How to create a demanded product: advice of the head of Y Combinator Michael Seibel

Photo: Flickr / CC by 2.0

At the end of August, the online School for startups Startup School began the well-known accelerator Y Combinator, which was an early investor of companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, WhatsApp and Reddit. One of the first lectures as part of the new course was read by Michael Sebel , the head and partner of Y Combinator, as well as the co -founder of the broadcasting service of the Twitch video game, which in 2014 was bought by Amazon for $ 970 million. He talked about what is needed to create a demanded product.

The Bell in partnership with the Russian non-profit online school of startups RUSSOL and with the VC publication retells the main theses of this (and in the future-and others) lectures Y Combinator.

• Real problem. The founders of many startups often make a mistake by creating a product for a non -existent client or to solve a non -existent problem. First of all, ask yourself what problem you solve. If you can’t answer clearly and briefly, but instead you write an essay on this topic, then there is simply no problem. It is also worth it to constantly ask myself a question - what result I am waiting for when the startup starts and starts working. If you do not know the answer, you probably do not solve a real problem again.
• Team. When there are cool developers in the team, the error price can be much lower than when you attract such specialists from the outside or try to do everything yourself. If you have your own developers, you can quickly make iterations, roll back, experiment with new features.
• A lot of work at the start. For the first few years, you should tolerate, do not rush to revel in the darkness, buy expensive things and arrange a party. The founders of Twitch at the start rented a two -room apartment. And the first few years, the four were engaged only in work - until she found her niche.
• Attitude to the case. You must relate to your startup as yourself. Failure in the startup or stopping work should mean for you in a sense the collapse of life. No need to make a startup for a beautiful line in a resume. This leads to failure.
• Own experience. Solving the problems of other people, without experiencing them on themselves, means the risk of walking along the wrong path, and even compete with those who are in the subject. The team should have at least one person who has experienced a problem on himself.
• A clear focus. You cannot solve the problem of all people at the same time. If the question of who your buyer is, you answer - “everything in the world”, this means that there is no buyer at all.
• Need. How often people are ready to use your product is very important. If the first client is ready to pay a lot of money for your product, but not more than once every six months, then you are not on the way to a billion. A good example is to buy a car: the need for a new car arises an average of time every seven years.
• Loss of product value. If you begin to distribute a product that solves an urgent problem for free, its value is lost in the user's eyes. Give the product for free-sometimes normal, but then you need to complicate the access of users to the product a little.
• Adequate price. When the startup only gets to your feet, you do not know what price to be appointed for using your product. Start with a higher one. You will always have time to lower it - as users' base grows. In addition, this will leave you space for maneuver in terms of discounts.
• The pursuit of the ideal . At the start, it usually turns into the loss of the time of the project. You do not know if this product will be successful and whether it will solve the problem. The best way to find out is to give users to try at least something. In an attempt to bring the product to the ideal, startups solve completely the wrong problems. Instead of having lost months and years for a long development of the perfect product, find the first users. They should be just those who desperately want to use even the worst version of the product and do it right now. In the first version of the iPhone there was neither AppStore, nor 3G, nor a heap of other things, but people still wanted him.
• Incorrect customers. Do not strive to impress investors, and most importantly - friends and relatives. The first is not your target audience. The second - they just love you. Their reviews will only be confused by you, and you will follow the wrong path.
• Toxic clients. Do not be afraid to part with customers who are trying to find different tricks and loopholes to ride on you, for example, blackmailing with poor reviews and falling asleep with thousands of appeals in support. They can make you doubt the right path.
• Metrics. By connecting different analytics services, you can get confused in hundreds of the proposed metrics. Select five simple metrics that measure the specific actions of the user. For Uber, this is registered, chose a route, added a map, ordered, went. For Instagram - opened the application, added a photo, used the effect, shared. The signals that translate the metrics should be clear and clear to the entire team throughout the life of the startup. All technical specifications and new features should be taken into account in the metrics - in order to understand exactly how these features are used and whether they play the role assigned to them.
• Meetings. Any meeting is paper with outlined actions. This seems obvious, but many startups do not do this. All important points and alleged actions need to be recorded. Even when you are only two people and it seems that writing is suck. Without such records, a month later it turns out that everyone understood and solved the problem in their own way.
• The essence of the successful product is that it was able to indicate the problem by proposing a solution.

You can watch the lecture here here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-h9uqz-vi&feature=youtu.be

• Thanks to the Russol “ Y Combinator in Russian ” volunteer initiative, in this lecture there are subtitles in Russian. The purpose of the initiative: to convey the experience of creating IT companies, as well as inspire an entrepreneurship. You can join and help with “Y Combinator in Russian” here .
• And here, until October 13, you can apply to the free online school of RUSSOL startups for the autumn acceleration flow and sign up for a two-month cycle of lectures of Russian entrepreneurs on how to look for ideas for business, create a demanded product, etc.

Yuri Yartsev (for The Bell)