Conquering Madison Ave as a Lean Startup @ LeanLA Meetup

Conquering

as a Lean Startup

MEETUP CUSTOMER DEV

Background• What industry are you in? What stage startup in

you in?

Lean Startup Experience• Do you know what customer development or MVP

is?

Burning Topics of Interest • What do you want to get out of this? Why did you

come here?  

Guaranteed Video Views. Maximized Sharing.

THE PROBLEM

In the time it takes you to read this, over 36 hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube.

THE PROBLEM

In the time it takes you to read this, over 36 hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube.

THE PROBLEM

In the time it takes you to read this, over 36 hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube.

We guarantee views for brand videos.

Repeatable • Social video ad products

Scalable • Social publisher network

Transparent • Optimization/reporting

• Data and targeting 

THE SHARETHROUGH SOLUTION

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SHARED VIEW

0

25

50

75

100

0s 12s 24s 36s 48s 60s 72s 84s 96s 108s

% PeopleStill Watching

Video Time Elapsed (seconds)

View Length: Paid vs. Shared

Paid

Shared

Shared Views are the Holy Grail

All-time Most Videos on Ad Age’s Viral Video Chart

Features on MSNBC, Fox News, Good Morning America5.4MM ViewsRockhard - Scarface School Play

3.8MM ViewsDentyne Pure - Epic Rap Battle

4.2MM ViewsButterfinger - I Like Big Butterfingers

Features on WSJ, NYT, Metacafe, Break, Digg, Reddit4.5MM ViewsMuscle Milk - Sexy Pilgrim

GMC - Dude Perfect Cliff Shot

Features on Buzzfeed, Digg, Metacafe, USA Today

1.5MM Views

Modern Warfare 2Everyone’s Doing It

Tony Hawk Ride - Skateboarding Dog Plays Video Game

6.1MM ViewsFeatures on Kotaku, Joystiq, CollegeHumor, Yahoo, Break, Metacafe, MySpace Video

Funded and advised by industry leaders

Dan GreenbergCEO, Co-Founder

Rob FanCTO, Co-Founder

THE TEAM

Mike MaplesFloodgate

Cali TranNorthbridge

Ron Conway Ron Bouganim

Steve Blank Auren Hoffman

Dave McClure Eric Ries

Hundreds of forward-thinking customers

Team members from Stanford, Google, VideoEgg, Current TV, Feed

Roots in Facebook applications and viral video consulting.

How did startups do business before the concept of Lean?

2 Hours of Development20M Daily Active Users

OUR FIRST MVP

CUSTOMER DEV GONE RIGHT

The Story

Take-Aways• Make your customer an internal hero• Find your early evangelists (good ones will want to

“invest in you”)• Change your pitch/product to appropriate customer

archetypes

InnovatorsEarly Adopters

Early Majority

Late Majority

Laggards

The Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle

Early adopters/Earlyvangelists

Geoffrey Moore, in his 1992 book Crossing the Chasm adapted and popularized the con-cept of the “Technology Life Cycle Adoption Curve,” whereby technology is adopted in five phases categorized by the type of buyer:

In a Nutshell: Passionate, early users of new technology or products who understand its value before mainstream markets. Acquiring early adopters is important to jumpstart product adoption.

Figure 2: Moore’s Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle Curve

• Innovators – aggressively pursue new technology, often out of pure interest in technology.

• Early adopters – are the first to pursue

technology for its intrinsic benefits.

• Early majority – rely on benefits of new

technology, but will wait for others to work out the kinks.

• Late majority –not interested in technology per se; waits for established leader to emerge, buys de facto standard.

• Laggards – don’t want anything

to do with technology; uses technology when it’s without knowledge of its existence.

Concept Definitions

17

INSTITUTIONALIZING LEAN STARTUP

We all want to cross the chasm. How do we do this (i.e. how do we scale)?

Always visible customer archetype board

Paired programming on all stories

Daily scrums, Rotating pairs daily

Good amount of ping pong

KEY LEARNINGS

Customer Development• Everyone does customer development• During training, new hires listen in on sales calls• New hires learn about the campaign trafficking

process

Agile Development• It’s all about discipline• All engineers work on the entire stack• Documentation and training handled via pairing• Visual status of build continuous integration

(working toward continuous deployment)

IS THIS IT FOR LEAN STARTUP?

customer development

lean user design

agile/xp development

CHALLENGING THE ASSUMPTION

Communicate with visuals instead of words

Low fidelity mocks solving a user’s pain

Stanford d.school whiteboards

Physical, visual, and transparent product communication

All teams co-locatedFrequent communication encouraged

LEAN USER DESIGN

What’s the goal?• Iterative design• Get designers speaking the same language as

Engineering and Business

Some more practices• Designers “pair program” with engineers• Communicate with visuals instead of words

Want to learn more?• http://luxr.co

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT A LEAN ADVERTISING STARTUP

Cash is a vanity metric• Cash should be treated like user count• More cash doesn’t equal long-term equity value

Lots of users, immediately.• All products need to instantly handle web scale

Lifestyle or Venture scalable?• Easy to slip in to a consultancy or agency

LEAN STARTUP TIPS

Figure out customer archetypes• You will save yourself much time and money

Plan everything in terms of an MVP• Not just product, but also marketing material,

sales plan, infrastructure

Technology is a problem solver NOT the product• Great technology by itself doesn’t prove business

models

Rob Fanrob@sharethrough.comtwitter: rfan622

Chris Schreiberchris@sharethrough.comtwitter: cousinchrishttp://sharethrough.com