Learnings from startup best practices

Antti Kosunen Nestholma Accelerator Butterfly Ventures antti@butterfly.vc

An#  Kosunen  –  Co-­‐Founder,  Investor

•  Butterfly Ventures •  Nesthoma Accelerator •  Several succesful exits, 2 IPOs, raised

+€100m, Invested in +30 companies, managed 18 patent litigations

•  2-years in the US, 2-years in Asia

How do you build great products in startups?

Screw it, just do it - Richard Branson

Half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. - Steve Jobs, Co-founder, Apple

That’s all you need.

Right? Well…  

Fact is that most startups fail.

What can we learn from them?

DON’T SCALE TOO EARLY Don’t focus on Scalability Don’t add too many Features Validate… Validate… Validate

 Startup  genome  infographic  

What are some of the best practices for

startups?

You need a great idea, but…

Most people think it’s all about the idea. It’s not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is to execute on the idea. - Mark Cuban, serial

entrepreneur

An idea can be done in million+ ways There were tens of social media network services before Facebook

Trust your instincts or ask advice from an expert?

What about

asking customers?

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. -Henry Ford

Problem Traveling takes too long

Need Better and faster transportation

Solution Mass-produced car

Want Faster horses

Make sure you really understand what is the problem that is worth solving

Ie. customers think that it’s worth their time and/or money

Validate your understanding

of the problem

1

Validate your solution

to the problem

2

Validate the value and scalability

of your solution

3

your understanding of the problem

1 your solution to

the problem

2 the value and

scalability of your solution

3 Validate

IDEAS

CODEDATA

LEARN BUILD

MEASURE

And this is how you do it Lean Startup Build-Measure-Learn -loop

Repeat as many times as needed

There’s no need to be

feature complete

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. - Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder

Minimum Viable Product Maximum amount of

validated learning about customers with the least effort

MVP’s come big and small

Video showing what the user experience will be

Single plane, single route, no routing, but

with great service (Well, maybe an MVP only in

spirit)

Hand-collected links to the world wide web

Simple WordPress blog with daily deals

and minimal backend

running on a Mac.

The Pivot: Sometimes it’s good to

change direction

The pivot. It used to be called ‘the fuck-up.’ -  Marc Andreessen,

Netscape Founder, VC

Some of the fuck ups:

Are you making a difference?

“How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use

our product?“

40% “Very Disappointed” needs to be more than

Source: Mariya Yao, Xanadu Mobile

“How likely are you to recommend us to your friends?"

+50

Net Promoter

Score (-100 to +100)

Source: Mariya Yao, Xanadu Mobile

+70

Top companies Google, Amazon etc.

Successful companies

Are you?

There are good tools to help you along the way

Here’s what your notes should say

NISP Materials for presentations