Lessons from John Landry: How 2 Have a Successful Startup
Although all startups are unique, new ventures consistently face some of the same crucial early choices, such as adding co-founders and taking their first outside funding. If you knew which approaches to these choices give startups the best chance to succeed, would you change how you grow your venture? This past Tuesday,#How2Tuesdays从空白中心移到洛克西奇大厅，以适应大众2如何成功启动。小时的男人是居住的Babson企业家金博宝约翰兰特，谁是序列企业家，首席技术官和投资者。绘制了他在科技创业世界的几十年经验中，兰德里分享了促进成功和失败的经常性因素。这是一个2周二活动，充满了宝贵的见解，但这里是兰德里谈话的一些课程：
成功的最佳方式：避免失败
Landry believes that the best way for startups to succeed is to avoid failure. He acknowledged that this advice is contrary to popular entrepreneurial literature focused on embracing failure as a learning experience. Although avoiding failure may sound simple or obvious, Landry showed us that there are many common but avoidable pitfalls which stymie startups. Based on entrepreneurial research and his own experience, Landry emphasized that the #1 reason startups fail is due to a lack of a market need. Entrepreneurs can avoid this fate by following the agile development process and remembering to keep their customers’ desires in mind, rather than misusing time and resources to develop a product that their customers don’t need.
Pitching to Investors? “Tee up the Problem”
As a serial CTO and investor, Landry has seen countless presentations from startups seeking funding from outside investors. He believes that many founders fail to set themselves up for fundraising success when pitching because they forget to take a step back and see things from their investors’ perspective. So what do investors want to see from startups? Building off of the importance of validating your market need, his main advice for pitching success is to “tee up the problem, then present the solution.” From his experience, this is the pitch structure which helps potential investors best understand the importance of your customers’ problem, and how your venture will grow by solving the problem.
“做没有规模的事情”
To gain initial customer validation and traction, Landry suggests that startups should go above and beyond by “doing things that don’t scale.” Although the eventual goal is to create a scalable model, Landry cites Airbnb as a company which found early success because it went the extra mile to succeed in its first test market of NYC, even if it meant doing things for customers that would not scale as the business grew. It was the positive word of mouth from these initial customers which helped catalyze their growth towards becoming the now iconic disruptor in the travel industry!
We hope you enjoyed these insights from Landry’s talk, and that you check out the Blank Center’s How 2 Tuesday events throughout the semester! On Tuesday, October 29, we’ll be hosting How 2 Negotiate in the Life of a Startup with Samuel “Mooly” Dinnar, instructor with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, a research affiliate at MIT, and the founder of Meedance. Register for the event athttps://h2eshipnegotiation.eventbrite.com, and check out this semester’s entire How 2 Tuesdays schedule athttp://bit.ly/2019h2tuesdays.