Tag / lean startup

by jcuene

Stay Golden, kid: Meet The 20-Year-Old Millennial Making A Living Off Facebook

I love stories like Koby Conrad who is hustling and growing his hemp business on Facebook (uh, it’s growing like a weed?). There are so many good, smart little businesses grinding it out and supporting jobs. I wish more of the business press would focus on this kind of story (a la “Bootstrapped and Profitable” from 37Signals.)

He’s a kid with limited technical expertise, who is using the Internet to build a fast-growing, small business.

He’s the kind of hustling, hard-working person the experts say doesn’t exist in his “millennial” generation.

“Everyone always tell you to be scared,” he says.

“Be scared of things going wrong, be scared of things not working, be scared of the people you meet online, but no one ever tells you that it could all actually work.”

via Meet The 20-Year-Old Millennial Making A Living Off Facebook – Business Insider.

by jcuene

Lean Start-Up Lesson from MyTime

Nice lean start up example of “faking it until you make it”, or, in other words, using the people-power before you code it with software:

Anderson’s growth strategy is pretty clever. He has three overseas workers (in India) who will take any bookings made on the app and physically call the salon or restaurant on the user’s behalf, then email the user back to say if their appointment has been successful. This can be a little time consuming – I tried booking a hair appointment on the MyTime website and had to go back and forth to find a good time.

The overseas worker essentially plays two roles: a one-time personal assistant for me, and a sales person for MyTime. Once they have the salon on the phone to book an appointment, they mention that it came through MyTime, before adding, “Would you like us to create a free profile for our app, so we can connect to you calendar?”

It’s not only a good growth strategy, but it’s also a great way to understand the mindset of the businesses you’re working with, the eventual buyers of your software.