Earlier in 2020, Travis got the opportunity to connect with Co-Founder of Late Checkout, Greg Isenberg. Listen in as Greg shared some of his thoughts in addition to: Episode Highlights: There's a shortage of startup founders and people working on startups to fulfill market needs We're entering an Entrepreneurial Renaissance that will go down as one of the most interesting periods of all time If you can clone yourself or if you have deep insight into a particular community, you can most likely build a startup around it And you could probably make at least seven figures from it Meetup story about https://twitter.com/heif (Scott Heiferman) and Meetup Crawls From a Startup point of view, your ability to create something that speaks to that community and gets them to try it is high. There's a thirst and hunger right now for new products Facebook started off as a tool for college students - the book of faces, literally and eventually they added social networking and all the additional features we now know Utility precedes community in a lot of senses How to identify a potential community of people to serve and build a tool for Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.) "Hey this is a group for Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.)" Understand what they need - maybe they need an analytics tool that shows them how to make more money, or maybe what they really need is a map of drivers around them, or a part line, or a clubhouse area, etc How do you serve your community? The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is to deliver that value to the community you serve When it comes to community-oriented products, it's about distilling the needs and wants of a particular community in a really succinct way that makes people feel at home Every product that is mainstream started with a small group of people Uber example Reddit Example In B2B, don't forget you're still working with people Make sure you speak in plain English in a way people understand What keeps Greg up at night His ambitions Being best in class Greg shared insights about his substack and what he does at Late Checkout Greg's key traits of a successful community and his process Step 0 - Where do you have a fundamental advantage over other people? What types of communities do you know better than anyone else? Canadian app for people who are from Canada and live in the US Questions about naturalization, getting citizenship, and there are probably other people who may have questions Where do they have those questions? What are the most common questions? Step 1 - Start with research and identify a few communities and you're going to select one to go deep with. Deep like a week doing research, and coming up with a hypothesis - where is this? Where is there an opportunity to help people? How do we serve these people? Step 2 - Observing and looking at the data Many data sources including: Trending SubReddits, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok Twitter, Meetup, Spotify, Clubhouse or LinkedIn Go deep on one of the above platforms to really understand where people are and what their needs are Step 3 - Develop experiments with the goal of obtaining feedback If Greg were to rewrite Lean Startup today, he would add a community lense to it add steps around the research and bringing in the community and speaking to moderators, on Reddit, speaking to moderators on Facebook, and co-building the product together Step 4 - Design sprint and then a community design sprint Step 5 - Determine if your startup can hit product-market fit or not 2 Favorite Points: If you have a key insight into a particular community, you could probably build a startup around it, and you could probably make at least seven figures from it. The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is
