„Do you know how many games the ‘Angry Bird’ founder has developed before he launched this ‘one Billion hit’?”

Now that I have described that starting a startup is rather like running a marathon than enjoying life, I have explained the 4 main pillars of making your business a success and I have shared some sayings and best practices, I want to get straighter to the point and bring up some more facts about the last lecture. This time the topic was “Building Great Products (talking to users and growing)”

We started with a guest lecture by Stefan Baxter, the founder of “Activity Stream” - an Icelandic startup. He made clear that ideas are worthless if there will be no execution. Therefore, an idea has to come always with the power of execution by the entrepreneur.  If a founder has a history of successful executions that will be even better for finding investors. 

The relationship between idea, execution and business success is explained in the info graphic below. For instance, having a brilliant idea might bring 20 points but multiplied by weak execution will never lead to the 10.000.000$ success you hoped for in the beginning.

We also talked about two categories of people: the ones who love winning and the other ones who hate losing. Sounds quiet similar, but there is a psychological viewpoint behind it. So what I asked myself, is it more likely to always win or never lose… I mean of course I like winning but I know that there will always be people who are doing better than I do. However, if we talk about startups there are usually just the winners and the rest, so make sure you pick the right perspective.

In the second part Bala talked about “The Lean Startup” and referred to a really interesting article from the Google Venture Team. Basically it was about “How to launch your product in 4 days”! At first glance it sounds unbelievable, but if GV is using this method, it apparently works.

So what we are now planning for our startup is the exact same thing. We reconsidered the idea about our “betting application” last week and came up with some new ideas during the weekend. The objective for this week is to choose one of the ideas and define what problem we are going to solve with it – basically what are the market needs and how we can address them. Afterwards, we want to build a prototype and find the first approximate 5 customers who are able to give constructive feedback. This allows us to validate the problem statement made in the beginning and reassure that our product meets the customer needs. As a result, we can refine our product before launch and, thus be more confident about the solution we built.

Overall, we hope to find a shorter way by using the “lean sprint model” of GV to create our product and that the feedback will help us to rock the pitch in the end - maybe like Kenny Brooks ;-) 

Btw, the answer of the quote is: 51 games!

„If you wanna run a startup, run a marathon!“ Bala Kamallakharan

Well, before I will review the last lecture of ‘How to Start a Startup’, I would like to give you the opportunity to gain insight into the presentation and skype interview with Sean Wise from the first lecture.

We started the lecture with the question ‘Why to start a startup?’. To be clear from the outset, this isn’t the best choice for work life balance. A startup means a lot of work, especially for the CEO.

Making money and being your own boss with flexible leisure time sounds good to you? Then forget about the idea of a startup! You have not just a night dream about how to change the future, it also keeps you awake during the night. So start your startup now and make something people love!

The idea of running a marathon is actually absurd . I mean you start with hundreds or even thousands of people at point A and run 42.195 kilometers to point B, what for?

Of course, for some people it’s about the competition: Who’s the first? Who runs the most marathons? And who gets the fame and the honour? For others it’s more about the experience and reaching their personal goal, but many of them run the marathon for the first time and they might get addicted as well.  Furthermore it’s time-consuming and you are a ‘slave’ of your own mind. Nevertheless, that’s also what keeps you motivated, because you wanna get through this challenge.

There we got the commonality with an entrepreneur! On my last post, I already wrote about 2 out of the 4 most important areas to maximize the success of a startup. The third one is EXECUTION! For the marathon runner I would say start running, same for the entrepreneur. But it’s not just about starting, it’s more important how to do it. You’ll never reach point B, the 42 kilometers if you just keep running straight forward. There are two key question you should always ask yourself to follow your strategy: 

“One, can you figure out what to do and two, can you get it done”

 Sam Altman

Regarding "what to do", you should know the execution. But even more interesting is the part "can you get it done". During the lecture we talked quite a while about this topic and Bala figured out two main points: Focus & Intensity!

Focus on your goals: For your job it is the same like when you do sports. You will have to repeat them over and over again, so that they get settled in your and your running buddy's or employee's mind. In addition, a startup is running on an extremely high intensity level during a certain time. If you can’t run on this level, you are not ready for the marathon yet. 

To put it in a nutshell, if your business is not growing it is going to die!

To complete the four areas, the last point is the ‘TEAM’– including investors, founders and employees. Actually the most important question for all 3 categories is:

“Are they smart enough to get things done, so that I would like spend time with these people?”

Sounds pretty easy - I mean would you choose someone being your friend if you even don’t know him/her? Of course not. You would start talking and communicating until you know the person. Same in business - Make sure that you know the people who are willing to join your startup.

“That’s probably why school or uni is one of the best places on earth to find a co-founder!”

Bala Kamallakharan

To sum it up, what I’ve learned so far in 'How to Start a Startup': You’ve got an idea on your mind which keeps you awake during the night? You figured out a product which people will love? You sold your story and your vision to at least two investors who are willing to support your startup and you convinced 2 to 3 co-founders who are able to keep focusing under extreme pressure to reach the goal of your startup? 

“So guess what? Launch your unicorn, because Life isn't a lottery ticket!”