Dan:
It’s always a case as … Whenever we meet someone that want to start something … That’s what you’re on the lookout for. Someone who comes to you and says, “I’ve already done this research.”
Tom:
Absolutely.
Dan:
“I put together a landing page on Squarespace, or something. Here’s what people thought when they saw it,” because you can do all that stuff.
Tom:
Yeah. Exactly, you can get quite a long way without having any desk skills at all. Like with Squarespace, you mentioned, is a brilliant example though. You can have a website in basically ten minutes, and no one knows any different.
You might know that it’s not perfect, but your potential customer has no clue. They just see something and take it as the words are written on the page.
Dan:
A lot of people can do design and dev., but in your business no one can replace you as founder.
Tom:
Yep.
Dan:
And that’s what you’ve got to focus on being.
Tom:
And so one of the other things, it comes from the passion thing that we talked about before…
Dan:
Yeah.
Tom:
… Is you need an unfair advantage of the industry that you’re trying to get into. If you’re deeply involved in that and you’ve noticed that something isn’t being fixed, or could be fixed in a different way, that is an incredibly important thing to have.
Dan:
Exactly. It’s less of a hard and fast rule I’d say because there definitely is room from someone coming from outside the industry with a different way of thinking. Some times things get disrupted completely from the side, and they weren’t even trying to do it.
Tom:
Yeah.
Dan:
But if they don’t know the industry, well you haven’t got that indoor instinct for what’s going to work because you actually need to test all your ideas. And yes you need to validate everything, but where do those ideas come from? They’ve got to come from your instincts around you.
Tom:
Yeah. Your knowledge … Most people that we speak to do come with that kind of background. You know they’ve worked in the industry for a while. They’ve seen the future is going a different way, and yeah, they had an idea.
But yeah, sometimes people do come in and say,” What’s you involvement in this industry?” And if they say, “none,” then it’s always a bit of a warning sign.
Dan:
Absolutely, because what’s going to happen is once you get a product going, the feedback from users is going to come so think and fast. Well hopefully it will come thick and fast.
Tom:
Yeah.
Dan:
If you get no feedback its because it hasn’t worked, so obviously somethings went wrong before that. Generally you’ll start getting user feedback, and people’s response to that is often to say is, “I’m going to deal with this one at a time.”
Tom:
Yeah.
Dan:
And if someone ask for that feature, then you have to build that feature. You can run a product like that. Essentially, what you need to do is very quickly filter and work out what’s happening and why it’s happening… And that can only come from instinct.
Tom:
Yeah.
Dan:
If every time you get a bid a feedback and you have to stop and think and say,”Is that good idea or not? I need to go and check how things work in that industry…” Someone else is just instantly processing that piece of feedback through experience and what they already know.
And knowing how to say, “That doesn’t matter” or “That’s a problem that we need to move and deal with that.”
It’s something that builds up over time. If you work here long enough you’ll get it, but it’s just will you get it fast enough.
Tom:
Yeah, exactly. If you don’t have it at the start you could be causing more problems then good.
Dan:
So definitely a good knowledge of the problem space and the customers within it. And, that’s something that you’re going to have to double down on, and keep learning as customers.
A good founding, I think that’s something good to start on.