Jason Cohen — Q&A and Smart Bear Live
(This article is part of the MicroConf 2015 Recap. Want to explore more talks from the event? Go back to the Recap Hub)
Main Concept
- As an entrepreneur, you have an obligation to create things that are important.
- The journey is the important part. Not the end. Focusing on the journey and the experience — not the end — helps reduce the stress of the entrepreneurial journey.
- Price 20% higher than expected so you can offer a discount to them
Talk Recap
Question #1: “Validating WPEngine — How do you recommend validating a product?”
- Before he had the idea for WPEngine, he validated that by explaining what the product did…
- but then respond back with separate feedback on how / what the product should be
- It’s important to run down a full view of the product, reveal what the price is, and go through how you invalidate an idea — finding objections
Question #2: “How do you ask about price?”
- If people aren’t flinching at the price, that’s a good sign that it could be bigger
Question #3: “There’s some thoughts that you should collect cash up front to validate”
- Do that!
- Cash that check. Take money in square!
- Crowd funding is a great way to raise the money
- But it isn’t actually validation
- It isn’t a distribution system that you can repeat
- So those early adopters may not be a market that you can reapeat
Question #4: “What if someone has something they’re building that’s too complicated to describe?”
- “I don’t believe in that”
- Google can describe what they do
- If you can’t describe it in a short phrase, then you haven’t fully thought through what you’re selling
- You’re going to have to put headlines and buttons on your site — you’ll need a phrase that describes what you are doing
- The job of validation is finding out if the person you’re talking to is the right target person
- Google is a good example
- “Organize the world’s information”
- …but they make money selling ads
- So although ads are the business, the mission is to organize information, and that power (that information) is what they monetize
Question #5: “Hypothetical: You have a situation, but it isn’t working as well as you want. How do you know when to quit vs push forward? “
- Appointment Reminder is a perfect example
- Growing — but slowly and painfully
- Seth Godin wrote the book The Dip
- …you’ll read it and still say “I don’t know what to do!”
- There’s no clear formula to follow
- What patrick / jacob said is a good metric: is this something that I want to continue doing for my life?
- Being an entrepreneur is never a good financial choice
- But financially everything is going to be slower than you want, marketing will take longer and harder
- …because that’s life. Building software or remodeling your kitchen, that’s how it goes.
Question #6: “What tells you that you’ve hit product/market fit?”
- There’s a struggle where as a consultant the turning point is when you’re just scrambling as a consultant between project and raising your rates
- For a product, usually you can see the metrics and that tells you when you’re starting to grow
- At the end of the day, there’s no good explanation / signal that shows
Question #7: “What were you doing before you hit product/market fit?”
- It’s important to watch what you’re customers are buying — and how they’re buying.
- It’s important to understand your customers buying criteria — how do they buy? What are their purchasing / pricing requirements?
Question #8: “When does it make sense to move up in price points in the market? What would you change as you move up in your price points?”
- Depends on the type of company you want to build
- Always good to push prices up as you can
- One company, selling products for $300/year
- Asked: Who are your customers?
- Tested changing pricing from annually to monthly
- 0 change
- One company selling a product optimizing Facebook ads
- A/B test selling the product $30/hour
- …no change in sales
- …..so you continue testing raising the price
- People are scared “What if my customers do X or Y”
- Freeze their prices.
- Work with them.
- Talk with them.
Question #9: “What drives you to keep showing up after a few successful exits?”
- The selfish answer is that I enjoy seeing the original idea move forward
- The fact that we can provide opportunity for the right type of attitude to succeed
- The fact that we can provide a company that matches up with how we want to help people succeed
- Similarly, we’re here to help our customers succeed in their businesses
- As an entrepreneur, you have an obligation to create things that are important.
Smart Bear Live
Company #1: Anders Pierson — TimeBlock.com
- Questions: Who is the target market?
- Small to mid-sized development companies
- Questions: What is going to kill the business (most likely)?
- Lack of money
- Questions: What’s preventing you from getting to revenue quickly?
- Not enough people knowing about the product
- Questions: How many people know about your product right now?
- ~25 companies
- Questions: How much are people paying you?
- $49/user/month
- Questions: What’s the next step to launching?
- I don’t have the app yet
- Questions: Why not sell the other 25 on the spreadsheet version?
- They have different expectations
- Questions: How can you extend the runway?
- Start selling to the people you’re already promoting the product to.
- Over-price and then offer a 20% discount, so they feel like they’re getting a deal.
Company #2: James Kennedy — procurementexpress.com
- Question: How do we get in front of CFOs of a company of the right size to promote an app?
- Even at 80-100 person companies, there are other people in the company that are internal and are able to advocate for this product.
- Similarly, find the EA (executive assistant) in the system and start advocating to them to purchase this product
- Primary Point: The CFO might not be the ultimate decision maker within the company.
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“Q and A Smartbear Live” (@asmartbear’s Microconf talk)
Tweet ThisLinks to Speaker’s Websites
- Website / Blog: A Smart Beart
- Twitter: @asmartbear
- Product: WPEngine
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“Q and A Smartbear Live” (@asmartbear’s Microconf talk)
Tweet This(This article is part of the MicroConf 2015 Recap. Want to explore more talks from the event? Go back to the Recap Hub)