It’s been a while since my last Startupify post. Is the program still running? Did it implode under crazy pressure? Did it explode from its own awesomeness? Does Chris have a pile of money big enough to swim in yet? Why the radio silence?

Well, here’s the thing: I’ve been pretty busy, and ongoing Startupify responsibilities have been a big part of that.

On March 9 I pitched to ABC³, the company that I’ve been working with. Basically that meeting was an opportunity for all of the stakeholders to physically get together, do a status update, and agree on the path forward. I summarized what I’d learned over the previous month, and I put some stakes in the ground around what I envisioned as our product.

That pitch went reasonably well, even though my pitching skills could still use some work. I got some great feedback from my partners, and we had some good discussion. The end result of that conversation was that we agreed on what we’d be trying to build, and that I could start working on it.

Side note: Our Practice Pitching events are a great way to get better at pitching. Sign up for the next one and get better with me!

Last week I did a lot of additional research and started to do some prototyping. My results have been encouraging, but of course we are very early in the process. I hope to have more details about this soon.

Getting started

I’ve also started doing Problem Interviews, which are basically conversations with prospective clients designed to validate (or disprove) the problems that we have identified as candidates for solving. While we do want to solve the immediate requirements of ABC³, we also want to be able to sell our solution to other customers, and sizing the market now is important.

In case you’re wondering how to structure these types of meetings, I’m using the outline from Ash Maurya’s book Running Lean. Chapter 7 is dedicated to Problem Interviews.

So that’s where I am today. The initial discovery phase is done, and we’ve started to work on building an MVP. I predict continued contact with my partners, lots more interviews, lots of testing, and even more learning in my immediate future.

If you’ve watched the TV show House for any length of time you’ve probably heard the eponymous doctor insisting that everybody lies.

Because he doesn’t trust his patients, he sends his team of brilliant doctors to break into those patients’ homes and investigate them. Sometimes the team finds a toxic cleaning product under the sink or a filthy litter box or a bathtub full of moonshine or a kitchen containing nothing but corn flakes or something equally silly. This discovery later becomes important and they (usually) save the patient. Sometimes they don’t find anything.

But they always look.

In House’s world, you can’t trust people to tell you everything that’s relevant so you need to do your own research. As it turns out, this is pretty true in the world of business too.

Hopefully your customers aren’t actively lying to you, but they probably don’t really know what they want either. It often falls to the entrepreneur—to me, for instance—to identify a problem that actually needs solving. Ash Maurya calls this the “Problem/Solution Fit”. It’s the first of three startup stages identified in his book Running Lean, and it’s what the next phase of Startupify is about.

The companies that come into the program do so with some preconceived ideas about what they want help with, but that might not be what we end up working on. What do they really want to accomplish? Their interests might be better served in ways that they haven’t considered.

If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.

- Henry Ford

The authenticity of this quote is widely disputed, but it  does a good job of illustrating the point. Hearing that a customer wants a faster horse and realizing that the horse itself is irrelevant, that the customer really just wants to be able to travel faster, is an a bit of an art.

My partner at Startupify is called ABC³, and my job over the next three weeks is to absorb as much information as I possibly can about their business. I need to be able to combine that business knowledge with technical knowledge to identify the most effective way of using our time together. How can I make them some money? Save them some money? Save them some time? Effort?

What do they really want from me?

Attending to the tasks that ABC³ has already identified might be the best route. Or it might not be. They don’t know. Right now, I don’t know either.

But I’m going to find out.

This is exactly what Chris and I failed to deliver during our pitch at the end of week one with Startupify.

Five days earlier, on our first day, we were tasked with an interesting exercise in order to get a preview of what is to come during the first month of engagement with Startupify customers. We were asked to pick a business problem, validate our ideas through interviews with potential customers and pitch a solution at the end of the week. We picked ThreeFortyNine, a co-working space in Guelph,  as the business model that we were going to focus on. To spice things up Brydon suggested that we set a target of $10000 in revenue a month and see if we can hit it. We spent the first two or three days generating ideas trying to hit that $10000 a month mark, which turned out to be a lot harder than we originally had planned. By focusing so closely on the money part of the problem we committed the cardinal sin of  entrepreneurship – we lost sight of who our customer was, owner of a co-working space, Brydon Gilliss and ThreeFortyNine to be specific. It was the biggest mistake that cost us our successful pitch.

After three days of generating ideas and spinning our wheels we decided to work on creating a private entrepreneurial clubhouse at ThreeFortyNine. We managed to do a pretty good job of validating the need and reaching out to our potential early adopters. By Friday afternoon, only 16 hours after we came up with the idea, we managed to contact 13 potential customers, 9 of whom responded and 7 agreed to subscribe to the paid service we were offering. That was a good feeling, which, unfortunately, did not last long. Going into the room to pitch the idea to Brydon, Chris and Brett Shellhammer and Mike Kirkup from VeloCity, who Brydon invited to evaluate the pitch and provide feedback, we knew the idea was not perfect. We knew we were going to get slammed on some questions, yet we felt our idea would help ThreeFortyNine to become a more thriving community. Moreover, we managed to convince people to pay for it already. People in the room had to appreciate that, right? Boy were we wrong. Brett and Mike did an excellent job of helping us realize where we were wrong. Below are the top three things that I would pay more attention to if I had the chance to repeat the exercise.

1. Never forget who your customer is. By focusing so closely on the entrepreneurial community and having some success with selling the idea to potential early adopters, we completely forgot that the early adopters were not our customers. Brydon and ThreeFortyNine were. This confusion also manifested itself in the fact that we did not deliver a good investor pitch or a good sales pitch. And those are the only two options you get. We talked about the idea and how cool it would be if implemented, but we did not talk about how it solved ThreeFortyNine’s problems.

2. First 30 seconds of the presentation are crucial. This is all you get to hook your investors or customers in the room. The rest of the presentation can be spend reeling them in, but you have to “stun” them with fireworks first. Watch an episode or two of Shark Tank and you’ll understand what I mean.

3. Demo, mockups or anything to illustrate the concept. In general people respond a lot better to an idea when they can visualize it and what a better way to do it than show a demo of some sort. What did we do? We had black on white slides.

We made other mistakes as well, but I feel like the ones that I mentioned here could have made the pitch go much smoother. I guess we will find out next time, only next time we will be pitching to our actual customers, so the pressure to deliver will be much higher.

I had a pretty good job with a very respectable company with good opportunities for advancement and professional growth. It was a comfortable and financially stable postion. Most importantly I knew what I was doing. I was developing and leading software projects in a team of bright and dedicated individuals. For each project that I worked on the process of getting to the end result may not have been clear all the time, but all the intermediary steps needed to get there were pretty familiar even if challenging. Yet, I had a constant feeling that something was missing from my professional life. I used to come home and work on my own projects and ideas almost every night. I desperately wanted to build something that I could call mine.

It was extremely hard to chase after my own projects while maintaining a demanding 9-to-5 job. My attention was constantly split. I found it extremely hard to focus and fully dedicate myself to a single task. Often I found myself working on a project at work and all of a sudden being overwhelmed by ideas related to my own stuff and my mind would start to wander. The bad thing was that I could not act on them right away, I had to capture them in my “idea bank” and try to go on with my job related tasks. Evenings at home mirrored the situation at work. The difference here was that I could act on job ideas, but often had to force myself not to in order to maintain focus on my own stuff.

I was killing myself and most importantly I was wasting time. At the end of last year I realized that I had just spent 8 months working on a project with a friend of mine and had very little to show for it. We were lost. The truth is it was not the first project with such outcome. I realized that I had been doing this for years. It was a painful realization as I want to bring ideas to life. I don’t want my life to be littered with unfinished projects. I want to see projects that I’ve acted on and brought to life. Having closure with projects is even more important than their success. Don’t get me wrong, I want to succeed badly, but I also don’t want to be living with what-ifs stuck in the back of my mind. Something had to happen.

This is when Brydon introduced me to Startupify.Me. Joining the program is helping me answer a question that has been bugging me for a while – “How do I get a taste of entrepreneurship and really understand if this world is for me?” How do I turn from a wantrepreneur to an entrepreneur? Startupify ended up being the answer – I get to wear a hat of a tech entrepreneur for six months, while being financially supported by an established business and backed by a team of experienced mentors who guide me through the world of uncertainty and chaos that is a startup.

The best case scenario after six months – I am a technical co-founder of a new business venture. Awesome! The worst case scenario… There isn’t one with Startupify.Me!

I’m a perfectionist, and that’s a bit of a problem.

Normally I resist showing anything that I’m working on to anybody. I write things, and then I edit them, and I let them sit for a while, and I edit them some more. And sometimes I get to the point where I’m ready to share them, and then I put them out there, and I let people read them.

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

But more often than that I write things, and then I edit them, and I let them sit for a while, and I edit them some more, and then I forget about them. They’re not good enough to share. I don’t want anybody to see what I’ve done, to see that I’ve put myself into something and that it sucks. I’ve got unfinished blog posts, and unfinished stories, and unfinished software projects, and unfinished art projects, and lots of ideas that never made it out of my head at all.

I knew coming into Startupify that my resistance to sharing early was something that I’d have to tackle right away.

I’ve been reading The Lean Startup and I’ve recently attended some great Lean Startup workshops here at ThreeFortyNine. Just last week my friend Owen gave a wonderful talk about Rapid Prototyping. I’m a huge user of open source software, where the mantra “release early, release often” is king.

I’m a scientist at heart. I know the benefits of testing my hypotheses. I know that getting feedback from outside of myself is the best way to achieve success. I know the benefit of building a Minimum Viable Product. I know that failing quickly is better than failing slowly, and that spending time on something nobody wants is a terrible idea.

But I’m still reluctant to share my work before it’s “finished”. At Startupify, I had to face this reluctance almost immediately.

Last week Yuriy and I worked pretty hard on a pitch that needed to be delivered on Friday. We had had a few interesting ideas, but by pitch day we really didn’t have anything good. We had to face Brydon and Chris. On top of that our first two mentors, Brett Shellhammer and Mike Kirkup from VeloCity, were driving into town for the pitch and we didn’t really have much to show them.

We delivered a very rough pitch, with sterile black-on-white slides we threw together on Friday morning. It was something that I’d never have thought of showing anybody before, but we presented it anyway.

Going in, we were pretty sure that it sucked, but the feedback we got from Brett and Mike helped us to see how it sucked. In ten minutes we got several pages of great feedback. I wouldn’t want to pitch that idea again (which itself needed quite a lot of refinement) but I’m confident that I could pitch it today in a much more effective way. That feedback was invaluable, and delivering in that rough form allowed us very quickly to find out how to improve.

It’s not easy to change who you are. It’s still going to be a challenge for me to put stuff out there that’s “not done”. I’ll still be striving for perfection, but I’m going to make a point of not doing it on my own. The first version doesn’t have to be perfect, and by putting something rough out there I can collect feedback and make it as perfect as I can as quickly as possible.

(If you find any mistakes in this post you can be sure that I left them there on purpose to make a point.)

I just finished my first week at Startupify.me.

I’ve probably learned more this week than in any other week during my professional career. Most of that learning has come from making mistakes. It’s been stressful, but it’s also been awesome.

There is something that I’d like to put out there for anybody thinking of joining the program in the future. This week was tough, and I let it get to me. I didn’t sleep terribly well. I drank way too much coffee. I even missed dinner one evening and didn’t realize it until I was getting ready for bed at 10:30.

This isn't me, but he looks like I felt

Of all the mistakes I made this week, I think this was my biggest.

When I’m stressed out and hungry and have a headache from too little sleep and too much caffeine I’m not at the top of my game. If I’d been at the top of my game I would still have made tons of mistakes, but I think I would have learned even more. By being healthy I could have made myself lucky.

I’m even more convinced that participating in Startupify.me is the right move than I was a month ago when I quit my nine to five. If you’re thinking of joining the program, my one-week-in opinion is to jump all over it. Just make sure to take care of yourself, because to get the most out of it you’ll want to be at the top of your game.

Goal #1 at Startupify.Me is launching new technology businesses. A close #2 is building up our developers networks and getting them working directly with the people leading our industry. We’re combining those goals with our mentor program. Our mentors have committed to spending time here at ThreeFortyNine working directly with our developers on our projects.

Today, we listed a glimpse of some of the people our developers and clients will be working with. If you’re a developer who feels you have the chops to get into the world of building software based businesses, then let us know. We’re hiring, like right now!

Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by an incoming software developer. We asked them to explain why they’ve decided to work with us at Startupify.Me. We aren’t sharing their name today as they’re currently employed.

I have a decent job. It pays okay, and it’s relatively secure. I don’t have to commute very far. I work with good people and I do work that makes the world a slightly better place.

I’m good at what I do. I write code. I do systems administration. Sometimes I do network stuff, and sometimes I consult on things. I’m flexible, and I’m creative, and I’ve never really had to worry about finding work.

When people ask me what I do for a living I typically say something like, “I’m a software developer. I maintain and customize product X for company Y. It does Foo, Bar, and Baz.” Usually people’s eyes gloss over.

I’ve started to notice that mine do, too.

I’m tired of my job.

I want to be excited about going to work. When people ask me what I do for a living, I want to be proud of what I tell them. I want to own my job. I want to be challenged. I want to learn. I want to make something. I want to play with cool stuff. I want autonomy, and I want to love what I do.

I want to take control.

In January I’ll be joining Startupify. I’m going to work with an established company for six months, and we’re going to build something together. Hopefully that thing will be awesome, and we’ll sell it and make lots of money. But that might not happen, and that’s cool too. Because I’ll be an even better coder. I’ll be a better sysadmin. I’ll be a better consultant. I’ll be more flexible, more creative, and more valuable.

I’ll be a better person, and I’ll try again.

I love the short timeline. I love the idea of creating something. I love the idea of, potentially, owning my own business. I love that, while success or failure rests heavily on my shoulders, I’ll be surrounded by experienced people who can help me succeed. I love the relative safety of Startupify, because instead of going into debt I’ll be able to pay my mortgage for those six months.

It’s a much smaller risk than simply going off on my own, and the potential payoff is about the same. Working with Brydon and Chris and an established company, my chances of success will be, I think, much better.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll find at the other end, but I know that I’ll be better for it. Startupify will be good for me.

Would it be good for you?

Why not get in touch with Brydon and have a chat? Maybe we’ll end up building something awesome together.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Brent Klassen of Blue North Strategies. We asked Brent to explain Startupify.Me from a client’s perspective.

I was involved in the early stages of a tech startup during the dotcom boom of the late 90’s. What a time! We traded on ideas, innovation, and creativity that knew no
bounds. We also knew no revenue, and as fate would have it, the enterprise skidded
to a halt when the seed funding ran out.

A few years later, when a friend and I started Blue North Strategies, I wanted a
business that worked. We sold time, and still do. Our expertise, our creativity, our
production capacity are all sold through the inventory of staff time. The time we sell
delivers all kinds of value to our clients, and we do pretty well at it.

Makes business sense, right? Sure it does, and I wouldn’t go back to the “build-it-
and-they-might-come” business model that typified the halcyon dotcom days, but
whenever the pendulum swings, something is always lost. And the reality for a
service-oriented business is that it is painfully difficult to do true innovation when
hours spent are justified by dollars billed. So how do you break new ground and
move beyond what you know works?

Here’s the thing – you know that there are probably dozens of innovative
technologies gestating in the minds and processes of your people. But actually
taking time away from client work to bring these into the light? That can be a
tough sell in a services company. Maybe you’ve tried it before – probably with
mixed success. Your attempts to “productize” probably take place in the crevices
between paying projects. Your R&D funding model probably cannibalizes those
same projects, making them appear less profitable than they actually are. Your sense
of requirements is probably driven more by your own need for efficiency than it is
by a real live market demand.

What makes Startupify attractive to a company like Blue North, is that it provides
us with the insight, expertise, and capacity to actually unfold some of our latent
technology innovations, without disrupting the good thing we’ve got going selling
services. We continue to serve clients, to bill our time, and all the while, there’s a
Startupify technology entrepreneur who’s observing the offering, the process, and
the delivery with the kind of objectivity that an insider could never really bring.

Then, once the insights have been gleaned, this same person begins prototyping,
rapidly giving form to the ideas that have emerged. We can test these prototypes
internally, and externally with our clients. There may be no bad ideas, but there
certainly are ideas that nobody wants to pay for. Quickly sorting the wheat from the
chaff is critical in terms of knowing where to invest the more significant dollars.

At the end of the day, what Startupify promises is the best of both worlds: a space in
which to incubate new technology ideas within the context of a viable, functioning
services company. Sign me up.