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Escaping Startup Flatland

Startup Flatland

This is where I bring it all home. I hope that by now you have been convinced that entrepreneurship is sales and that sales, like design, is about clear communication. Standing between you and this coveted clear communication are the flatlands which you must escape if you want to be understood. In this essay I am going to explain the two escapes that stand between the entrepreneur and product / market fit.

Escape #1: Idea to Vision

So you're taking a shower, singing Abba, and all of a sudden it hits you: the most brilliant idea of all time. You are standing on the brink of the future, looking out over a sea of hover boards and bloodthirsty robots. In your mind's eye the picture is crystal-clear HD video, but that's just your mind's eye.

If you want to bring about that delightful future you need other folks to pitch in as well. That means transforming your idea into a form that can be understood by others. We call that lil' fella a vision. The flatlands at this stage are varied. They are the verbal pitch, the PowerPoint presentation, the executive summary, the lunch meeting, the six-pack of beer, and so on. These are the mediums through which you must communicate your vision in order to build a team and raise money. If you can't get your idea to escape flatland and become a vision, no one will get it or give a damn.

Escape #2: Vision to PM Fit

Congratulations. You got yourself a team and some money. You clearly have a knack for sharing your vision with other people. Time to raise the stakes. The second escape is a team effort. You and your team must transform your shared (and evolving) vision into the right product for the right market.

This, as it turns out, is much harder. At this stage, your own product is the flatland. It is the primary medium through which you talk to your users. Unlike the one-off pitches from your first escape, transforming a vision into PM fit requires an ongoing conversation with your market as you try to determine just what they need and ensure that you are giving it to them.

The back and forth of this conversation increases your chances of miscommunication (think telephone game). If you can't escape flatland here and get in sync with your market, you'll either miss the market opportunity or fall short with your product.

Coming Up

I think we've done enough discussing what flatlands / PM fit are. Time to get into the practical bits of how you actually go about escaping startup flatland. Our first order of business is to talk about just what makes an idea good or bad so you can take a hard look at your own and decide if it's worth pursuing. Startups are very much garbage in, garbage out. If you start with a bad idea, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to reach product / market fit. Once we're sure you're on solid ground, we can get into just how you go about escaping the flatlands ahead of you.

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Escaping Flatland

Flatland

"Flatland" is a design metaphor popularized by Edward Tufte in his book Envisioning Information. It's a great way to think about the challenges of effective communication. The idea of flatlands is built upon a pretty basic observation: most of the mediums through which designers must communicate are flat (the printed page, the billboard, the digital display). Tufte calls these "flatlands," and they are a huge bitch. He articulates the central challenge as follows:

"The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?"-Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

Flatlands inhibit effective communication. As such, whenever you try to communicate a message through one, the default outcome is failure. It takes effort and ability to evade failure and communicate in a way that achieves a shared under-standing between you and your audience.

In an ideal world, we would mind link or download thoughts into each others' brains, matrix-style. But, alas, if the cancellation of Arrested Development has taught us anything, it's that this is not an ideal world. If you want to communicate a message, you're going to have to do it over an imperfect flatland.

Escape

Escaping flatland means moving beyond the constraints of the ill-suited, two-dimensional flatlands and communicating with a clarity that enables understanding. Put simply, it means communicating successfully.

"Escaping this flatland is the essential task of envisioning information - for all the interesting worlds (physical, biological, imaginary, human) that we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate in nature. Not flatlands."-Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

For Tufte, the escapist designer is one who takes a nearly inscrutable data set, finds its core meaning, and then translates that meaning into a design that reads more like a data story than a list of numbers. Somehow this person is able to convey a sense of depth and dimensionality using a medium that resists it.

Verbal Flatlands

The printed page doesn't have a monopoly on communication suck. Our language isn't doing us any favors either.

"our language, like our paper, often lacks the immediate capacity to communicate a sense of dimensionality."-Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

The notion of a verbal flatland is especially important for entrepreneurs. We may not need to turn a data set into a data story, but we certainly need to take our ideas and transform them into meaningful visions. Up next I'm going to talk about the startup-specific flatlands that the entrepreneur must escape in order to achieve PM fit. Stick around kiddos.

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Entrepreneurship and Design

Design is Communication

After my last web startup, I moved back to San Francisco and landed an entrepreneurial residency at Cooper, one of the world's leading interaction design firms. It was a great experience and it didn't hurt my feelings at all that the 26th floor office had a view of the entire city.

It was also a very formative time in terms of my thinking about the Web and entrepreneurship. I was surrounded by tremendously talented interaction designers who were gracious enough to teach me about their profession. I watched as these designers did what was essentially the job of the CEOs who had hired them: talking to customers, fine-tuning product visions, and selecting product functionality.

The more time I spent with interaction designers, the clearer the connection between design and sales became. Of course they aren't exactly the same thing, but they do have the same objective: effective communication in service of shared understanding. Design is not, as I had thought, purely about aesthetics; it is about creating something that, as Ladislav Sutnar put it, "serves to intensify comprehension."

"To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master." -Milton Glaser

"Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communication: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge." -Paul Rand

"Good design makes a product understandable. It clarifies the product's structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory." -Dieter Rams

"Whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort." -Massimo Vignelli

"Fucking thing sucks." -Bill O'Reilly

Learning from Design

The moral of the story here is that we web entrepreneurs can learn a hell of a lot from the great design thinkers. Under-standing what they have to say about design and communication can make our lives easier, our pitches clearer, our products more on target, and our cocktail party conversations way more trendy. (Jonathan Ive blah blah thrift store blah blah Sufjan Stevens blah blah mustache.)

One design concept in particular -"flatlands"- has stayed with me over the years. I believe it serves as a powerful lens through which to view the challenges of reaching product / market fit. The parallel between applying flatlands to design and applying them to entrepreneurship can be drawn fairly easily and effectively. Most of the rest of these essays deal with the application of this powerful design concept to entrepreneurship.

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Entrepreneurship is Sales

It is impossible to overstate the role that sales plays in entrepreneurship. When you’re trying to create something great from scratch, you are always selling. In order to build a team, you have to sell yourself and your idea. In order to raise money, you have to sell your team and its vision. In order to create partnerships, you have to sell your company and its values. In order to sell your product you have to sell… your product. Like the final Lord of the Rings movie, it never ends.

I know that makes a lot of you folks nervous. You don’t even like the sound of the word “sales”. Well I don’t blame you. Sales has got itself a pretty bad rap. It conjures up images of used-car salesmen, tupperware parties, and Alec Baldwin’s testicles.

The problem with these images is that they paint the salesperson as being out for themselves and — more often than not — trying to pull a fast one on you. Maybe he wants you to buy a car that’s a lemon or buy any form of tupperware. He almost never has your best interest at heart. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Here at startup flatland we are going make an assumption that will allow us to explore a much more compelling definition of sales. We will assume that you believe in what you are selling; that you think it is useful and valuable; that you think it will improve the lives of the people who buy it. If you believe these things, sales can take on a different meaning.

Shared Understanding

In this new light, we can see that great sales is not about pressure or manipulation. Great sales is about achieving shared understanding. Because you believe in what you’re selling, your task is simply to enable the person to whom you are selling to understand the product and its value to them.

From a place of understanding, they can evaluate for themselves the extent to which they need / would be willing to use or pay for your product. Your job is clear communication, nothing more. Of course that is much easier said than done.

Challenges of Sales

There are three primary challenges associated with sales. Remember that “product” as it pertains to the entrepreneur is defined loosely. Sometimes the product is your team, sometimes it’s your idea, sometimes it’s you, and sometimes it’s even the actual product you’re selling.

Clear Communication - How do you convey the value of your product quickly and clearly? If you can’t do this, you will lose people who would normally love your product and confuse everyone else.

Target Audience - How do you pick the right person to pitch? Shared understanding isn’t enough. You need to achieve it with someone who actually needs your product. Otherwise they get your idea but don’t care about it. Who is your target audience?

Timing - When do your reach out to people to sell to them? Selling can be very intrusive even if you are selling something people want. Choosing the best moment / environment for a pitch is a crucial part of the art.

I'll talk later about some ways to overcome these challenges. For now, just start to reframe your thinking regarding sales in terms of achieving shared understanding.

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What is Product / Market Fit?

The Shit.

That's right Mr/s Entrepreneur. Product / market fit is the shit. It's like finding a twenty dollar bill in your jeans after you just did the laundry. But don't just take my word for it, let's ask Marc Andreessen. What do you think Marc?

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit -Pmarca Guide to Startups Part 4

That's not too clear. Can you be a bit more specific?

Do whatever is required to get to product / market fit...you can ignore almost everything else. -Pmarca Guide to Startups Part 4

Nice. I like ignoring things. Thanks for the tip, guy. How about you gentle reader? Are you intrigued? You ought to be. If not, no worries, you probably know a lot more than Marc. He's only started two billion dollar companies and then Ning and then a $300 million venture fund during the recession. Total n00b.

How About Less Hype & More Definition?

Fair enough.

PM fit simply means building the right product for the right market. Reaching PM fit requires tracking both variables: the quality of your product and the intensity of its impact (market). If either side of the equation lags, so will your startup.

Building a great business isn't just about building great products. It's about building great products that have an impact. If you toil away for years developing a knife that spreads chunky peanut butter as though it were smooth, you may build something great (in terms of its goal), but your impact will likely be limited by market size.

The iPod/Pad/Phone aren't successful because they are marvels of design and engineering. They're successful because they are marvels of design and engineering that everyone wants.

As a startup, you must maintain this dual focus. If you fail to do so, you'll end up with either a mediocre product in a great market or a great product that almost no one wants. Neither outcome is particularly exciting.

Of Note

The term "product / market fit" was actually coined by a former professor of mine, Andy Rachleff, who founded Benchmark Capital and co-taught by far the best course of my college or graduate career. His partners in crime for the course on Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital were Pete Wendell (founder of Sierra Ventures) and Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google). Each class they would tackle various entrepreneurial issues simultaneously from the perspective of the VC and the entrepreneur and at lunch they would sit and answer any questions students could come up with. Scoreboard.

Anyhow, just wanted to point out that I have more than one reason for being fond of the concept. I sincerely believe that focusing on PM fit is the best way to think about building a great business. You can agree with that or not. If you don't agree, you probably won't like the rest of these essays. If you do, this should be pretty fun.

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A Few Notes

Reading List

I've read a fair number of business books in my day. Inevitably bits from my favorites will sneak into these posts in ways I don't fully appreciate. To mitigate any awkwardness, I will say that The Art of the Start, Zag, Getting Real, Don't Make Me Think, The Brand Gap, Envisioning Information, and the essays of Marc Andreessen and Paul Graham are all recommended reading and much better writing than I can offer. It also wouldn't hurt to subscribe to Fred Wilson's blog. It's home to some of the most consistently high-quality startup writing on the web.

If you can't read it all, start with these:

The Art of the Start (Chapters 1-7)

Getting Real (All)

Zag(pp 24-25, 28-32, and 65-75)

Don't Make Me Think (All)

Pmarca essays (Guide to Startups #1-9)

Paul Graham essays 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

It's Alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to try to weave all these essays into some sort of cohesive narrative so don't expect things to stay the same. Expect them to evolve and change over time, which is more fun anyhow. If you want to stay up to date on changes, head over to my blog where I will publish all updates to this and other parts of the site. Or just click here for the rss feed.

Disclaimer

I'm not convinced I've done enough to be writing about startups, but.

These essays are about getting to Product / Market Fit, but I've never actually done that. That is not a self-admonition. The way I define PM Fit (as it will often be abbreviated) is such that very few folks have.

At Fictive Kin, my team and I are working on some very cool stuff that we believe will attain Product / Market Fit and change the world for the better. That's called a double whammy.

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What's All This Then?

Short Answer

Excellent question. I'm not entirely sure.

Long Answer

Edward Tufte recommends reading the final chapter of Strunk & White's Elements of Style once a year. The reason for this required re-reading is that with each passing year of experience, we are better able to understand the chapter's 21 writing commandments.

When we're younger, we can only superficially understand recommendations like "Do not overwrite." or "Be clear." Experience gives us access to deeper levels of meaning in these recommendations and enables us to better follow them.

So much of startup advice works the same way. It comes in the form of simple, declarative statements that require personal experience to fully understand. Often, and as is the case here, that understanding comes only in hindsight.

What follows is a collection of spare parts. Some of these parts I picked up from others and have then found true in my experience and others are things that I've experienced and then distilled into something of minor value. I'm writing it all down largely as a reflective exercise, but also as a way to share these ideas with the increasing number of folks that I've been working with.