February 15, 2014

Have you ever noticed that some startups or businesses seem to get traction when similar, maybe even better, struggle to win customers? How and why that happens is one of the many secrets of growth hackers, serial entrepreneurs, successful venture capitalist, and even the midas touch of Silicon Valley.

And even as I reveal this secret sauce, I will add a strong caveat to the formula: To know it, like any formula or recipe, is useless until you precisely mix the ingredients and correctly cook it. This will be the hard part, but hard is good. It’s why most fail.

So, secret unveiled…

Building the platform, from which you launch and grow your startup, is the hardest part.

It is the part that will make you soar early, sustain through the dip, and build a product that everyone wants.

What then is the platform?

A platform, in business, is an infrastructure that allows you to quickly spread your message, distribute your product, showcase your work, gain feedback, and have the resources to adjust and pivot to market reactions.

It sounds like a lot, and it is. That’s precisely why only the exceptional can succeed without leveraging an existing platform.

You’re going to need to partner with someone or some organization that has large parts of this platform already built. This is why I always recommend entrepreneurs immediately seek out a partner (in my experience, avoid drafting friends) and/or an appropriate stage investor.

This partnership will give you an immediate forward momentum.

Spread Your Message #

“If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This is an ancient philosophical question, but completely pertinent to our discussion. Regardless of how awesome your product or service, it’s lost on the market if you don’t have a way to get the word out on how you’re making the world a better place.

There are thousands of articles about building up your blog, social following, and email lists. I won’t rehash the literature here you can easily do that research, but I do want to redirect your thinking a little bit.

Granted all of these tactics are useful and necessary, but it will be a slow and painful march. Perhaps even a death march, depending on your patience and resources.

In my experience, the secret weapon to getting your message out to the market quickly and powerfully requires access to the right kind people–people with big platforms–and being able to enlist their help with a phone call or quick email.

This is why I think investing in a few solid conferences and meeting people face-to-face, getting yourself some speaking gigs, joining forces with local entrepreneurial meetups, getting funded by influential angel or VC investors, or if you hit the jackpot and get into a YCombinator class can be so powerful.

These kinds of activities help you to start meeting and knowing people, people with platforms, people that can help you tell your story.

Distribute Your Product #

Much like your message, you have to get your product or services into the hands of customers as soon as possible. Anyone who has ever been responsible for sales can tell you how hard this can be, even if your initial product offering is free.

Here again, influencers and partners with existing platforms become so important to your early traction and acceleration. Using a product or service, whether it is free or for a fee requires a high level of trust.

Think about the last few products or services you used or bought. You have to trust the provider with your privacy, your data, your deadline, your own performance. This creates friction and anxiety for prospective new customers. You must overcome these concerns if you want your startup to takeoff.

The quickest way to close this gap is to leverage the reputation, network, credibility, and trust already built into a partner’s platform. Referrals are powerful.

Showcase Your Work #

I see many an entrepreneur that fails because they don’t showcase their portfolio. This happens for a variety of reasons: fear, perfectionism, humbleness, confidence.

Truth is, your 70% is probably better than 90% of the market. Simply your passion for what you’re doing, as an entrepreneur, will get you to this level because everyone else is just slugging a job.

Got it? So, whatever might be preventing you from showcasing your product, even a minimally viable product (MVP), or customer enriching services shelf it. Splash your work all over the Web and show anyone that stands stills long enough to hear your pitch–standing still is optional.

Capture Feedback #

This is going to hurt a little bit, but you need to hear it.

Your first product or service is going to suck!

Okay, now that we’ve blurted out the truth. How do we get past this?

Assuming giving up your dream isn’t an option, we need to fix this and fast. We need to get users/customers to tell us what they want, what they’re struggling with, and what they love as often as possible.

I recommend two approaches to achieving this rich feedback loop:

1. Build feedback loops into your products and services - Every product or service should be designed to gather feedback from the user. This be behavior based (my favorite because it’s growth oriented) encouraging them to take an action, like sharing with their friends. Or just a simple one question survey, within the user experience, like a Net Promoter Score.

2. Survey your traffic, email lists, and communities constantly - Even if you have feedback loops built into your product or service, make sure you are still asking your customers questions as often as possible. I like to do this with Qualaroo on the home page and blogs of all my clients, with Survey Monkey in my email lists, and using Facebook polls and Survey Monkey Audience.

Gathering the feedback is just the first step. Now you have to be crazy responsive to the right feedback. This requires experience or at least a partner to go through the peer review process of triaging the feedback and prioritizing your reaction, from none to pivot.

Resources to Adjust or Pivot #

This is where it can get tricky. Resources in a startup are always a constraint. And for the most part, that’s a good thing. Therefore, you have to ruthlessly prioritize, but at the end of the day you have to have the resources to make changes or even throw it all away and start over.

I can tell you from experience, this can take a lot of money.

In the best case you will just need sufficient resources to pay your team and yourself enough to get to an iteration that begins to make money. In the worst case you need the financial resources to make a pivot, which can mean anything from getting rid of the wrong people to make room for the right ones to buying out partners or bad investors. I done this once and it nearly killed one of my startups.

Startups Need a Launch Platform #

Startups succeed when they have reach, speed, traction, and agility. A platform, arguably the hardest thing to build in a startup, helps you to quickly achieve all of these things.

Startups need a platform from which to launch from, gaining traction and accelerating into their market.

How will you co-op a platform for your startup? Will it be a partner to expand your skills, a strategic business partner, or the right investor?

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