That Bikram Choudhury episode of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, the one where he calls his alleged victims of sexual assault liars and “trash,” claims 5000 women a day want to sleep with him and that his sperm is worth a million dollars, and proceeds to have an R-rated meltdown on camera, is nominated for […]
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Friday, March 31, 2017
Man saves co-worker after watching Hands-Only CPR video
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS A daily ritual of reading the newspaper helped a New York City man learn a skill that he would later use when saving his co-worker’s life. On the subway on his way to work, David Martinez, 55, peruses The Washington Post on his Kindle to […]
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Poco después de aprender RCP, un hombre ayuda a salvar vida de colega
Por AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Para un hombre neoyorquino, el ritual diario de leer el periódico le ayudó a aprender una aptitud que usaría para salvarle la vida a una colega. Cuando va camino al trabajo en el subterráneo, David Martinez hojea The Washington Post en su Kindle para ponerse […]
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Odyssey Expands O-Works Lineup
Consider this an FYI rather than any sort of major release announcement.
Odyssey has expanded its 2017 O-Works lineup with the addition White/Black/White versions of its popular #1 Wide, #7 (Fang) and #9 shapes. The additional color schemes raise the total count of O-Works models to 13.
With that many to choose from, if you can't find an O-Works in a shape that suits your eye, it might be time for a new eye. Transplants are expensive. Maybe try Lasik or something.
As with other O-Works putters, the 3 new models feature Callaway's Microhinge face technology for greater topspin immediately after impact.
#1 Wide
#7
#9
Availability for the new models begins April 28th, 2017 for $229.99
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Panera Bread first to post added sugars for self-serve drinks
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Panera Bread on Wednesday will start labeling the amount of added sugars and calories in beverages. It is the first national restaurant chain to post nutritional information at self-serve beverage stations. Most Americans want to cut sugar in their diet but aren’t sure how, according […]
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Thursday, March 30, 2017
St. Louis Busch Stadium to open the season without chew
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS When the St. Louis Cardinal’s season home opener starts on Sunday, many of baseball’s traditions will continue at Busch Stadium. But one that will be notably absent is smokeless tobacco. St. Louis city officials passed a measure last month banning smokeless tobacco from all sports […]
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Survey: The Best Training Aids in Golf
Which Training Aids Actually Work?
There are hundreds if not thousands of golf training aids on the market right now, and it seems as if more are being added by the minute.
Smooth your tempo, make better impact, hit it farther, and shave enough strokes of your card to earn a spot on the PGA Tour. There are training aids designed to improve literally every aspect of your game.
Some come cheap (less than 20 bucks), while the cost of others can creep well into the hundreds. Technology comes at a cost, right?
But which training aids actually work? Which ones actually help you play better golf?
We want to cut through the garbage and help narrow your focus on a select few of the very best training aids in golf.
To that end, we want to know a little bit about your game and the training aids you've used to improve your game.
Please take this brief survey and let us know about your experience with golf training aids.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Gum disease, tooth loss may raise risk of death in postmenopausal women
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Gum disease and tooth loss may increase risk of death in postmenopausal women — but not cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests. Researchers found that periodontal disease was associated with a 12 percent higher risk of death from any cause and loss of all natural […]
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Clues but still no clear cause for rare heart disease in kids
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Hugh Ham was just 1 year old when he developed a rash and fever. Doctors thought he had strep throat. Ten days later, he was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, a rare heart disease in young children that causes inflammation in blood vessels throughout the body. […]
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Chronic conditions decrease for younger people, report says
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Early deaths because of chronic conditions including heart disease, cancer and HIV have decreased over the past decade among people under 44. Those results are “something to celebrate,” said Julie Willems Van Dijk, PhdD, RN, director of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, which released […]
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Seafood dish among winners of avocado recipe contest
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS Winners of the Take Avocado to Heart recipe contest were announced Wednesday, with a creamy avocado dip, fajita-stuffed tomatoes, and an avocado and blueberry smoothie bowl topping the list of winners. The American Heart Association and Fresh Avocados – Love One Today selected first, second […]
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How I Pitched My Business and Raised $2.3 Million in VC Funding
I grew up in a family where excellence was expected; my parents wanted us to be the best at whatever we wanted to be. If you were going to go to the trouble of learning to play the piano, why not be the best piano player you can? Since I came out already a bit of a perfectionist, it’s hard to say which way the causality flowed on following the family mantra.
I mention that before I explain how I’ve been able to raise $2.3 million for the SaaS startup I founded because sometimes we see success coming out of the blue, when really that person benefited from a broad network of support. The context of family, friends, and mentors can get lost in the background when the spotlight is shining on someone.
Build the world you want to live in
I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur long before I could even spell entrepreneur.
For me, it’s always been about building a product. While I was still in college, I co-founded a business with a friend that made iPhone covers. I focused on the product—making something better than anything else available on the market.
My partner and I sold the company in 2012, right when mainstream companies at both the SMB and enterprise level were starting to adopt cloud-based SaaS solutions. At the same time, I was starting to realize that both the elegance of cloud-based software and the business models it enabled were what really got me excited.
I spent a couple years running a digital agency that built custom software and just dove in head-first, teaching myself to program (which would serve me well later), figuring out how to effectively run a software team, and understanding the landscape of technologies available to entrepreneurs as I helped them make their product goals reality.
Experience and ambition make a good team
I loved running my own “tech” business, but I still felt like something was missing. Service businesses can be fantastic—among their many virtues is the fact that they’re very often profitable from day one.
But I had a desire to do something more scalable and more impactful—I wanted to build a SaaS company of my own. In my case (and this isn’t true for everybody), I felt like an MBA from a great program would allow me to gain the credibility, network, and education I’d need to build that future business most effectively. So I applied and was lucky enough to be accepted at Harvard Business School, where I started in the fall of 2013.
After a great first year, I did my summer internship at Google as a product manager. I’d always been an entrepreneur, so having my first taste of a full-time job was something I was both happy to do and gave me a great sense of what that “other life” would look like.
Risk-taking prevents you from getting stuck in a rut
It was an amazing summer and I felt lucky to get a full-time offer. I had a couple months to make the decision—whether I’d go back to Google or start something on my own—which though I analyzed and overanalyzed, I think I knew what I really wanted to do all along.
I was looking for wisdom to help make the decision, and found a gem in a lecture from my venture capital professor at HBS. He reminded us that with our newfound knowledge and degree, our careers had a solid baseline. There was almost no chance we’d end up without the essentials. With that baseline, the way to maximize the expected value of our careers was to increase their volatility. Taking risks wouldn’t kill us, but it could bring a huge amount of success.
Once I understood that principle, I knew that moving forward with my own business instead of going back to Google full-time was the right thing. But I wanted to find a solution to a problem that was as big as my ambitions.
If you want to run a startup, go with what you know
The idea for ZipBooks came right before my final semester at HBS, and stemmed from my own experiences as a business owner—I knew firsthand about the headache that comes from managing the cash flow of a small business.
Here’s the problem I saw: As my agency grew, the projects got bigger (and so did my payroll, relentlessly rolling around every two weeks), but payments often got slower. It was ironic that even though that second company looked better and better on paper, my cash flow headaches grew right alongside the profits.
Find your own magic
Over Christmas break, I started building ZipBooks. I knew that if I was going to have a shot at raising money, I would need something to show. I coded feverishly throughout that semester, taking several credits of “independent project” and enlisting one of my professors to mentor me throughout the process. In March, armed with an MVP, I started making pitches to VCs.
The process of pitching to professional investors for the first time was illuminating. My biggest takeaway from that process was that you have to have some kind of “magic” in order to raise venture capital. The magic can be anywhere—team, product, traction—but without at least one slide in your deck where the investors’ eyes truly bulge out, it’s hard to get to a yes.
I did my best to make that moment happen: I had two successes under my belt, a functioning product, a freshly-minted MBA from a top business school, and an innovative business model—we were going to give away free accounting software to small businesses and make money by helping them manage their cash flow problems.
Getting traction is key for early fundraising
So I had a business plan, a product, and funds enough to buy some time to figure the rest out. The biggest hole in the “rest” of the business at that point was users. I needed to be able to show that we were building software that addressed a real problem. Small business owners are notorious for being fickle about the software that they use and even if you can get a user to stick around, they still might go out of business.
I hired an employee who had B2B SaaS marketing experience, and he worked on getting users while I worked on building new features that would convince them to stick around. After about a year of that, we were starting to generate real traction—the kind we would need to raise a “real” seed round where we could hire an engineering team and make a real go of it. I spent a couple months taking phone calls and meeting with potential investors.
The pitch was stronger this time around—the product was further along, the team was more complete, and we had real life businesses using the product. The round came together fairly quickly, thanks in no small part to our previous investors who chose to back us again.
Seed round funding mechanics follow a pattern
At the seed stage, the mechanics of getting money from investors is fairly straightforward. Once the investors are confident that they want to invest, they’ll send you a term sheet (in many cases, the biggest part of that is the valuation and amount invested, which you may have already agreed upon). Those two terms determine how much of the company you’re giving away.
Other important terms include liquidation preference (who gets paid out first), participation rights (if the investors get to “double dip” on returns even after they get their full investment back), dividends, governance (board seats), and other investor rights. It’s important to have an attorney look over the terms of the term sheet before signing. Though term sheets are generally non-binding, you want to understand what you’re agreeing to, beyond just valuation and amount raised.
Once the term sheet is signed, everybody gets serious, and that’s exactly what happened with us. Both sides enlisted their attorneys to start putting together docs (the term sheet just outlines the primary terms, but there will be hundreds of pages of documents to make everything specific and binding), and move toward a close. Even with our bigger round, this process took less than a month. Once everything was signed, we were off to the races!
Execution trumps ideation
I think a big reason we were able to raise the money we did was because our focus was on product, traction, and team—not on the idea, and that’s where I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs get hung up.
You may think your idea is great, but do paying customers agree? You may get along with your business partner, but are your skill sets complementary and compelling to investors? You may want to build a tech business, but do you have the tech chops to do it, and the product to show for it?
When you’re pitching, just remember: You need to have some sort of magic. You’ll feel it when you have it, and so will investors.
Once we had that magic, the money followed, and that’s been invaluable in helping us realize our vision.
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First Look: PXG X Collection Drivers, Fairway Woods, and Hybrids
20 Second Intro
“I assure you, none of it is hype. No bullshit. Everything actually does something and makes a difference… and that’s our calling card.” – Bob Parsons, Founder & CEO, PXG
Product Name: PXG X Collection
X Collection Models:
- Drivers: 0811X, 0811LX ($850)
- Fairway Woods: 03411X ($650)
- Hybrids: 0317X ($550)
*Price include any shaft in the PXG lineup.
Timing is Nothing
It’s been just a bit more than two years since PXG officially launched its inaugural collection. For a good bit of the industry, 2 years might be considered an extended release window, but in this case, any correlation between today’s announcement and the date on the calendar is pure coincidence.
Unlike the mainstream wing of the equipment industry, PXG doesn’t do release cycles.
“We don’t actually care what when we launch says,” PXG’s Chief Product Officer, Brad Schweigert. “We don’t have this big five-year roadmap where we’re saying we need this here, that here, and that over here. It’s where can we make a noticeable improvement to help make the products significantly better.”
The timing is irrelevant.
With no specific due date, there’s no need for good ideas to be left in reserve for the next model either. Development continues until PXG’s engineers run out of ideas for ways to make the product better. And while Founder & CEO, Bob Parsons, is the final arbiter of what moves forward (if he’s not wowed in a handful of swings or less, the team isn’t done), the lack of time constraints coupled with PXG’s notoriously unlimited R&D budget allows the company, says Schweigert, to be more innovative than traditional golf companies.
Case in point, the new X collection. Parsons says X could have been released 2 or 3 iterations ago - and it would have been really good, but PXG’s R&D team, which includes former PING and Cobra engineers among others, kept coming up with more ideas.
The result is a collection of metalwoods that leverages semi-exotic materials to push design – and driver design in particular - into uncharted territory.
It's Expensive, and that Pisses Some People Off
This is a PXG story and I know what's coming. I’m certain some of you are already rolling your eyes as you prepare to bang angry strokes nearly through your keyboards. So yeah, it costs what it costs and it is what it is. All I ask is that before you pass final judgment, allow me to take a stab at answering some of your likely questions.
Is the 0811X a replacement for the 0811?
No. According to Bob Parsons, the 0811X augments the 0811. The latter will remain in the lineup, price unchanged. PXG believes the new model will be a better fit for the majority of golfers; however, the original remains the better option for low spin golfers. To give you some small frame of reference, both Ryan Moore and Zach Johnson are expected to continue playing the 0811.
It’s also worth noting; Parsons was assertive in saying that, unlike nearly everyone else in the industry, PXG will never discount its products.
What’s new/different/better about the 0811X?
When PXG launched the 0811, it thought it had something special. It was certainly a competent driver; offering performance as good as anything in the mid/back CG space. That said, the sound wasn’t the best, and for a good bit of golfers, the single prevailing adjective was spinny (even with all eight heavy weights forward).
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, even PXG would likely concede that the 0811 didn’t wow like a PXG product is supposed to.
The company believes that has changed with the 0811X. The new modely features three significant changes (four, if you like fewer weights) from the 0811, each implemented with the goal of creating a product that offers more distance, tighter dispersion, and better sound and feel.
Here’s what’s new.
Carbon Fiber Construction
The overwhelming majority of low/back CG designs feature some form of Carbon fiber construction. Notably, Callaway, TaylorMade, and Cobra rely on Carbon Fiber to free the discretionary mass necessary to power their back and sometimes low CG designs.
PXG claims its new carbon crown weighs only 8.2 grams. There's almost always nuance in these sort of numbers, but by nearly any measure, it qualifies as exceptionally light, even by carbon fiber standards. PXG's crown ranks among the lightest in the industry, and a quick check of the numbers suggests a nearly 22 grams savings over the titanium construction of the 0811. We’re talking about a sizable chunk of weight for PXG to play with it.
Honeycomb TPE Insert
I’m not a guy who hated the sound of the 0811 (full disclosure, mine has the sound dampening benefit of hotmelt), but it’s an area where PXG felt it had an opportunity, if not a need, for improvement. Not surprisingly, to solve the sound issue the company turned to the same TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) technology it uses in its irons. After trying several different approaches (putting the TPE directly behind the face, different thicknesses, etc.), the company settled on a honeycomb TPE sheet anchored to the interior sole.
Score another one for biomimicry.
The insert achieves the desired result of minimizing vibrations, particularly around PXG’s signature weights. Not only does the inclusion of TPE solve the sound problem, but it also eliminates the need for the often-complex rib structures used in other manufacturers’ designs. Gram for gram, the TPE insert saves weight over other methods of vibration control.
Variable Face Design
It’s fair to say that every manufacturer claims some sort of benefit from proprietary face technology. PXG is no different. In this particular case, the focus isn’t ball speed. PXG says its complex variable face design saves weight by way of an improved strength to mass ratio while at the same time helping promote tighter dispersion. Once again, we’re talking about taking weight out of the heavy part of a club so it can be placed where it will benefit the golfer.
Fewer Weights
It’s hard to talk about any PXG product without discussing the weights. Of no particular significance (consider it a bonus), I suppose it’s worth mentioning that PXG has simplified fitting a bit by reducing the number of screws from 16 to 10. The change still allows for front, back, draw, and fade settings, without being quite as wrench intensive as the 0811.
If there’s so much Tech in the 0811X, why can’t I see any of it?
It’s true that golfers love visible technology (I’m guilty of it) - that’s not a fact lost on PXG, nor Bob Parsons in particular. During the design phase, there were discussions about whether or not to make certain aspects of the 0811X’s technology more apparent on the exterior of the club. Ultimately Parsons decided against it. He’s of the opinion that visible technology is about marketing hype more than anything else, so PXG has a simpler idea.
“We’ll let the performance of the club speak for everything.” – Bob Parsons, Founder & CEO, PXG
What Are the Mass Properties of the 0811X
We haven’t measured the 0811X (yet), so we’re not able to independently verify the mass properties of the new driver. What I can tell you is that PXG is well-aware of our mass properties chart, and it wants the dot for the 0811X to exist in near isolation from everybody else. To that end, the company is making some bold statements about where it believes the 0811X fits.
The specific claim is a CG location that’s 1mm below the neutral axis within a Moment of Inertia (MOI) of 4800 g-cm^2. Plugging the estimates into our chart (above) we see that, if true, the 0811X would have the lowest CGNA of any driver measured, with an MOI (forgiveness) in the vicinity of the Callaway XR16, PING G LS and SFTec, Cobra F6/F7 (depending on weight position), and the 0811.
That would be uncharted territory - a unicorn of sorts - and it would make the 0811X special. Exceptional, really.
What Does that Mean for Performance?
In terms of the numbers, the biggest difference between the 0811 and the 0811X is spin. The 0811X should spin significantly less, launch marginally higher, and offer the added benefit of being easier to turn over. That means a driver that’s longer, and a bit more anti-slice than its predecessor.
The Robot Numbers
In PXG's robot testing, the company found that the 0811X launches .25°-.05° higher and spins 600-800 RPM less (depending on relative weight placement).
The stated distance gains are 8-12 yards of carry and 10-15 yards of total distance.
An additional 10 yards of left/right dispersion are produced by the respective draw and fade settings.
What’s the Deal with the LX Model?
In addition to the standard X model, PXG is also releasing a 0811LX. The LX is 8 grams (199g total weight) and five swing weight points lighter than the standard model. The LX is intended to fit golfers seeking a lighter driver and those looking to leverage longer shafts.
A good bit of the weight savings is attributable to a lighter TPE insert (8 grams instead of 14), but given the swing speed range of the anticipated demographic, it’s unlikely the smaller insert will hurt sound and feel.
What are the Specifications of the 0811X and 0811LX Drivers?
The PXG 0811X and 0811LX drivers are available exclusively through PXG’s network of custom fitters. The price is $850 with any shaft in the PXG catalog.
PXG X Collection Fairways and Hybrids
What’s a driver release without accompanying fairways and hybrids?
What’s intriguing about the 0341X (fairway) and 0317X (hybrids) is that unlike most OEM lines, the majority of the 0811X’s signature technology is consistent throughout the entire metalwoods lineup.
Both the 0341X and 0317X feature both carbon fiber crowns and TP honeycomb inserts.
PXG 0341X Fairway
From a design perspective, they key design detail is that the lighter crown has allowed PXG to drive the CG down and a bit forward. That’s right, forward, not back.
There’s a school of thought in fairway design that says that if you can’t hit a fairway wood, your best bet for success comes from a back CG design. If, however, you’re already competent with a fairway wood, front CG designs will often produce better results.
The 0341X has a longer heel to toe width than the 0341, which maintains the MOI of the original, despite the more forward CG.
In robot testing, the 0341X showed faster ball speeds (1.5-2MPH), launched higher (1°), spun less (300-400 RPM lower), and produced more distance (7-10 yards carry, and 8-11 yards total).
PXG also says the new model should prove a bit easier to hit, while offering tighter dispersion and, because of the TPE insert, generally better feel.
In addition to standard 3, 7, 5, and 9-wood models, the 0341X is also available in a 13° 2-wood. While still reasonably compact, the 2-wood features a taller face than the standard 15° 3-wood, which makes it more suitable for use off the tee, without compromising playability from the fairway.
PXG 0341X Fairway Specs
PXG’s 0341X Fairway is available exclusively through PXG’s network of custom fitters. The price is $650 per club with any shaft in the PXG catalog.
PXG 0317X Hybrid
I’ve already mentioned it, but it bears repeating: the PXG 0317X hybrid features the same TPE insert and Carbon fiber crown technology as the 0311X Driver.
Carbon fiber crown… in a hybrid.
While the resulting weight savings (nearly 10 grams vs. steel) aren’t as significant as they are in larger clubs, every gram counts.
The carbon fiber crown and TPE insert give the 0317X a technology upgrade, but other design changes are intentionally subtle. The 0317 is immensely popular with PXG’s Tour staff, so there was little motivation to create anything radically different.
As with the 0341X Fairway, PXG’s engineers got an MOI boost by extending the 0317X from toe to heel, but the design remains shallow from front to back, and look at address doesn’t deviate much from that of the 0341.
Where relative performance is concerned; in robot testing the 0341X produced 0.5 MPH more ball speed, launched 0.5° higher, spun 200-300 RPM less, while producing more distance (3-5 yards carry and 5-7 yards total).
For those who like their hybrids to spin a bit more for better green stopping power, the original 0341 might still be the better option.
PXG 0317X Hybrid Specs
PXG’s 0317X Hybrid is available exclusively through PXG’s network of custom fitters. The price is $550 per club with any shaft in the PXG catalog.
Coming Soon?
Bob Parsons tells us that PXG will be releasing another driver coming in the coming months. Uncharacteristically tight-lipped, Parsons says the next one well be aimed at a very specific segment of the market.
For more information on PXG’s new X Collection, visit PXG.com.
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Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Going Into Consulting? Prepare for Scope Creep
Are you new to consulting? Planning to start soon? Beware of scope creep. It’s a real problem in a lot of professional services. I ran into it in my years of consulting related to high-end planning and market research.
Scope creep is what happens when you’ve done the consulting (or programming, design, engineering, etc.) you promised but your client wants more. I ran into it a lot during my consulting years, doing business plans for clients. Imagine my disappointment as I delivered a finished plan along with an invoice for my fees, only to be asked for more work. Suddenly, my money was being held hostage. And, in my case, the kids needed shoes. But the client said assumptions had changed, or the product had been revised, or the financial analysis needed more scenarios.
You Can Avoid, and Manage, Scope Creep
It’s always worse with new clients. With repeat business with existing clients, you know each other, and you can take some of this for granted.
At the outset,
- define the deliverables carefully, with specific, concrete, agreed-upon definitions for each step, with approvals and approval process laid out.
- And while you’re on the subject, you should also build timing of deliverables in terms that protect you from the client’s delays, such as having milestone 2 coming due not on a specified date, but rather on a specified amount of days after approval of milestone 1.
- And, better yet, that plus days after receipt of payment for milestone 1 (solving another problem while you’re at it).
- And also, point out from the beginning that things do change, and progress can lead to change, and when things change requiring work different from what is specified, that takes place at a given billing rate.
Then, as the engagement rolls on, you have to stick to it.
Very Hard To Do After the Fact
What’s difficult is that you have to deal with scope creep in the beginning, with the way you define the engagement, and your billing structure. It’s very hard to manage when you’re delivering, and your terms of engagement haven’t built the precautions into it, ahead of time.
If you get into that situation, of course you know you are dealing with ambiguity. Reasonable people can disagree about what’s a prototype and how that relates to the entire product. Details that should have been specified weren’t. So now what do you do?
Try to configure your response as “yes, we can do that for you … and here’s how much it will cost.” Follow that with details of the difference between what you promised and what more they want. Be specific. Have a good list of additional development required to go from your vision to theirs. Try to explain your point of view. If you have to, it will save the relationship, and you can afford to, offer a big discount on additional work. Take the high road, blame yourself for the misunderstanding, and keep the client happy.
Remember that repeat business is the life’s blood of professional services. Try not to lose your client.
The client is not always right
You may run into a client whose demands are unreasonable. The first time is the client’s fault. From then on it’s your fault, not the clients. Specify your jobs better and stick to your policies.
You might find this helpful: in my years of consulting, I ran into one client who played scope creep on me more than once. I guess it had become a standard tool in his toolbox, to get more work from consultants for less money. After the second time I started taking the price I would have charged to anybody else, and tripling that price for him when he asked me for consulting. I didn’t get the engagements, but also I didn’t have the aggravation. I was better off.
But I also, for my own peace of mind, stuck with the general rule for consulting: you don’t say no. You say yes, and here’s how much it will cost. Build the aggravation into the price. Make it so that if you do take it on, it’s worth the extra problems.
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Stent retrievers are a game-changer for severe strokes
By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS By 2015, stroke experts were starting to agree on the benefits of using tiny, cage-like stent retrievers to remove clots from large vessels that block blood flow in the brain. Today, the consensus for that treatment has become universal, thanks to an analysis of patient […]
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Demand Validation: How to Find Out If Customers Want to Buy Your Product
Before you start your business, it’s essential that you make sure that customers are interested in buying your product. Taking this one step will save you weeks (or possibly even months) of lost time, and potentially save you thousands of dollars.
In this article, I’ll show you how you can make sure your customers are interested in your product before you spend any time building your business.
The wrong way
Several years ago, my team and I worked hard building a new product. We were certain that our current customers would want it and we toiled for close to a year before releasing the first version. We were proud of our work and even got featured on Techcrunch.
But, a successful press launch doesn’t always translate into a successful start for a new business. While an initial burst of press helped get the word out there, we had made one crucial mistake: we hadn’t bothered to truly understand our potential customer before we built our product.
We thought that our product was for “everyone”—one of the cardinal sins of the startup process—and we didn’t focus our marketing and messaging on any particular market segment. We didn’t even quite understand which features our customers thought were most important and exactly how they would end up using the product.
Needless to say, we struggled to get customers. We had to change our pricing several times and develop additional features as we slowly figured out who our true customer was and what they actually needed. Some features that we built in the first version of the product were rarely used, while we scrambled to build what our customers actually wanted.
The paradox of speed
My guess is that, in the end, we probably wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars because we built what we thought customers wanted instead of building what they actually wanted.
It turned out that we were trying to move too fast, and in the process, we ended up slowing ourselves down because we skipped the all-important step of making sure we understood who might want our product and why.
Being nimble and fast-moving are excellent traits for any entrepreneur, but even the smartest entrepreneurs should do a bit of planning before investing time and money into building a new business. Of all the steps in the business planning and startup process, validating that there’s demand for your product is one of the most important steps. It’s the step we skipped and paid the price for. Keep reading to find out how to do things the right way.
Validating demand for your idea
What is demand validation?
The truth is, your idea probably isn’t perfect. Sorry to delivery that hard truth.
But, the good news is that there’s a way to fix it.
For your idea to work, the first thing you need is for other people to care about it. If you are the only potential customer for your idea, your business isn’t going to get very far. Other people need to want to buy what you’re selling. In other words, there needs to be demand for your product.
This is where demand validation comes into play. Demand validation is the process of making sure that other people are willing to part with their hard-earned money to buy what you’re selling.
Changing guesses to facts
The reason you need to validate that there’s demand for your product is because you’re starting out with a guess, not an actual product. You’re guessing that your product is something people want. You’re guessing that people want to pay you for your product. You’re guessing that you can grow your business into something profitable.
Because your idea is nothing more than a series of guesses, you need to take the time to change those guesses into facts. Once you know the facts, you can refine your idea and change it from a mediocre concept into an idea for a viable, successful business.
The 3 questions you need to ask yourself
Now that you have your business idea (really, your guess, right?), you’re ready to answer three critical questions:
- What problem do my potential customers have?
- What’s the solution to that problem?
- Why would people pay money for my product?
You need to understand the answers to these questions so you can easily explain your idea to other people. And, more importantly, you need a sanity check to make sure that your idea is valuable to potential customers. These are the first steps in demand validation.
Here at Palo Alto Software, we’re currently working on building a new team email product and we’re going through this exercise right now. Here are our answers to these questions:
- Problem: It’s hard to manage info@ and sales@ emails with a single email account and customers sometimes get the wrong response or no response at all.
- Solution: A collaborative email management tool for teams.
- Value: Everyone can work in the same inbox without stepping on each other’s toes and make sure customers get better support with fewer headaches.
You might be thinking, this format won’t work for me because I’m starting a restaurant (or bike shop, or hair salon, or clothing store, and so on). But, you don’t have to be inventing some new kind of business or some new product for this format to work.
Here’s an example for a restaurant:
- Problem: There aren’t any good, reasonably priced Italian restaurants in this neighborhood.
- Solution: A new restaurant on the west side that offers authentic northern-Italian flavors.
- Value: A great meal out, near your home, at affordable prices.
Here’s an example for a bike shop:
- Problem: It’s hard to buy a good bike in this town without being an “insider” cycling expert.
- Solution: A snob-free shop where regular people can get top-notch gear and expert advice.
- Value: High-quality bike gear for your family and commuting at reasonable prices, without the attitude.
Trust me, you can do this exercise for any business. But, it’s not always easy and it’ll be tempting to procrastinate and skip this step. Don’t let the frustration get to you—the time spent on this now will pay back dividends later on.
Create a value statement
With the answers to your questions in hand, you’re ready to build out a value statement. This is often called a value proposition or a unique selling proposition, but it doesn’t really matter what you call it. Call it whatever you want, the exercise is still the same.
Here’s a quick template you can use to help create your value statement:
If you think that [problem], you should try [solution] like [company name] so that [value].
All you’re doing is taking your three answers from the previous step and turning them into a sentence. You might need to do a little wordsmithing to make everything work, but that’s OK. The key is that the message should stay the same.
Here’s the value statement for the team email product we’re working on:
If you think it’s hard to manage info@ and sales@ emails with a single email account and customers sometimes get the wrong response or no response, you should try a collaborative team email management tool like Outpost so that everyone can work in the same inbox without stepping on each other’s toes and make sure customers get better support with fewer headaches.
I’ve added the italics so you can see how everything fits together. Here’s the bike shop example:
If you think it’s hard to buy a good bike in this town without being an “insider” cycling expert, then you should try a snob-free shop where regular people can get top-notch gear and expert advice, like Garrett’s Bike Shop, so that you can get high-quality bike gear for your family and commuting needs at reasonable prices, without the attitude.
And the restaurant:
If you think that there aren’t any good, reasonably priced Italian restaurants in this neighborhood, then you should try a new restaurant on the West Side that offers authentic northern-Italian flavors, like Beppe’s, so that you can get a great meal out, near your home, at affordable prices.
This isn’t always as simple as it might look, but it’s worth the time it takes to get it right. You’ll use this value statement over and over as you work through the next steps in the demand validation process.
Validating your idea with customers
1. Get a 30,000-foot view
Armed with your three answers, you’re ready to start validating that your potential customers have the problem you think they have and that they’ll be interested in your solution.
Evaluate search volume
Let’s start by looking at what people search Google for.
Using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner and Moz’s Keyword Explorer, you can see how many people search for specific words and phrases. You’ll want to think about what people might search for when they’re looking for solutions to the problem you’re trying to solve, so create a list of searches related to both the problem and your specific solution.
For example, for our team email product, we might look at these terms related to the problem we’re solving:
- Manage email
- Respond to customer email
- Inbox management
- Email overload
And, we’d look at the solutions that people might search for:
- Team email
- Email collaboration
- Team inbox
- Share email
- Collaborative email
- Email for teams
If you have potential competitors, you could also look at their brand names and see how many people are searching for those specific solutions.
Hopefully, your research has shown that people are searching for your problem and solution already. If you’re coming up empty at this point, though, you’re going to need to head back to the drawing board, refine your idea, and try again.
Join the conversation
Next, take a look at online forums and other services where your potential customers might hang out and discuss problems and solutions related to what you’re doing.
For example, if you’re starting a restaurant, check out Yelp and other review sites. Look for Facebook groups for foodies in your area. What are people talking about? Are they happy with the current options? If they’re not satisfied, what are they looking for?
This level of research will help turn your guesses about the problem you’re trying to solve into actual facts. Use your research to show that there are people who have the problem you think they have and what kind of demand there might be for your solution.
This type of research will give you some small indicator of the scale of your potential audience as well. The data is just an approximation of your potential market, but it’ll tell you at least if there are just hundreds or perhaps thousands of potential customers out there.
2. Shoe-leather research
Your next step is to actually talk to some of the people that you spied on from 30,000-foot view in the previous step.
No, knowing how many people search Google for the problem you’re solving is not enough. You need to know more about these people. Are they willing to pay for your product? If so, how much? What are they doing to solve their problem currently? What do they really think about your idea?
Create a list of places where potential customers spend their time
Start out by finding 10 to 20 different places where people who have the problem you’re solving hang out. Don’t just say Facebook—be specific: Members of the Springfield foodies group, people who have reviewed other Italian restaurants on Yelp, people who comment on restaurant reviews in the local paper or the alternative weekly, and so on.
For our team email product, we looked for forums where people talked about customer service, people who commented on blog posts about office productivity, people who wrote blog posts about productivity and email hacks, and people who listen to the Startup podcast, among other things.
You’ll need to find at least 10 of these sources—the more the better. If you’re struggling with this step, you might need to return to your original idea and make some revisions. Maybe you aren’t thinking about the right potential customer or need to rethink the problem you’re solving. Either way, don’t proceed beyond this step without making your list of places where you can find potential customers.
Identify specific potential customers
Now that you have your list, you need to identify specific people from each group that you can reach out to and see if you can talk to them about your idea.
Try and find at least 10 from each group. Again, the more the better. And, yes, this is a lot of people (at least 100), and yes, it’s hard work. But, who said starting a new business would be easy? While this might be a bit hard, it’s much easier than having to shut down a business that you invested time and money into because you found out that customers didn’t want your product.
Talk to your potential customers
When you have your list of people, the next step is to actually talk to these people. It’ll be tempting to start with a sales pitch and see what their reaction is, but there’s a better way.
Dust off the answers to the three questions we talked about earlier. Now you’ll put them to good use.
Start by reaching out (phone, email, Facebook message, LinkedIn InMail, and so on) and use a message like this to get started. I’ll continue using our team email product as an example, but this format should work for other businesses as well.
“Hi—I really enjoyed your blog post about Gmail hacks. I especially liked [insert what you liked here] and plan to start using that hack with my own email.
I was wondering what you recommend to manage info@ and sales@ emails with a single email account to prevent customers from getting the wrong response or no response at all. Is this a problem you have? Are there solutions that you recommend for solving this problem?
Thanks again, and keep the great blog posts coming!”
Of course, you’ll have to tweak this messaging depending on who you’re contacting, but you get the idea. I’ve bolded the problem statement in the sample above, but that’s not something you should do in your actual message.
Now, not everyone will reply to you, but hopefully, you’ll get a few responses. That’s why you need to have a big list of potential contacts. If you completely strike out, you might need to go and look for new locations where your potential customers hang out, or you might need to go back and take a second look at your problem statement. It’s possible people don’t have the problem you think they have.
Of the people that do respond, you’ll get two types of responses:
- “I haven’t heard of that problem and don’t have it myself.”
- “I know a bunch of people who have that problem. Here’s what I do to solve that problem and here’s what I tell other people to do who have that problem.”
If you get a bunch of the first answer, you’re going to be headed back to the drawing board to work on your idea and come up with a new set of guesses that you need to validate.
Hopefully, you get lots of responses that fall into the second category. In that case, you’re going to want to follow up and talk more about your solution:
“Thanks for getting back to me! I’m really interested in how people manage their email. In fact, I was thinking about building a collaborative email management tool for teams.
I’m imagining a product where everyone can work in the same inbox without stepping on each other’s toes and make sure customers get better support with fewer headaches.
Do think a product like that would be interesting to you or other people in similar situations? If it cost $20 per month, do you think you might be willing to give it a try?
Thanks again for your time!”
Do you see how useful it is to have answered those three questions earlier?
Again, hopefully, you’ll get an answer. Not everyone will respond; after all, people are busy with their own things. But, you should get some responses.
If you get no response, try again. It’s OK to check in with your initial contact a few times. If you get a “no thanks, that doesn’t sound useful” response, you might be once again sent back to refine your guesses. Hopefully, you get a bunch of “absolutely!” responses.
You might get push-back on price or you might find out that you’ve priced too low, but answering the price question is going to take some additional research and testing. At this stage, just make sure that the price that you float is something sustainable for your business. Better to suggest too high of a price than too low.
At this stage, though, finding out the ideal price isn’t the goal. The goal is simply to make sure that people want your product. Price is something to tackle in detail a bit later in the process.
3. Make it (kinda) real
If you’re starting a business where online advertising makes sense, then the next step takes all of your research and puts it to a final test: Will people actually put their money where their mouth is?
Build a landing page and test some advertising
In this final test, you’ll build out a landing page for your product and buy some ads on Google and/or Facebook.
Your landing page doesn’t need to be fancy, but it needs to look real. Thankfully, there are plenty of great services out there that can help you build a professional website quickly and easily. Take a look at Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify and build out a simple page that describes your product or service.
You’ll want to include your price and a “buy now” button on your landing page. But, your “buy now” button won’t actually work. Instead of taking your potential customer to a shopping cart, you’ll want them to end up at a page that explains your current situation. Something message like, “Sorry! Product X isn’t available just yet. Please enter your email address below and we’ll notify you as soon as it’s ready.”
You’ve done two really cool things with this process. First, you’ve validated that people are willing to commit to buying what you’re selling. When they click “buy now,” they are voting for you and ready to buy. Second, the people that give you their email addresses are your first customers. So, while you actually build your product, you’re building an actual database of customers to market to.
To drive traffic to your landing page, you’re probably going to have to buy some ads on Google or Facebook. Target the lists of terms that you figured out earlier in this process related to your problem and your solution. If you have competition, consider advertising to people who are searching for those alternative products.
Consider content marketing
An alternative approach to building a landing page and buying advertising is to explore content marketing. Instead of buying traffic, you could start a blog with content that your target audience might find interesting. If you can get traffic to your blog by promoting your posts in message boards and other places where your target audience hangs out, then you’ll have a built-in platform to mention your not-yet-real product and drive traffic to your landing page.
The advertising option takes a little bit of spare cash but is easier and potentially faster. The content marketing option takes time, effort, and some writing skills—but, you’ll also be building a long-term asset for your company. If you have the bandwidth, you could try both methods and see which one works better for you.
Light the fuse
If everything has gone well to this point, your guess is no longer much of a guess—it’s a collection of facts. You know:
- Who wants your product
- Why they want your product
- What value your product provides to your customers
Now, it’s time to really get started.
What’s wonderful about this process is that it removes a massive amount of risk from the startup process. With demand validation, you know that if you execute well, your business is much more likely to be successful. You’ve removed many of the guesses involved in starting a business and are on a path that’s more likely to yield positive results.
A good next step is to do the first pass at a financial forecast. What are your expenses going to be? How much money, if any, do you need to raise to get your business off the ground? What are your sales goals? We’ve got a good guide to forecasting sales here and an overview of the ideal planning process here.
Of course, you’re going to continue to refine everything as you go and you’re going to come up with new guesses that need to be validated along the way. But, knowing that there is demand for your business idea is a huge win for your startup.
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