My previous post covered the first five points of Guy’s speech for entrepreneurs on ‘The Art of the Start’.

Here are his next five points. [plus a bonus point]

6. Aim for providing a unique product that offers great value to the customer. Yes, easier said than done. “The holy grail of marketing,” says Guy.

7. Follow the 10/20/30 rule.

— 10 slides in your PowerPoint pitch.

Title
Problem
Solution
Business model
Underlying magic
Marketing and sales
Competition
Team
Projection
Status and timeline

— Give the pitch in 20 minutes.

— 30-point font should be the smallest size used. It forces you to condense your material to its essence.

8. Hire ‘infected’ people. Ouch! Questionable word choice in 2020, but in 2006, Guy meant, ‘people who not only have work experience and educational background, but love your product.’
— Ignore the irrelevant. Guy has never taken a computer class and was involved in the jewelry business when Apple hired him. Why? Because he loved the Macintosh.
— Hire better than yourself. If you do that, you’ll avoid the ‘Bozo explosion’ resulting from ‘A’ players hiring ‘B’ players, and those ‘B’ players hiring ‘C’ players…and so on.
— Apply the ‘shopping center test’. Imagine you’re in a shopping center and you see the candidate from a distance. If you don’t feel an incentive to walk right over and welcome him/her wholeheartedly, then that person is probably not the one to hire.

9. Lower the barriers to adoption.
— Flatten the learning curve. [Simply your product or service.]
— Don’t ask people to do something that you yourself would not be willing to do. [ex. Make the process for, say, a password to free products, simple enough that you would be willing to complete.]
— Embrace your evangelists. Give perks to, create programs for those carriers of the good news of your service.

10. ‘Seed’ the clouds.
— ‘Let a hundred flowers blossom’. Welcome the possibility that unintended customers may use your product in unexpected ways.
— Enable ‘test drives’ to make sales. It tells potential customers you think they’re ‘smart’ [capable] and because of that, you’re encouraging them to work with the product.
— Find the true influencers. Interact with administrative assistants, tech support, etc. Those folks ‘really do the work.’

Bonus point #11: Don’t let the bozos grind you down. Two kinds of bozos:
— The nerdy social misfit bozo who doesn’t want to see you succeed. Easy to ignore.
— The more dangerous one–the slick upper management tech bozos who, because of their status, might just make you pause. See the next post…

If you watch nothing else from this video/speech, at least fast-forward to the last five minutes, where he takes himself to task for his own ‘bozosity’. Good stuff.

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Here are his first five points…

1. The best reason to start a company is to make meaning.

• Increase the quality of life
• Right a wrong
• Prevent the end of something good.

2. Make a mantra for your organization and its employees. A mantra:

• Should answer the question: “Why do you work here?”
• Should answer the question: “Why do you exist?”

A mantra is not a mission statement. If you want one of those, go to the Mission Statement Generator by ComfyChair.

3. Get going.

• Find a few soulmates.
• Don’t be afraid of polarizing people.
• Think different.

4. Define a business model.

• Be specific.

1. Who are my customers?
2. How do I get them to ‘buy’?

• Keep it simple.

• Ask women about your business model. According to Guy, women do not have the male genetic flaw of wanting to ‘kill the competition’. ;->

5. Weave a MAT [Milestones, Assumptions, Tasks]

• Milestones = first day of shipping your product, finishing a product design

• Assumptions = write down and test questions like, “How many sales calls can you make per day?” “What’s the customer ROI?” “How much does it cost to install our product?”

• Tasks = actions that help you reach a ‘Milestone’ = rent an office.