So Jason and I last night were making a list of all the things new start-ups do wrong.. it's long list, but we distilled it to some interesting points:
1 - Don't bet against the consumer. They ALWAYS get what they want. Sometimes it takes a bit of time, but they always win in the end. The more your business model requires thwarting or subverting customer desires, the faster you will fall from grace. Microsoft learned this, AOL learned this. Steve Jobs, are you listening!
2 - Never try and solve a problem for an industry or business. Solve a problem for a customer. a 1% improvement in a customer's experience is the easiest sale in the world. a 1% improvement in business efficiency, with no benefit to the customer is a far harder sale. Think on this a while and you'll see it's true.
3 - Don't build a business which does something else which is already being done, "almost as good" as that thing. In the music business there are like 10 online radio - streaming services. none of which hold a candle to Last.FM (met him yesterday btw, lovely chap) or Pandora. If it's not a noticeably better user experience.
4 - People will pay with money, they will pay with attention , they will pay with their data. But the less significance you can place on the purchase decision and the more significance you can put on the benefits, experiential, commercial, lifestyle of the result of the purchase, they are less aware of it as they incur the charges. This is why Amazon's one click was so brilliant. What we need now is Snocap+amazon 1-click in a widget. oops did I say that out loud?
5 - Its a distributed world. Forget building anything in a giant monolith, build tiny distributed things that connect together and are more powerful or move things closer and more handy to consumers. Again, the better the user (customer) experience = you win.
6 - When you are pitching, ALWAYS listen to the objections. even when you disagree, listen. when you here the same one over and over, take some time to think about why. If your customers are telling you something - listen to them for God's sakes. Why is it that so many entrepreneurs think their customers, who have all had to fight, claw, manipulate and grow into the position of being the person who has purchasing authority might have missed learning a thing or two on the way there. I can't tell you how many pitches I've been in (on both sides) where a particularly excited entrepreneur began bickering with, or in one case YELLING at a customer.
Remember the 1st rule, the customer always gets what he wants. your goal is to give it to him.
Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com
