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> Easy job for her.
Just finished https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
Holy shit, NOT an easy job for the first decade+!
Strongly recommend that book by the way. It reads almost like a techno thriller.
Love these guys. Downloaded.
PS Eric Berger also wrote a book about the early days of SpaceX called Liftoff. I'm in the middle of it and very interesting.
You should make a 30 sec animated explainer video. Video needs to be much simpler and end with a call to action. People don't need to understand the science: "Get paid to poop and help people." That's enough. https://www.fiverr.com/categories/video-animation/whiteboard-explainer-videos Also hire someone on fivver to do the voiceover.
You should also contact everyone again and ask them why they didn't respond. Otherwise you'll only keep guessing as to why. And actually a 2 to 5 % response rate for cold emailing isn't that bad. You need to treat this like a startup. Look up startup marketing tactics. https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369 Recommended book.
Search the main sub for "Red Pill Books Compilation V3"
>Millionaire Fastlane by MJ Demarco: (Mindset - P2) No this isn't some get rich quick scheme or ideas on how to make quick money. Demarco presents the idea in his book that there are different ways of thinking about money amongst people. The "Slowlane" way of thinking which is plagued by the ones who work paycheck to paycheck to survive, and the "Fastlane" way of thinking that breaks away from the norm of the typical "Go to school, get a job, save your money, retire at 65." mindset. Very interesting read on how to achieve wealth through changing your way of thinking.
I also like Ramit Sethi and his book "I Will Teach You to Be Rich". He also has a youtube channel.
What is the current setup like? What is everyone else holding? Is it shared? What classes of equity are there? Preferred stock? Options? How long will it take you to get fully vested in your 1%? Are there kickers? Can you buy in or lock in a per share value? Hit your library and read this book to start with. https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616
At the end of the day an equity play only for something with no product, market , fit or paying clients is a suckers game.
> Decline in SolarCity installations
> TSLA is abandoning solar energy!
Solar is one of the most essential components of their renewable plan (solar + storage = renewable grid) and they aren't going to abandon that because SolarCity's contracts came to a halt, unsurprisingly after TSLA tightened every facet of their spending belt due to this horse-fuckery quarterly analysis.
SolarCity was a stop-gap to penetrate the market with solar before a viable mass-scale solar option came to play (the roof, which is on the backburner while TSLA is scrutinized every Q for automotive deliveries).
lol, come on man. If you can, read a VERY BASIC BOOK on tech investing, and reevaluate how you're perceiving this entire market sector. Try thinking 5Y, 10Y ahead, and not 1 or 2 Quarters ahead.
If you think TSLA's end game is to prove the electric vehicle as a concept then let the international market take from that, you're in the wrong frame of mind and it's no surprise TSLA valuation or longevity doesn't show. Doing so would be like getting lost in an Amazon valuation as a bookstore years ago, claiming they just need to grow into Barnes & Noble's valuation.
Every time this is brought up, I repeat my suggestion for the same book to get someone started on this concept:
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296
You can disagree with the book, but if someone read this book in 2012 and went to the markets, they would've been balls deep in FANG before it even became an acronym. The book doesn't say "Buy FANG" ...but covers socioeconomic and modern-market theories that might offer perspective on how to truly look at companies like T/FANG, and what sets them apart from things like GPRO and Yahoo and why their slow starts usually have unexpected big yields.
I repeat myself: If TSLA was an automotive company ("product") with no moat or visible escape velocity, I wouldn't be as overweight on 'em. Fortunately, every member of the PayPal mafia well-understands the difference between a product and a platform, so I trust Elong to take us there despite quarterly noise.
Highly recommend checking out The Mom Test. It has a ton of great information both about conducting effective customer interviews, as well as how to find them. Best of luck!
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296
This is my long answer but holy fuck does it do an amazing job at explaining why that shit doesn't matter in the long run. And not just about Tesla, but Thiel explains it so damn clearly that if you read this in 2012 someone would claim you had a Crystal Ball on gainz.
The fluff / development / QC issues matter quarterly, but long-term, that's not what investors are focusing on. Their batteries are going to power the world, and I've placed my very...very...large bets on that accordingly.
Anyone who ever wants to invest in tech MUST read Zero to One. You don't need to necessarily agree with it, but it triggers a new perspective on how to analyze modern tech markets.
This is hardest thing after you find your target market to focus on.
Testing, testing, testing. I read somewhere once that "the best marketers are the best at experiments and doubling down on what works". Every company is going to be different. You might even find channels that work for you but don't work for your competitors.
Just remember that each channel has different feedback loops. For example, direct sales gives pretty quick feedback while SEO can take months to years.
This might be a little outdated for new bootstrapped SaaS's but this book gives you a good framework to work from: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369
To answer your questions... I think it's a solid yes.
The speed which new products and services are launched is so high, that "build it and they will come" simply doesn't apply. I'm still struggling with that as I'm a technical founder with no marketing counterpart. And I'm done building a great service (user's words), and it doesn't get any traction.
But speaking of traction, a book that helped bring some clarity is Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth because it explains 19 generic channels and a strategy to reduce the noice in every field and do some focused marketing on channels that actually work.
Your first build should be an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that has the most basic features possible.
A useful analogy is a hot dog stand… instead of building what YOU think is the best hot dog stand, complete with all types of up-sells and bells and whistles, you want to build the minimum viable product.
What is the “hot dog” of your platform? What is the most basic function that provides value?
Define what that is, then see if you can reduce it some more.
Start there, get it into the hands of users and let them guide you to create what THEY need the rest of the way.
This book is recommended often, and is worth a read: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
I like the two MJ Dmarco books. Cuts through the usual “become a millionaire finance books”bullshit which are all similar.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0984358161/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_4N7456HS0J6EPJNX4KRY
Talk to your target audience / customer by phone or in person. 10 interviews will yield 80% of consumer insights.
Ask them what their challenges are when it comes to X (problem you solve) ; How do they currently solve that problem?
Get them to walk you through their day-to-day in regards to the problem you solve.
Find out what media they consume, where they hang out online (websites, news media, blogs, social media).
You may find out that they have other problems you can solve , or that your solution is the right fit for them.
Do not tell them about your solution first (it will ruin the results); Do not ask them what they WOULD do but rather find out what they already do (People are not good at predicting their own behavior).
Best of luck to you and your project!
This site has more tips: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
Founders at Work is a great book to show how many different routes there are.
It sounds like getting investment won't be the challenging part for you, but choosing the right investor will be.
As one of my previous investors likes to say "we look for companies that already have the fire going, just add a little bit of fuel and watch it grow" (mostly talking about existing team + product + traction and just missing some extra cash to grow the business)
If you're looking where to begin, I'd say it's
- figuring out how much you need (which you probably already know).
- figuring out which types of investors match your needs (angels vs VC vs PE).
- figuring out how much you're willing to give up, considering both equity and control. (voting rights, board seats, decision making are going to be a big thing)
- make your deck, practice your pitch and then reach out.
A couple of books I'd recommend are:
- Venture Deals by Brad Feld (finance stuff if you're going with VC or angel money)
- Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman (hr/operations stuff as your organization is going to shift with influx of capital and new hires/people)
It started as a slight varnish on top of what was Extreme Programming that was easily packaged and sold by consultancies. These focused on brining Agile to big enterprise aka "your Agile transformation", and honestly most of these were face-value only. The true power of Agile requires an entire cultural shift for the organization, not just Engineering.
Scrum shops and scrum consultants typically peddle this watered down mostly-broken Engineering-only version, and well it sucks.
The best book I've ever read on distilling the true heart of Agile is actually a business book. I highly recommend it: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
Read Lift Off by Eric Berger and hear the answer coming from SpaceX employees themselves. That book helped me a lot to understand what makes SpaceX an outlier. Spoilers: it's hard to exclude the upper management..
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
Design engineer who went down this process. Injection molding this will be 50K+ with first production runs. Read this, changed my attitude on product development. True adopters will pay money for a 3d printer version and you will learn the most from them
If it has anything to do with a social media marketing agency, stay away.
Other than that, Zero to One by Peter Theil is my suggestion, having done multiple successful startups and known people who also have.
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296
Read Liftoff by Eric Berger. It's the story of the first few years of SpaceX from the point of view of the early SpaceX employees.
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973/
Spoiler: Elon Musk was the main project manager (akin to Von Braun's role) and Tom Mueller the propulsion engineer who designed the engine. If you follow Tom Mueller on Twitter, you'll find him often refuting people saying "Musk was not the mind behind it " like you do.
A bachelor in Physics is enough to say he can read engineering textbooks and figure out what they mean without having to go back to study calculus or whatever.
I believe him that he left the PhD because he thought the opportunity to make money on the early internet was too good to miss. And he did make make building and selling zip2.
The people interviewed for Eric Berger's Liftoff (https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973) were pretty candid.
Tom Mueller, former head of propulsion at SpaceX, father of record setting Merlin and Raptor engines and possibly the best rocket engineering currently working in the world, thinks that people who say that Elon is not technical are hilariously wrong.
I have no idea what YC's preferred methods are - but as someone thats been in marketing/startups I can give you my two cents.
I’ve come down to are either risking it with a $1500 budget to conduct a/b tests for automated marketing strategies with google ads etc, or the other method would be to just cold mail prospects for the B2B product and affiliates for the B2C product.
So it sounds like both deals you are trying to close are effectively "B2B deals" (even the B2C you are talking about an affiliate deal) - typically the sales cycle for most B2B deals are longer so I would account for that (i.e. the deals we start today we're going to not get revenue/close until 3 to 6 months from now)
The second thing I'd say is that doing outbound, it can work, but inbound is always reliable, repeatable, and most importantly it validates theres a demand. If you are convincing people via outbound, its never as good as someone searching for a solution to a problem. If you can stomach the acquisition costs of someone signing up its a much better strategy, $1500 is probably not going to get you there but it would be a start (the typical CPA might be up to $1500). Knowing this should also help to make sure you are pricing appropriately. You might think your product is $100/mo - but you should shoot for 70% to 80% margins because there are so many costs you dont know of yet. Theres a book called traction its got a really good framework called the bullseye framework to rank order the marketing initiatives you should do.
YC has a startup school that sounds like you'd be a good fit for
If von Braun wasn't a major in the SS, lots of things would have been named after him. He is the person who contributed the most to rocketry. Elon Must has created a miracle of a company in SpaceX. It shattered the myth of "it will costs billions of dollars and you will fail anyway because only people who have worked with the people who worked with von Braun can build a rocket that works, if you try without receiving the wisdom of those who worked on Apollo you will fail". Turns out an organization with good leadership and only $100M can build a working small orbital launcher. Since Falcon 1 it has been done a bunch of times, so it wasn't a fluke. Now space has been democratized. But I think nothing will be named after Must, because he's a shit. I used to think he's just immature, but he's a real shit, and it's a pity. Eric Berger's "Liftoff" interviews a dozen people who were there in the early days and Musk really was deeply involved in all the technical details. He didn't lie when he said he's the chief engineer. But he's also an asshole.
I do not consider myself an Elon fanboy by any stretch but to say he "didn't make the rockets" is actually completely false. Elon is the Chief Engineer at SpaceX and has a TON to do with the actual design and development of their technology. I read the book Liftoff which details his involvement from the beginnings and to say he just leans on his employees is flat out wrong in this case.
For anyone willing to dive deep into the origin story of SpaceX, I highly recommend the book Lift Off by u/erberger. It contains not only the account from Musk himself, but also by several early SpaceX engineers.
Fun fact. The writer, Eric Berger. Has recently been acused of war crimes by Rogozin.
Sweet Jesus it must be fun being that crazy.
If you want to bother with the history I'm talking about I'd suggest starting here:https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
I read it on a long layover. The section I'm referring to is from September to December 2008.
Good luck, homie. I should know better than engage.
there's a best selling business book that literally tells people to look for what people are complaining about in order to find your next big million dollar idea. it also gives examples of cases where it works.
> but he’s not personally doing any of the hard work.
I don't know how you can jump from "that's not to be downplayed" to "his job doesn't involve any of 'the hard work'".
The people that each individually contribute some fraction of the hard work don't actually get to make that contribution (or it does not translate into a 'real' product, that changes anything about the world, a la Blue Origin or Waymo) absent Musk.
From all accounts, at least as far as SpaceX and Tesla are concerned, Musk is personally quite involved in the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the hiring, engineering and production-line decision-making required to make those companies function successfully. He's obviously also absolutely crucial to their financial success, as he both personally committed all of PayPal money to keeping them afloat in the early days, and his presence is what draws investors to continue plowing money into companies that require massive amounts of capital (and early losses) to ever achieve profitability. SpaceX is basically going to lose money for another decade, everyone knows that, and every investor in the world wants to be on the cap table.
I mean, there's obviously a gradient to Musk's personal usefulness to any one of his enterprises from more (SpaceX, Tesla) to less (Neuralink, OpenAI), but the people that claim he doesn't do anything are willfully ignorant of all the numerous accounts of all the stuff he actually does.
The book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares outlines a number of different marketing channels and how to use them. It's pretty solid.