The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.
Website: pocketrisk.com
Twitter: @johnndge
Slides:
Talk Recap
- Pocket Risk is an online investment risk questionnaire for financial advisors
- launched in April 2013
- $99/mo
- made it to 6-figures as a non-technical founder
Idea Phase
- Goal: Establish whether you have something valuable
- Establish what you want to achieve – $10k MRR, quit your job, billionaire
- Margin of safety – have money in the bank or a job
- Find a problem – your own experience or speak to market
- Assess market size – can I achieve my goals in the market?
- total reachable market given your resources (i.e. you know SEO, PPC –> that’s your market)
- Validate problem – speak to 20 prospects and see if problem exists
- Define the solution – create a mockup. Have a vision for customers, product and industry
- Customer validation – sell the solution using mockup. Get 10 companies to pre-pay
Build Phase
- Goal: Hire developer & build something valuable
- Minimum $15,000 development budget. $100/hour max. You get what you pay for
- Finding a developer: HN monthly hiring, Ruby groups, referrals
- Assess Developer – programming test, level of commitment, past work, references, gut
- Continue marketing and building your list
- have a plan to generate traffic
- Listen to episode #239 of Startups For The Rest Of Us
Launch Phase
- Goal: Get to breakeven
- Generate traffic – read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
- Find out why people buy, don’t buy, use, don’t use and churn – speak to them on phone
- Know your metrics and unit economics – traffic, conversion rates, MRR, CAC, LTV, churn, feature usage
- feature usage tells you “sticky features” that make people happy
- Develop Relationships – industry journalists, thought leaders, other CEOs serving same customers
Growth Phase
- Goal: Achieve your overall goal
- Manage churn – don’t die by a thousand cuts
- reducing churn doubled my LTV
- every 30 days check which users didn’t use product for last 6 weeks and email them
- Keep generating traffic – marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable. CAC < LTV
- Systems – start building systems so the company can grow without you. Use software & hire
- Vision – steer company towards your vision for customers, product and industry
- Manage churn – don’t die by a thousand cuts
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