- Eric and Kat from Startup School are answering questions about how to talk to users and how to launch multiple times.
- They recommend not spending too much time perfecting each launch and instead focusing on getting feedback and maximizing surface area.
- They advise keeping landing page call to actions short and not waiting too long to release an MVP.
- Separating user interviews into two groups, one with current users and one with potential users, is recommended.
- They suggest asking for feedback without incentives and considering if the product is better than what is already on the market.
- They discuss the importance of researching and reaching out to influencers and bloggers and the need for persistence in reaching out to a large number of people.
- They also mention the potential for finding users in Facebook groups, subreddits, Twitter hashtags, and other online communities.

- The company Joy had difficulty getting featured by wedding websites and blogs, but they followed up with a drip campaign.
- Launching in a specific metro area requires some manual groundwork, such as reaching out to friends, colleagues, and classmates.
- For biotech or pharmatech companies, it is important to target the right reporters and publications and consider timing the launch around conferences or paper publications.
- Robin Rover is a platform for people to trade purchasing data with companies, giving consumers control of their data.
- When testing an MVP with users, it is better to focus on solving their actual problem rather than discussing hypothetical features.
- OKAQ.com teaches kids AI using video games and should not save the big launch for Demo Day but launch as quickly as possible.
- Live Simulator is VR training for first responders, and the founder is looking for examples of solo founders who have built big projects while working full time.

- The speaker discusses the importance of going full-time on a startup after building a minimum viable product (MVP).
- They emphasize the need to be convinced of the idea's value before convincing others.
- The speaker suggests that if an MVP is not being regularly used, it may indicate a lack of necessary features or failure to solve the problem effectively.
- Pricing experiments can be conducted for enterprise partners by offering different prices without publicizing them.
- The speaker advises enterprise founders to charge more for their software, considering the cost of alternative solutions.
- When the user and paying customer are different, user interviews are necessary to understand their priorities.
- Municipal governments can be slow in decision-making, but understanding their budgeting process can help accelerate the pilot testing of products.
- The importance of researching previous attempts at solving a common problem is highlighted.
- The speaker reassures a questioner that the quality of features is not vital for an initial online launch, as the product is designed for a large user base.
- The speaker suggests building the product to be useful even without a network effect.
- A question about relaunching a company in a different industry and attracting investors is discussed, with the importance of understanding the team's commitment to creating new moments in the spotlight.

- The video features different entrepreneurs seeking advice on their startups.
- Rashmi is the founder of a subscription-based digital magazine for young adults.
- Alexander is working on a one-click micro donation platform for content creators.
- Bruno is developing a platform to match CEOs with advisory boards.
- Yoder is creating an app to connect drivers with parking lots in Latin America.
- The entrepreneurs seek advice on customer discovery, user interviews, and finding product-market fit.
- Suggestions are given on narrowing down target audiences, testing features with current users, and reaching new users.
- Advice is also given on identifying the beachhead and approaching Silicon Valley tech companies.
- The downside of referencing existing products or businesses is discussed.

- The use of certain constructions or references to well-known household names can help paint a clear picture of what a product is.
- It is not advisable to reference a product if it is in crisis or if it is not well-known or relevant to the target audience.
- A simple landing page can be a sufficient minimum viable product (MVP) if it solves a problem and generates interest.
- It is important to start small and focus on solving one person's problem before scaling up.
- Re-engaging users can be done through personal outreach, such as phone calls or emails from the CEO.
- Surveys can be a useful method for determining product-market fit before building a full product.
- Building a reputation and trust with regular users can help when approaching big companies.
- It is recommended to start with smaller customers who have the problem and can make buying decisions quickly.
- If a business discovers that their current approach is not working, it is okay to stop, rebuild, and relaunch.

- The speaker emphasizes that it is important to recognize when the current problem being worked on is not the right one and to consider pivoting.
- The speaker advises against targeting a demographic that is not generating revenue and suggests either changing the product to generate revenue or finding a different demographic to target.
- During user interviews, it is important to focus on understanding user behavior rather than just asking about desired features.
- The speaker suggests treating user interviews as an opportunity to learn about the user's whole life and context, rather than just focusing on the product.
- When launching a big update for a mobile app, it is recommended to go through the entire launch process again and use existing users to test and refine the update.
- For a startup in the healthcare vertical, it is important to consider legal and ethical implications and to potentially collaborate with existing telemedicine platforms.
- Pursuing smaller customers who can make quicker decisions is generally better for startups, especially in the early stages of finding product-market fit.

- The video is ending a live Q&A session and encourages viewers to continue asking questions on Twitter and forums
- Next week's session will be live design reviews with Erin Epstein
- Viewers can post their website on the forum thread and receive a live review of their landing page or website
- The session will be 2 hours long, allowing for plenty of time to cover multiple sites

- Eric and Kat from Startup School provide advice on talking to users and launching multiple times.
- They recommend focusing on getting feedback and maximizing surface area rather than perfecting each launch.
- They suggest keeping landing page call to actions short and releasing an MVP early.
- They recommend conducting user interviews with both current and potential users.
- They emphasize the importance of researching and reaching out to influencers and online communities.
- They discuss strategies for launching in specific industries, such as biotech and pharmatech.
- They highlight the importance of solving the actual problem for users and going full-time on a startup after building an MVP.
- They advise conducting pricing experiments and charging more for enterprise software.
- They discuss the challenges of targeting different customers and understanding municipal governments.
- They suggest building a useful product without relying on a network effect.
- They address questions from entrepreneurs working on various startups and provide advice on customer discovery, user interviews, and finding product-market fit.
- They recommend starting small, re-engaging users, and using surveys to determine product-market fit.
- They advise building a reputation and trust with regular users and targeting smaller customers who can make quicker decisions.
- They encourage recognizing when the current problem being worked on is not the right one and considering pivoting.
- They stress the importance of understanding user behavior and treating user interviews as an opportunity to learn about the user's whole life and context.
- They recommend going through the entire launch process again when releasing a big update for a mobile app.
- They suggest considering legal and ethical implications for startups in the healthcare vertical.
- They conclude the video with announcements about upcoming sessions and opportunities for live design reviews.

Questions from SUS 2020 answered live by Kat & Eric (https://www.startupschool.org/posts/31881)

Good morning everyone and good evening and it could be anywhere.

I'm the facilitator, course facilitator here at Startup School.

Hi everyone, I'm Kat Manialik, a partner at YC.

Kat and I are here today to answer questions about the subjects of this week's lectures, how to talk to users, and how to launch again and again and again.

We've pulled a bunch of questions together from the thread on the Startup School forums that we'll start answering, but we will also take some questions from the YouTube comments, from Twitter, smoke signals, basically anywhere that you can find us we will attempt to answer some questions.

First question is from Gustavo from Fluxo.

Fluxo enables you to build a financial model for your growing company in minutes, not days.

So I only have 1 question, Gustavo, about this one-liner and it was, who is this for?

So I would just add like in the 1 line, the 1 line is pretty good, but just add who it's for.

Your question was, there are so many channels we can launch on, but many of these I can either do something quick and hit launch or I can spend days and weeks trying to maximize the chance that each channel is successful.

What's your recommendation for balancing between maximizing number of launches versus maximizing chance of success at each launch.

So 1 of my main goals for the talk was to sort of stop founders from putting too much emphasis on that 1 perfect launch.

So I would say, rather than spending, you shouldn't be spending weeks trying to perfect any of these channels.

So what I would recommend is, you know, you might spend a few hours trying to get the messaging for each of these channels down.

You might spend a couple hours to a couple days getting feedback on that messaging, but Don't sort of spend weeks stressing over each of these channels.

Granted, launching a kind of pre-order Kickstarter campaign or pitching press does take a little longer and I'm sure Eric has some thoughts on Kickstarter and pre-orders, but don't spend too much time stressing over any of these channels.

Yeah, a launch, 1 of the things that I've learned is that, think about it this way, everyone in the world doesn't know who you are right now.

Every time you launch, 0.0000001% of the world finds out about it.

So every single launch will be brand new to so many people that, that's kind of the, the motivation to keep, keep launching.

Like if, if it's perfect by the time you launch, then you've waited too long.

Yeah, you want to maximize your surface area.

And it's so hard to get people to care about you at this stage in your company's life that you want more and more of those chances.

Next up, Matthew from Katara writes, Katara, we help you find bias in your AI training data sets and then help eliminate it.

How long is too long for a landing page call to actions, like sign up to be notified of our alpha launch or get on our mailing list to be the first users on our platform?

Is there a general rule of thumb on how long people would wait or stay interested?

So the longer you have people on a wait list, the harder it is to re-engage them.

So I would say get an MVP of the product out as soon as you can.

How long should the actual call to action be?

Alpha, beta, doesn't mean anything to me as a user.

So just say sign up to be notified of our launch, sign up for our newsletter, whatever it is, short.

I think oftentimes when I'm writing content or copy for a site, I sometimes get a little bit too caught up in my own head.

1 thing to consider is you're the 1 who's been thinking about this for ages, like for hours and weeks and days.

So it's possible that you may just need to get whatever you've written in front of anybody and just ask them what they think and get their opinion on it.

Because oftentimes, we will obsess over the perfect copy when in reality, like, they still don't know what we're talking about.

Try to get as much feedback as you can as possible.

So you can post, you can post your content on the startup school forum.

And just like, if you need some eyeballs that aren't your own, just like post a thread, say hey, can I get some feedback on this?

I'm sure that some people will jump in and say, like, I don't get it.

And try to be, if you see something on the Startup School forum that you don't understand, jump in there, because you need to hear those honest voices.

We help brands hire photographers for their digital marketing needs.

We have a round of user interviews scheduled next week.

We are also heavily engaged in paid customer acquisition through an incentive program.

While we are talking to a user, should we pitch them on a new coupon incentive or just ask for feedback?

Is it better not to mix up these 2 user touch points?

I like to separate my user interviews into 2 different groups.

1 is with people who are using the product and 1 is with people who are not users who I just want to learn about what problem they have on the day to day and what existing solutions they're already using.

Once they start using the product, generally I find that people just want to talk about how to improve it and give you feedback.

And it's really difficult to get them to context switch back to a world before they started using your solution.

So in your case, I would say, separate, like if you have user interviews with people who haven't begun using your products, try to treat those as kind of wide open interviews where you're asking questions to find out what other products do they use, have they paid money for similar products in the past, how have those products failed, before you introduce your product and start getting feedback on that.

And then in terms of coupons, incentives, I always try to just ask for people's I try to ask for feedback without any incentive because Honestly, if this is a real problem that people have on a regular basis Then you're helping them by you by you like asking them about their problem and trying to build something as a solution, like that already should be the incentive that they have if this is truly a big problem for it.

If you're finding that you're constantly having to pay money to people to answer surveys and stuff like that, it's possible that they don't really have a burning problem.

And 1 thing I would think about too is, is what you're building really better than what's currently already out on the market, because that might be a challenge too, is converting people who, you know, already use, you know, similar services.

So, yeah, as, as Eric was saying, if it's not a real problem that you're solving, or if your product isn't 10x better than what they were using, it might be difficult to convince people to convert.

Yeah, that's a good data point as you consider which ideas to work on.

Next up, We Are Ladder, a platform that simplifies the process of finding effective mental wellness practices and solutions Okay, a few months a few problems with this 1 like I can't tell if it's an app.

It's a website if it's a service Platform doesn't really tell me I think I get like something to do with mental mental practices.

I think it would be also it's missing like who is this for exactly?

Like is it for is it just you know for consumers?

Is it for you know are you directly connecting consumers with therapists or?

Let's assume, okay, I'm going to assume that it's for like consumers.

So who is it for and what is the exact problem you're solving?

Their question is, what are effective strategies for getting influencers, bloggers, and leaders to help us launch?

Preferably as cheap as possible, if not free.

How do you get people to talk about your product?

I think 1 of the things to think through is do your research.

When you reach out to bloggers or influencers, are you actually solving a problem that they care about or that their readers care about?

I would say that, you know, and frankly it's a numbers game.

So for a lot of the YC companies that I've worked with that have tried to get influencers and bloggers to cover them, they will reach out.

If you're doing cold reach out and not getting warm introductions, you can reach out to 50 bloggers and only get 1 person to respond.

So if you need more than 1 person to respond, you're going to have to send hundreds of these emails.

And often People say, oh, we tried to reach 10 or 20 or 30.

So there's a lot of people who want to help.

Like, basically, the people that have this problem that you're trying to solve, They exist everywhere on the internet.

Some are these like top level influencers.

Others are people who run like a Facebook group.

We've seen a lot of companies get their first users and people talking about their product by finding like a Facebook group.

There's a company 2 batches ago that made a device that helped kids with cerebral palsy learn how to walk.

They basically just went on Facebook, found a group of parents and families whose children have cerebral palsy and got dozens, if not hundreds of signups just through that group.

So there's subreddits, there's Twitter hashtags, there's Facebook groups.

You know, there's Product Hunt, there's Hacker News.

And, and if you're reaching out to bloggers and you're emailing, don't think that they're going to respond on the first, after the first email.

You have to, you have to follow up with a follow up email.

There was a company that I mentioned in the talk called Joy.

They were trying to get featured by, they're a wedding website builder and they were trying to get featured by wedding websites and blogs.

So they said out of 50, only 1 responded.

And they had a whole sort of like drip campaign to follow up with those bloggers.

Oh yeah, I forgot that the internet here is not perfect.

I think we should go to the internet cable.

It says excellent connection, but it keeps dropping the video feed.

We provide an affordable pickup for any return, shopping returns directly from your porch.

It's clear, a little bit of a tongue twister with a lot of mentions of porch.

Okay, I'm launching in Pittsburgh this week.

What can you advise for launching in a specific metro area?

don't know if my Pittsburgh area knowledge is perfect.

So, launching in an area with like a geo-targeted service.

I guess you have like, you must have runners that go and pick up these porches or something

When Lug is Uber for movers, or they basically will,

They'll come and pick up your stuff, yeah.

They'll, they'll pick up any like delivery item or that.

So what they did on their first week, just to figure out, you know, just to start get, getting people using it, is they stood outside of Ikea.

They actually had, you know, 1 of the founders was driving a truck and 1 of the founders would run up to people in the line at Ikea and say.

Hey, do you need help moving this, getting this home?

And they would have their user click a button, and then the other founder would drive the truck up.

And so I think in the very beginnings, you're going to have to do some manual stuff on the ground, stuff like this.

So presumably, you might have gone to school, you might have worked at companies in the area.

Why don't you get all of your past co-workers, your friends, your colleagues, other classmates, using this?

People who buy stuff on Amazon need to return it, I'm sure that you can just talk to your friends and see if they have the problem.

Other alternatives are we've seen companies have some success with door hangers, where

OK, so they go and they print off little door hanger things.

And they go around to houses and just hang them on doors.

I could imagine like, what if you printed off stickers and you've let, like, as you saw Amazon box, then people would think that you're trying to steal the Amazon.

I was like thinking you could put stickers on other people's Amazon boxes on their portals.

1 thing that worked for me is I recently started using a startup because they put something up in my building's elevator.

So they said, hey, if you want to have these types of things delivered.

Yeah, and then so I took down the number.

It's just like wherever there's a higher concentration of people.

Like a little, did you rip off a little tag or was it like a

From Shishay, founder of YDS Medicine, which provides self-driving molecular design services, serving as a GPS for the journey of drug discovery.

Bio founders have amazingly interesting products and ideas.

They generally have to dumb it down for the rest of us.

The question is, how or where to launch biotech or pharmatech companies?

In terms of press and media-wise, we found that Fierce Biotech and Stat are great and they are often interested in early stage bio

What I do is I look at what reporters have covered companies like mine or like the company I'm going to pitch before, is what I'm building in the wheelhouse of things that they're interested in.

And then I make sort of like a list of who I might reach out to, and I prioritize the first.

And say I'm going to Fierce Biotech, I'd find the right reporter there.

I'd reach out, offer them an exclusive on the fact that we've launched.

If they don't respond or pass, then go to the next reporter or publication.

I think that I always love launching when I have some reason to launch, like some sort of event.

So oftentimes, scientists are going to conferences.

They're publishing posters, which are a thing.

So if you're doing that, consider reaching out to reporters or bloggers or people who are in this space and pitching them your idea timed around that conference.

It's a good reason to say like, hey, pay attention to me, there's something happening like this week.

I think especially if you're, you know, from the life sciences, you might be publishing a paper.

And oftentimes, the university you might be publishing that with will help reach out to

Oh, yeah, universities sometimes have groups that specialize in trying to get the work of students and researchers out.

So that could be another person who could help.

Next up, we are Robin Rover, an online platform for people to trade their purchasing data directly with companies.

Okay, I think I know what you do, but I'm guessing there's something a little bit missing, like purchasing data like my Amazon shopping history.

Okay, so this is like 1 of those companies that's trying to

from ad, from ad, like monetizing based on ads to like a clear, transparent.

Regarding the mom test, you say to talk about specifics, not hypotheticals.

I need to test which functionalities to develop to evolve our current MVP.

To do so, I've gathered some insights from users on what they would like to do.

I want to test them with others, but should I ask hypothetical future features?

So I always like to, when I'm testing an MVP with users, I always like to build something, whatever is the actual MVP, like the smallest set of work that I have to do in order to solve their problem, and then put it in their hands and get feedback.

Talking about a hypothetical product is hard.

It's much easier to talk about a problem that they're having and then build a solution.

Give them the solution to the problem they told you they actually have.

Sometimes people will talk about a problem that they think they have or that they wish they had.

Anyways, So yeah, so as you're gathering these insights, try to gather the insights about the problem that people have.

And then in the back of your mind, think about how you could solve them, and then give people the solution so they can try it.

Does it make sense to save the hard launch, the full version 1.0 public release for a big event such as Demo Day?

If you were going through YC, we would say no, don't save that big launch for Demo Day.

Launch as quickly as you can so that by Demo Day you have some amount of traction or you've been able to get real user feedback and iterate the product based on what your actual users are saying?

I think just hearing some of the words that you're using about this, saying like hard launch, full version, 1.0, public release, I think you may already be kind of getting too complicated with this.

In reality, what you're making sounds interesting, like a game that helps kids learn AI.

I'm sure that either you have kids yourself or you know some people who have kids.

Don't treat your launch as like, oh, it has to be perfect.

Yeah, just push the button, make it go live, make the website live, and tell your friends.

And that's something, like Kat was saying, That's the first point on which you can iterate afterwards.

Like I said before at the beginning, every time you launch, there will be a magnitude, megatude?

Just like a multitude, a multitude of people who've never heard what your app is.

So they'll be happy to find out about it then.

Live Simulator is VR training for first responders.

I let users run the call by placing them in VR and having them command virtual crews to resolve an emergency, communicate using an in-game radio, and try not to get anyone virtually killed.

It's created by a firefighter for firefighters.

I think your one-liner VR training for first responders already does.

I've built 3 modules over the years, but the 2 failed launches convinced me that the bar is much higher for my MVP.

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YC SUS: Kat Mañalac and Eric Migicovsky discuss Week 2 SUS Lectures