⚙️ One Weird Product-Market Fit Hack...

Hi there,

Welcome to the first edition of Specno 123. We’re developing this quick-fire newsletter to add value for founders, startups and businesses at various stages on your innovation journey.

Take a look and hit reply to share your thoughts…

Is your idea good enough? Get clarity by validating it first with a solid go-to-market strategy you can take directly to investors. Check out the competition and run some validation experiments.

Get your first customer. You don’t even need a product, sell it as a service first ala YC founder Paul Graham’s do things that don’t scale method. Jump on WhatsApp and activate your network – even Stripe recommends it.

How fast can you get an MVP out? YC’s MD Michael Seibel recommends you “launch something bad quickly”, an MVP is the simplest thing to see if you offer ANY value at all. Good news is we can help you launch an MVP in a 3rd of the time at just 10% of the cost.

Are you in the start phase? Have questions? Hit reply and let us know and we can see how we can help.

How to establish product-market fit. Ask your users how they’d feel if you shut down your product today, says growth hacker Sean Ellis. You want at least 40% to say they’d be “very disappointed”, that’s when you have a “must-have” product (worth scaling) in the right market. If it’s less, segment your audiences until you get the 40%, or reposition the product for different use cases until you hit at least 40%.

How to scale your team. From that same Ellis video, growth teams are all about finding people who fit the culture of testing. Two things: 1) find people who thrive on iteration and pivoting and 2) create an environment where people can test and experiment like Google and Facebook in the early days.

The unit economics that matter. An investable business is all about returns, so get on top of your acquisition cost (CAC) per channel, in relation to the revenue you get from each (CLV). If you’re acquiring customers for less than you’re making out of them, you’re golden – more at the 37-minute mark in this vid.

Need help growing faster? Maybe that's augmenting your team, or perhaps it's coffee with one of our growth experts. Either way, hit reply and let us know and let’s see how we can help.

How to diversify your product offering. The most successful companies disrupt in different spaces than their core business, says Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen. You either try create a new market by developing something people aren’t buying yet or create a cheaper alternative to capture the lowest segment of the industry leader’s business. Either way, you don’t invest in sustaining what you currently have, you build new. And chat to expert venture builders.

Maintaining company culture through rapid growth. Teach every employee how your business works, says Netflix’s Patty McCord. If everyone can see and understand how everything they do individually, and in teams, contributes to the bottom line, the culture not only takes care of itself but also grows and evolves with your business.

Exit strategies. The best time to sell is when you don’t need to (making money). But never start acquisition talks until you’re ready to sell – it’s the most distracting process in the world, says YC co-founder Justin Kan. The best way to sell is to actually engage in lengthy talks with a big company about how you can “collaborate”, because that will eventually land on one of the higher-ups’ desks, and you just want to be on their radar long enough for one of the big guns to decide it’s easier to just buy you out than to start a partnership.

Want to scale faster? We have people that are comfortable with the discomfort of the scale phase. Hit reply and chat with us about how we can augment your team and help you scale faster.

What’s happening at Specno

Founder’s Den 3.0 was an absolute blast. With over 200 people attending, we were inspired by talks from LÜLA founder Velani Mboweni, African payments service Revio COO Nicole Dunn, and Silulo Ulutho Technologies co-founder Luvuyo Rani. Missed it? No worries, catch it right here…

Also, watch out for Founders Den 4.0 coming at you in Q1 2024.

Hit reply if you think we’ve hit or missed the mark, tell us what you’d like to see or hear more of and, just in general, what would really add value to your journey…

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