Episode 2: Discovery phase is here, join us!
We will build something based on your advice
Link to discovery phase is just before the bottom. For Episode 1 click here.
Please help by sharing this with anyone who would be interested. 🙇🏻
A short recap
This really is a journey and I appreciate you reading these lines. In January I came out of my closet with my cofounder advert, which exposed my idea to the world and got around 2300 views.
In the process I reconnected with a bunch of people that I have neglected in the last decade, I got valuable feedback and great connections for the future: special thanks to Patrik, Alex, Valentin and of course Dejan.
In general, if you are not a dick, people will help.
Public commitment to build something also made me leave my comfort zone and serve myself on a plate. Realistically though, 95% of people already forgot about it. I could quietly kill it and nobody would even blink. Except you and you.
Further, almost nobody gives a shit about your idea and your plate. Your idea is nothing special and everyone somehow feels that ideas are immensely hard to implement. We all have our own plates and there is no space for stolen ideas.
The art of Customer and Product Development deserves a separate title
This is one of those “yeah, logical” revelations, like 23 + 8, so obvious today, but hard when you started to learn math. And how often I thought: “Ok, this or that was stupid thinking a year ago, BUT NOW, TODAY, I finally know how it is.” Bullshit.
Without standing on the shoulders of giants, learning from great books and online, this would be a waste of time and money. Thank you Gutenberg, Berners-Lee and all the rest.
Everyone who built something from scratch deserves our respect: building great things (or a habit!) is extremely hard. Obvious, right? Nothing great is easy, and rightly so. Yet so many underestimate the persistence and discipline needed.
We love our ideas, and a lot of people will tell you they like your idea as well. This is because they like you or they want you to stop talking about it. But when you come knocking again to collect money or effort, they will be busy.
This is why customer development should come before business development. Again obvious, right? I wish I knew this five years ago and that more people would think about it. Everything would be better and we would have nice things.
Building something is also an emotional rollercoaster. For three days you will love the shit you are doing and on the fourth you will think: what on earth am I trying to do here!? Useless.
So, I stood on the shoulders of giants: I read books, papers and had 26 customer development interviews (thank you, you know who you are). By talking to people about money I realised there is something, but it is not a banana as I thought. It is more like a banana, some spinach, an apple or even nothing. Depends who you ask. But there is something…
Discovery phase is here! Join us!
To validate if there is something or only a big nothing we are now looking for you or people you know that either:
🗒 use(d) Excel to track their costs or income,
📊 use(d) any of the budgeting/cost tracking apps.
Or/and
💡 would like to get a better insight in your/their cash flow and
💸 would like take charge of your/their finance and get more flexibility in the future.
We think you will like it and will be happy to take you on this journey and get advice from you in the process. All forwards/likes/RTs much appreciated.
As you can see by our logo draft (⬇) we need some good advice! 🤡
Highly recommended resources
Peter Thiel (Zero to One) will challenge your thinking. For example: „What important truth do very few people agree with you on?“ or „What secrets are people not telling you?“. He also (correctly) argues that you should not be disrupting and that you can have a last mover advantage. (He is also a rather controversial contrarian.)
Rob Fitzpatrick (The Mom Test) will teach you how to talk to your customers. You will never again ask „What do you think about [insert your idea]?" or „How much would you pay for it?" He is a nice chap, even replied to my Twitter DM immediately.
Seth Godin (This is marketing) will give you a different perspective on marketing. I found some excellent ideas here, for example smallest viable market and how swimming pools are often more important than oceans.
Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things) will make you understand that that fancy design faucet in your toilet is a bad idea and how important user centric design or engineering is. If it is hard to use something, it is poorly designed.
Google Scholar gives you access to a lot of science, usually for free. If they want money for that paper, you can also try here (thanks Lea!)
MS Word’s WordArt gives you a fine technology to create logos as cool as the one above.
And of course: people on Twitter, a treasure, what can I say.
If you are not subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can do it by dropping your email below. Or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for reading and for your help!
All related articles
2021-01-29 Episode 1: Looking for a co-founder
2021-03-12 Episode 2: Discovery phase is here, join us!
2021-04-19 Episode 3: We have a name, a logo and our website is live!
2021-06-28 Episode 4: Season finale
2021-07-20 Episode 5: Finitary is ... paused, frozen, almost pushing up the daisies