Slides from my presentation at the DC Founder Institute.

1. Founders Institute:
Product & Service Development
Paul Singh
@paulsingh
http://www.resultsjunkies.com

2. Startups are HARD
• Your competitors are better off than you
• Customers don't always know what they want
• You have limited resources...
Speed is your competitive advantage

3. Hurdle #1
How do you decide what to build?

4. You're not the
customer
(surprise!)

5. Customer Development
• Get out of the office
• Adding features is not progress
• Learn & iterate (linear execution is for suckers)
Goal: build the minimum product to get early
users (customers are even better)

6. • The Four Steps to the
Epiphany (Steven Blank)
• Checklists + tactical tips
• Buy this ASAP (you can
thank me later)
Customer Development

7. Hurdle #2
How do you actually build the damn thing?

8. Avoid Rocket Surgery
• Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous (Blog)
• Google Apps (Email, Calendar, Docs)
• Ruby on Rails/PHP, MySQL, Github (Tech Stack)
Pro tip: copy other startups

9. Hurdle #3
How do you avoid making noob mistakes?

10. Ghetto, but useful
• Be cheap (but not too cheap)
• Optimize later (manual processes FTW!)
• Learn to love technology (or you will get
burned)
• Learn to love SEO & organic customer
acquisition
Pro tip: don't skimp on user experience
(as far as your users are concerned, the
interface is the product)

11. Hurdle #4
How do you navigate the competition?

12. You do have
competition, right?
...I'd be scared if you don't.

13. Ignore the Competition
• Setup keyword searches via Google Alerts
• Pay attention to their user/support forums
• Don't compete on price or features -
winning that battle is hard
...but listen to their customers

14. Case Study
Because I’m not (entirely) full of shit.

17. Paul Singh
paul@resultsjunkies.com
@paulsingh