategics. However, there is a top secret form of fundraising known only to a select few Silicon Valley insiders. It is so secret, it is unknown to most entrepreneurs and many investors. Find out what it is in this week’s Entrepreneur Minute.
Customers do not care about your solution; they care about their problem. Have you measured the underserved need? Do you know how your customers solve their problem today? Maybe they understand the problem and potential solutions better than you. Successful entrepreneurs solve the problems others face.
Successful businesses generate extraordinary value for their customers and users, whether by creating delight or solving a long-standing pain point. In this week’s episode, I want to remind entrepreneurs that their job is not just to create value for their customers, but to create value for themselves and their investors.
I have a simple request of entrepreneurs: stop obsessing about passion, pitching, and your technology and focus instead on the actual fundamentals of your business. Investors know what really matters to creating a successful venture-backed business. Do you?
You have a product which has a great user interface. It solves a killer problem that your users feel viscerally and know they have the need to solve. They love it so much they are recommending it to their friends, and they cannot wait to pay for it. You have revenue, growth, and you’re scaling up. Your job’s over, right? Hardly.
Lin-Manuel Miranda made Alexander Hamilton famous as a Hip-Hop Icon because he wrote his way out of poverty, but is he also a Silicon Valley Icon? Were Hamilton alive today, he would be where his tenacity, vision, innovative spirit, and bare knuckles zeal would be free to create without regard to class or geographic background. Today, he would be in Silicon Valley.