An app developer: 2 million dollars in exchange for 7 blood experiences

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I am the CEO and founder of an app company that develops apps that help users find jobs using their mobile phones. Since 2009, our company has encountered a series of setbacks, products have made four transitions, encountered unimaginable pressure, layoffs, the differences between the founders, homelessness, cooperation, and personnel and professional resistance, and so on. But the company has been through a variety of setbacks, made in line with market demand for products, the number of users and participation has increased steadily, and recently through financing to obtain financial support. But it was hard to come by.

This article is not intended to gain sympathy from users or readers, or to win awards such as reports. Just to share the feeling after the experience. While participating in the NEWME Accelerator Entrepreneurship Training and CODE2040 education program, some of these experiences were also found to be quite useful.

Although I may not be good at storytelling, every time I go out to guide the classroom, I can not help but ask myself, what I have been pretending to say what AH? But this does not affect me to share these experiences of hobby, because this can be as a cautionary tale let up-and less detours.

The difficulties of starting a business have cost us 2 million of dollars, and by sharing, by understanding my experience running a software product company, the audience has learned these lessons without spending a penny. If someone in the audience is planning to produce products such as lasers, micro-cores, gene therapy, or to develop a game, then perhaps I don't know much about these areas and may not be much help. But if that's the case, write down my experience.

1. Cross-10, starting with "10 deals"

What does "Cross-10" mean?—— make more than 10 interactive transactions. What these things are, depends on what the specific companies do to decide. For example, the sale of gummy bears, CROSS-10 is 10 different employees to 10 different customers successfully sold candy, if the management of the platform to build, then Cross-10 is to allow 10 different teachers to 10 different students to successfully promote the course. That is to say, the seller of the business 10 people and the buyer 10 respectively have interactive or trading relationship. For most companies, this Cross-10 relationship is not hard to find, while others are digging in cross. But no matter what kind of participants, must ensure that the other party to the company made time or financial input.

Remember, finish Cross-10 first, and then start writing code. It's not hard to implement CROSS-10, all you need is word processing software, Excel forms, a phone call, and a 100 dollars for sponsored ads (AdWords). But only through Cross-10, with the real user contact, get the other party spend time or spend money to give help, developers can really understand what the market needs is what kind of products.

I have given many people advice on how to Cross-10, but only about 5% of them have implemented this practice. But these 5% people are the ones I've contacted the most, and I've often helped them with product design or financing.

Cross-10 is just a start-up step, if even Cross-10 can not achieve, then talk about how to achieve 1 million transactions? While it's not easy to make mistakes in the process of trying, it's always a lot less than the loss of a long time in the wrong direction.

2. A real fan is worth 1 million zombie powder

From the end of 2011 to the beginning of 2012, a number of social-networking video applications, such as Socialcam and Viddy, dug up many Facebook users from the early Facebook social graph (Facebook Open graph) And indeed in the short term to obtain a lot of interest in return. But after Facebook changed its marketing strategy, millions of users chose Facebook and abandoned the social video apps. The reason for this is that users are just beginning to think these apps are good, and they really like Facebook. If it's just a common application, without the support of a large group of hardcore fans, a new application will be able to replace it. For example, after the Airbnb, also appeared a number of similar rental applications, but later the emulation of the application can not establish the former stable application group.

Experiencing user use in a real application environment is the key to gaining user trust. If the company adopts market research and investigation this indirect way, it is tantamount to saying "I do not have self-confidence real face-to-face communication with customers, for fear of their own baby's application by the user pointing point." But in fact, the 15-minute effect of interacting with customers in their use environment may be worth 10 hours sitting in an office discussion program. That was the way to do the front-line communication with customers, saving my own company.

So get out of the office and go with the users who use their products--not in the original, Paul Graham of Airbnb's CEO Brian CHESKY,YC Incubator, and Steve Blank, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. It was in the 2011 Brian and Reid Hoffman that I heard this advice and used it in my own company, and it turned out to be the word that changed the company's development forever.

The only way to design a product that users really love is to go to the front line of the user--and there may be some skepticism about that, but the real fans are much bigger than the fans who just pay attention.

3. "Ugly" for the United States, do not wait until the application of repeated beautification after the release

Lindedin's founder, Reid Hoffman, once said, "Do not wait until the application is repeatedly beautified and then released." It is normal for developers to be embarrassed in the future by applying the first edition. ”

The first applications that many companies initially released proved to be problematic, some even fatal. From some basic harmless error (such as color, layout by user picky etc.) to very serious errors (such as application crashes). But the important thing is that companies get feedback from early adopters and make corrections to overcome errors.

For example, this year's just popular for high school students in the application of Tinder, the early version of the message on the issue of a serious bug, many key features easily crash. However, this application still embodies a strong adaptability, each updated version and the previous version of a number of improvements made, and ultimately successful. Application launched within 2 months to match the success of more than 1 million of the admirers (both sides of the first mutual goodwill), the U.S. campus is a fairly popular social application.

(You want to take jobs for example?) Sorry, the great God is too far from us. If you're confident that you're a genius like Steve Jobs, it's not the kind of guy I've been able to track down four times. O (╯-╰) o)

4. Not the target user, there is no voice

Here is a conversation that happens frequently:

Founder: "Pablo, I have this idea, $#@%^&*^$!@# ... What do you think?

Me: "Do you think I'm your target user?"

Founder: "The amount ... No, but since you've been a start-up for a long time, I'd like to hear your opinion. ”

Me: "Since I am not a target user, my view of the product can be completely ignored." Try Cross-10, maybe I see some advice on CROSS-10 's data. ”

Founder: "...

5. Seeing is believing, eliminate the blank check

Many application developers contact a large number of application experience people, as the application of online user protection. The following dialogues are also commonplace

Me: "Have your apps been released?"

Founder: "Oh, no, not yet." I am a perfectionist, our application development team is also called the Program Ape Ninja, has spent three months to edit the code, the product estimate in four weeks can be online. ”

This answer makes me feel puzzled, "not online?" You spend more time before the line, and you can not know what the user's application of such a real request AH? Hurry online, online is the first step. ”

The entrepreneur will explain: "Because thousands of people (or tens of millions of people, all of us, can swallow an elephant) have promised to experience our application, we must be fully developed products to not let these people down." ”

Me: "Let me make an analogy." Selling a product that's not yet online with a user experience is like selling a free beer at a stadium, just before the beer comes in and yelling at the sign. Although you have described to them in advance the magical function of the product, but these experience users actually put the time or money for the product is zero, agree to experience for them is only a bag to make the loss of the decision. If you sell a free beer at that time with a grain of wheat, yeast or a rotten hop in the warm water, you won't be drinking it for free. The application experience and the release of the user whether to buy, is completely two concepts. ”

If you have been behind closed doors, developers can hardly develop the products that really meet the expectations of users, and the product description to the user, but also often add the effect of myth. Until the user really invests time and lobola, rejecting the cheap experience of "free beer," you can really get valuable advice from your users.

Another form of partnership in the early years of application development, I personally do not care. If your application does not win a small number of people first, then it is unlikely to get a good reputation from a small group of people. Early to establish a partnership, developers will rely too much on partners to deal with all kinds of things outside of development, while focusing on the potential of the original development will find unrealistic goals. I have also learned from this partnership model, failed three times, respectively, wasted 3 months to half a year of time.

Real users like to use the initiative to attract users, but also attracted by the various investors. Over the past two months, with the successful application of the final exit, there has been a steady stream of investors who have contacted us more than the sum of the investors we have sought in the past three years.

6. Promote minimalism, eliminate TMS (Too-much-shititis)

TMS, used to refer to the application of too long, involving too many links between the phenomenon, is the most likely to make the problem of start-up companies.

In short, there are countless ways to get things done, and then diffuse your thinking around this thing. Examples of success are ebay, Google, Paypal,twitter,facebook,square, and so on. But if you want to go hand-in-hand with a number of things and then pick out the one that has the most potential, you will die.

Often there are entrepreneurs who describe their products: "This product will provide a first-class user experience, which involves from a to B to C to ... Process in order to achieve this goal: in cooking when the church users of Chinese ... "This is too different from 108,000." For this description, my reply is usually: choose one of the links to do well enough. Even in the simplest of steps, success is a great thing.

Focus on a specific goal, design a plan, make an attempt, identify problems, and constantly revise to avoid linking your product to TMS. After this, the question of how to add the application function can be considered "sweet distress".

7. Chatterbox

Summarize your application within 5 words. If not, it means that you are not aware of your application or what you are doing.

Imagine if a 5-year-old user described "Our product is a multi-platform, user to user, sharing content of the multi-platform community, to%$^&* ($@!# ...") The other party is not bored to blame.

The more descriptive, the more you can only show that you are not sure of your products. In the same way, entrepreneurs who are not able to say what they are doing in a concise language often don't spend much time on such a person.

But the establishment of such a clear description is based on the above project. Only when the developer has experienced Cross-10 to face up to the first version of the application of the various errors, grasp the goal to develop a direct hit key issues of application, can really establish such a description.

Finally, the most important skill for startups is to stand up for the 101th time after being beaten 100 times. Make adjustments and continue to work towards your original goal. Only with such tenacity can we live through the top 7 challenges and push the product to the right track.