The video from yesterday’s interview with Andrew Warner is now live on Mixergy.com (see embed below). While Andrew initially characterized me as the “secret weapon behind start-ups that have had incredible growth” I explained that a lot of their growth was based on the pre-existence of great products that met important user needs. I helped these startups build a strong growth foundation around early users’ passion, but the continued momentum is the result of product/engineering teams that keep enhancing the products and great marketers accelerating customer acquisition. Startup success is truly a team accomplishment and if the team starts to focus on who deserves the most credit, success will likely evaporate.
As a successful entrepreneur himself, Andrew did a great job of steering the conversation to the topics most interesting/useful for entrepreneurs. It took me a while to get warmed up (it was a Monday morning after a weekend in Vegas), but there is a lot of new and useful information – particularly in the second half.
Successful startups are only possible with founders who have the guts to go for it so Andrew and I spent a lot of time at the end of the interview trying to analyze the qualities of the best entrepreneurs. Each of the founders I’ve worked with deserve to be on this list, so I regret not mentioning all of them. If the video isn’t loading below, try this link.
Andrew Chen
Brant Cooper
Dave McClure
Eric Ries
Jamie Siminoff
Steve Blank
Thanks for doing the interview!
Hi Sean,
I just discovered you on Mixergy.com and wanted to say great interview. Thanks for sharing your priceless insights and for writing and sharing here too as well. I have a question. I have a startup (launched in ’07) and my market is enormous..even if I broke it down to just 3% that would be over 25 million people. I design and manufacture accessories for people with diabetes. I’ve got the ‘product’, and I’ve got the demand…question is why haven’t I hit any real big numbers? I’m guessing I’m not business savvy enough to take it to ‘the next level’ for growth, but I know its potential and would like your insights…
Thanks for taking the time to read my ‘novel’ comment 🙂
Thanks for this informative interview! I actually started taking notes during it because of the great information.
I NEVER thought about this before, but I got an idea to skip the whole email confirmation step and just provide a preview of what the website does. If the user likes it, they can enter their email and confirm it later. A way of providing instant gratification to the user.
I recommend that you run the survey on Survey.io. This will help you determine if the product really does meet this important need in a unique way. If you get a large percentage (i.e. over 40%) of customers saying they would be “very disappointed” without your product, then there is a good chance that your issue is business execution related. For most companies the issue is really product and market related.
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I really enjoyed this article and interview. I was recently turned onto your blog by my friend Sean at Mavenlink. I would say the biggest thing I took from this is Teamwork. Everybody has to be ready to work together and adapt.
Sean – Just listened to the interview. I learned a lot, thank you. I am very early stage with my start up so I feel you have given me a good roadmap. Your advice about creating rock solid messaging is spot on. I’ll be following your blog as well.
Sean,
Great interview! BTW, you spend a decent time towards the end speaking about why you’re not a good founder type. I thought you were working on a venture, aren’t you?
Bhanu,
Thanks, I wondered when someone would bring that up 🙂 I didn’t really intend to be a founder, but was hit with an epiphany of a huge opportunity that I was perfectly suited to execute. I actually tried to push it out of my find for several days (my consulting practice has been fun/lucrative) but I kept having a nagging feeling that it had to be done. I shared the vision with a few venture capitalist friends and they quickly offered to fund it. Momentum has been strong ever since.
Sean