This week I posted on Linkedin announcing my new startup – Ziply. I have started slowly peeling the covers. Unlike some other founders, I don’t think I am cut out for some big splashy announcements or even openly share on Linkedin. Plus we are just starting.
Here is the post.
As you know, I write a lot about B2B Products here and on Linkedin. (Please give me a follow there or connect. If you tell me you are my subscriber, I will blindly accept).
I will share my Ziply journey from time to time and even challenge some of my own thoughts I have written here, if it comes to that.
This is my second startup but the first one where I put my own money.
Boy, It hits you differently.
Much easier to give advice to others. So far I have advised 13 startups and have regular sessions with a few of them still. Even easier to read about the various frameworks on podcasts and blogs, and think that you can simply apply them and your risk goes down.
It does not work that way. Let me start sharing what works and what does not.
#1 Validate, Validate, Validate
Of course, before you even start, you need to validate your idea and ensure that you are building something customer wants. Good theory right?
And we did. But here is a problem. It is very hard to validate the copy book way in B2B.
The challenge is that not many customers are in the market for your solution. They are not prioritizing the problem you are solving. Which means either you have to find a customer who is prioritizing or you talk to many many people, which is a time sink.
What we did was we sniff tested with a few experts and some prospects whom we knew. When most of them said, this is something they will try, we started building an MVP.
The challenge for me now is to find those prospects who are currently facing this pain and are willing to pay to solve. OR, create an urgency amongst those who are not shopping. That’s a bit challenging. My plan is to make 10 customers in need successful, and use the case study to convince the others.
It’s a human psychology at play. When people are convinced they need something, they will pull you in. If you try to push, they might push back too. (Oh wait…that’s physics too)
So if you are an aspiring founder, this is what I recommend you to do. Find 5 B2B prospects with whom you can freely discuss the problem you are solving and who will be willing to be a beta for you once you have something. Which means you will need converse with 20-30 prospects.
I had secured a few beta customers as soon as we started building. And now they are my pilot customers.
Validating via interested prospects is just a green light for you to start. It’s not a signal that you will grow. Consistently finding customers at scale requires a different set of validation. Which I am going through now.
#2 What is my value proposition ?
OK, that sounds easy on paper.
You talk to customers. Find what resonates.
Here is the challenge, the value proposition that we think is important might not be relevant nor a priority. Let me take an example.
I recently bought a washer and dryer. Obviously, I was checking through my requirements – capacity, size, efficiency, price, delivery, And I ended up selecting a Samsung one. After installation, I found out they have an app from where I could control and it would tell when a wash load is done. Very useful, but not something I cared about in my decision criteria. If they did not have an app, will I still buy? Yes, because for me the app is not important.
Think of the over ambitious product marketer who will market the app for the washer/dryer. Fancy, but not important. I would have ignored these models.
You may have heard of vitamins and pain killers. But I like to think of value proposition as a spectrum.
At the top level are value proposition that customers want today because they are in pain.
Next up, are value propositions that pushes the customer into a purchase e.g. a fre 5 year warranty, or free service.
After that are value props that are not relevant to customers but it’s a good convenience. The app, in my example.
Ultimately, buyers will buy the entire package with heavy weightage towards their own needs first.
What does this tell us? It says that I will need to focus on the top level value proposition to attract the prospect in the first place. And then add the bells and whistles later in the discussion.
So what is that one value proposition that is important? Thats the discovery I am going through.
And it varies by segment. For some type of customers, cross channel content creation is critical. i.e Create linkedin Post and automatically create a tweet or IG reel out of it. For others, amplification via employees is important to spread the word.
So when I talk to customers, I validate what is important and focus on that aspect first.
Remember, I need to close paying customers fast.
I’ll share more lessons learned along the way. Next time I’ll share how to manage the barrage of feedback and suggestions you will get. And also how to prioritize your time between attending conferences, meeting people for coffee, reading blogs or listening to podcasts etc.
