Mark Fletcher is a consumer Internet golden child, a serial entrepreneur and founder of two consumer Internet startups, ONEList (now Yahoo Groups) and Bloglines (acquired by Interactive Corp). True to form for a successful Valley entrepreneur, Mark is an angel investor. I came to know Mark through his website Startupping where he shared his startup lessons learned. Mark was also featured in ‘Founders at Work.’
I spoke with Mark at Buck’s Woodside about how he conceived his successful products, the process of growing those sites into successful companies, and what makes a successful consumer Internet startup. The most interesting part of the interview was when Mark described how his first startup took off very quickly, once he arrived at a solid concept. Mark created ONEList and it took off overnight because it solved a fundamental pain many people were experiencing. Making mailing lists at the time was a painful process, and ONEList made it easy. Bloglines was another good idea because it solved a problem Mark personally was experiencing, how to keep up with the many blogs he read. Furthermore, Mark leveraged the marketing and PR relationships he had built at ONEList to get press for Bloglines which spurred their growth.
I think there is a lesson here as many first-time entrepreneurs target the consumer Internet space and often burn years making minor improvements to failing product concepts. Mark’s experience would seem to suggest that a bootstrapped consumer Internet startup is not a marathon in which you slowly build interest in an idea, but a race in which you iterate product concepts until you find one people love. As Eric Ries says,”Increasing iterations is a good thing – unless we’re going in a circle.” Disinterested users will politely suggest features to add to your losing concept for years.
Learn from people like Mark. Winning concepts for bootstrapped startups take off fast because they cure someone’s pain. Not many startups succeed in the market they expected to, with the product they had in mind originally. Pivot your product until you arrive at something the market validates. You simply cannot afford to waste your valuable time, energy, passion and money building on faith for years at a time. Employ customer development. Iterate your product until you get bankable feedback on a viable product. Remember, if your startup is not connected with a market need, it is an art project.
Finally, if you haven’t read it, stop what you’re doing and buy Steve Blank’s book. It is not like any other startup book you’ve read. It is not just another book like the many you’ve probably read from people like Guy Kawasaki. Four Steps to the Epiphany turns product development from a faith-based gamble to a grounded, fact-based process. This book can save you years of frustration.
Mark was clear on one thing. If you have the drive, you can build a startup anywhere.
(This post is #6 in a series from research by Russell Jurney, TechDrawl Contributing Editor, on the unique startup culture in Silicon Valley. The first post was the concept for the study; the second was a fundraising plea for the trip where Celia Dyer raised $1600 on Twitter in 4 hours using a visualization tool developed by Georgia Tech graduate student, Courtenay Bird; the third was Jurney’s personal story from 35k feet; the fourth was about the California “state of mind;” the fifth was the fascinating interview with Konstantin Othmer; and, the sixth was an interview with David Lee of SV Angel. Stay tuned for more video interviews from Jurney).
[Photo Credit: Kate Jurney]
