Per Aspera Ad Astra

2022-08-13 12:00:35 How to do sales

As a founder, you will inevitably need to do sales. As I mentioned previously, you SHOULD NOT outsource sales to some external agency or by hiring a salesperson. Doing sales on your own both teaches you how to sell and helps you understand your users/customers better.

Writing a cold email appropriately is one of the most essential skills a founder can learn while doing sales. That would be especially helpful for B2B startups, however, can be also applicable to others.

6 Key Tips on writing a cold email right:

1. It should be short. Max 6-8 sentences.

2. Clear language. No jargon. No buzzwords.

3. Address the problem that the potential customer is having.

4. Say you are the founder. Describe why you/your team are impressive.

5. Include link to your website / video / gif showing your solution to their problem.

6. Include an ask for a call / meeting / self-serve.

Important note - selling to startups is a lot easier than selling to small/middle-sized companies since startups are the ones who are more eager to try out new software, product, etc. as long as it solves their problems.

Persistence is the key. You should be ready to send out 100/200/300 cold emails before you onboard a real paying customer. It's pretty clear from the picture above what the typical sales funnel looks like. 500 emails led to 2 customers. But if you had stopped on the 100th email you would have never gotten these 2 customers in the first place. Fascinating stuff!

If you want to see more guides on sales, let's get 20 " " under this post.

Stay lean Open / Comment

2022-08-11 13:30:24 Open / Comment

2022-08-09 13:01:04 How to talk to users (part )

Here is part in case you missed it.

Let's assume you have already built an MVP based on the first 10/20/30 user interviews that you've conducted. You included there ONLY those features that are the most relevant in solving customers' pains. Now the thing that you cannot overestimate is iterating.

The idea is that every now and then (preferrably after launching new features) you have to show your MVP to users (including the ones you have conducted an interview with in the first place) and gather relevant feedback.

There are many ways how to do that - for instance you can create a Slack/Whatsapp/Discord channel where you put interviewees all together and update them on your progress. You are making them a part of "early adopters" community which can make them feel special and motivate to give feedback.

Latest updates, new features, exlusive access, etc. - all this stuff gives people sense of privilege/status and once again motivates them to give constant feedback on your product which is incredibly important on early-stages.

You should repeat this cycle until you find product-market fit:

1. Customer feedback -> 2. Turning feedback into product insights -> 3. Implementation of relevant features -> 4. Test-drive of those features -> 5. Fixing stuff -> 6. Do the cycle again

Important note - ONLY founder/-s should do the job of talking to clients. Noone can replace them. This is a key survivial mechanism of a startup that should not and can not be outsourced.

At a first glance it's a total waste of time and I get why one might think so. Well, it is. Doing such kind of tasks is unscalable process and you can't automate it - you should go one by one gathering feedback. Just keep in mind - it's absolutely okey to do so. Once you find your product-market fit you obviously will automate everything you potentially can in order to scale and grow fast. However, during pre-product-market fit stage it makes sense to do unscalable tasks - ultimatelly that's the only way you can genuinely improve your product in terms of what customers really want.

Do things that don't scale and feel good about it!

Stay lean Open / Comment

2022-08-07 21:29:00 Any thoughts? Open / Comment

2022-08-07 10:35:52 Feel free to ask any questions or make any suggestions!

You can even share yours in the comments so that we can help each other improve our CVs Open / Comment

2022-08-05 17:54:41 Open / Comment

2022-08-05 17:54:00 Final Interview in Berlin

During the recruitment process, I was invited to come to the office in Berlin for a final interview in-person with Creative Director, CEO, and other managers in the company I applied to. Here is the company.

Damn, it was exciting. To be honest I've never experienced such art of recruiting. In a nutshell , first I talked to Creative Director about my experiences, hard skills, etc. Essentially he was trying to understand whether he likes me or not and whether I am gonna be a good fit for a company's culture, team, all that kind of stuff. It turns out, for such positions (I assume it can be applicable to all managing positions  -  I was applying for Performance Marketing Manager) it is incredibly important to have a high level of so-called soft skills. Why? Because they are unable to check your hard skills even by giving you tasks to solve, case studies, etc. The only way a company can check it is by simply hiring and working together for a couple of months to see whether a person is nailing the work he is supposed to. That is why it makes more sense to hire someone with high soft skills "qualities" so that at least the cooperation in the early stages is gonna be pleasant and smooth. I hope you got my point.

Coming back to the interview. Then the Creative Director invited over the CEO  -  he was also quite lovely and basically was trying to get to know me better as a human being in the first place (NOT as a specialist). Small tip  -  you gotta have at least something valuable in your CV, some kind of "track record" in order to be invited to the later stages of recruitment. Later on, other managers came in, I was introduced to the team and to different departments. After that starts the fun part

CEO and Creative Director invited me over for a dinner at the restaurant (apparently another method to get to know me better  -  this time with beers involved ). After a couple of beers, the blood pumped to our faces and the REAL interview started XD. We were talking about literally everything - from the company's history, and life story of the founder to the current political and economic state of the world.

About 2 hours later they gave me a job offer . Eventually, they liked me and wanted me to be a part of the team. That's certainly good news  - but I haven't decided yet because I still have other interviews coming up and I wanna have other offers to compare to. Pretty fun experience after all  -  was worth 8 hour-trip to Berlin and back. Open / Comment

2022-08-03 17:01:33 How to talk to users (part 1)

First off, why is it important to talk to users? Well, you are working on a product, and you think you know what people want — harsh truth — in most cases you are wrong . Friend & Family is also not a reliable source of feedback — it’s unlikely that they will tell you the truth unless they are the target audience for your product. You basically need to talk to potential users and find out what their “pains” are, and what obstacles they stumble upon in a certain industry or using a certain product.

That being said, that is YOUR job to come up with a solution, and figure out what features to implement in order to solve customers’ problem. NEVER introduce your idea to people you are interviewing. Yes. Never. Your task when talking to people is to listen and figure out what they are complaining about, what they struggle with, etc.

A nice trick is to ask open-ended questions regarding the industry they are operating in, processes’ setup, workflow, and such. Questions that will give out as much information about potential customers and the current state of the market are the key. Some examples of such questions:

Tell me how you do x today?

What is the hardest thing about doing x?

Why is it hard?

How often do you have to do x?

Why is it important for your company to do x?

What do you do to solve this problem for yourself?

Eventually, you should conduct 10/20/30 interviews before building an MVP with a particular set of features. After each talk, you will have notes that you should organize and cluster by key topics. By that time you should see what the weak points are and how your product can fit in and solve this problem. Even more exciting path ahead!

The question you might be asking, “alright, that’s clear, but where do I actually find people to talk to?”. And that's a completely fair question to ask. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to find them. There are generally 3 groups:

1. Friends & Personal network
2. Co-workers
3. People you don’t know

1. Friends & Personal network. Pretty obvious. If your target group is among your friends or people you know, the easiest way is to reach out to them and interview them. However, that is not always the case.

2. Co-workers. A promising group, especially if you are building SaaS/B2B products. This group is oftentimes associated with a certain industry, so their insights might be extremely valuable.

3. People you don’t know. The biggest group. Examples: LinkedIn cold outreach meaning reaching out to people from your industry on LinkedIn asking them to take 10 mins of their time to ask a couple of questions (how to write a proper message will be covered in part 2). Reddit/Slack/Discord communities — are also a great source of potential interviewees. Facebook groups. And lastly, any kind of in-person events where you can meet up with potential users on-site and conduct an interview.

In part , I will cover more on what are further steps with an MVP that you have built from first insights + how to iterate and receive customers’ feedback constantly.

Also, let me know if you like such huge posts like this

Stay tuned Open / Comment

2022-08-02 23:25:28 Quote

"So I want to plant a hypnotic suggestion in your heads: when you hear someone say the words "we want to invest in you" or "we want to acquire you," I want the following phrase to appear automatically in your head: don't get your hopes up. Just continue running your company as if this deal didn't exist. Nothing is more likely to make it close.

The way to succeed in a startup is to focus on the goal of getting lots of users, and keep walking swiftly toward it while investors and acquirers scurry alongside trying to wave money in your face".

― Paul Graham

P.S. Tomorrow is gonna be a huuuge post "How to talk to users".

Stay tuned guys Open / Comment

2022-07-30 18:43:01 Open / Comment