This is some really great stuff. It is especially true in the tech industry but most of what I have included here works well for business in general.
I have to attribute these learning from a slideshow I saw from Xobni and Dropbox:
- Make something that people want. (If you don’t you are wasting your time, and worse other people’s time.)
- A poor product-market fit cannot make up for by great marketing.
- A good product can work for itself in being good marketing.
- Answer problems that you don’t know you have.
- Keep learning
- Ideas might be cheap, but launching a new product will cost money.
- Talk to as many people as possible. Any and everyone who will listen.
- You can learn without launching something such as using Adwords and landing pages to see if there is a desire for your product. If people click you have something others might be willing to get. If people offer their email address for more info, you will have an even better idea.
- Go to where your target market spend their time.
- Not everyone will want to buy your product. Don’t focus on everyone.
- Develop for the niche first. If it gets bigger, it gets bigger.
- Consider tying yourself to something bigger. Especially if that bigger thing is moving in a direction that you want to go in.
- Make your own PR possible.
- You are responsible for making people think positively about you. If you don’t put something in the people’s mind, someone else will.
- If you want word of mouth, you need need need a great product.
- Help out in the social scene. No one will put the share like on your webpage but you.
- Encourage word of mouth when you have a great product.
- Be really good at one thing.
- If it is easier to use, people will find you.
- Fewer decisions are actually better. Compare Facebook’s few customization options to MySpace’s endless variations. Now who did better?
- Remember people don’t like reading. Make things simple, and easy to understand.
- Make things pretty. This is my own thought, ugly things are no good.
- Attract the person to use you, then you can teach them how it works.
- Get feedback constantly
- Know how many it takes to get one sale
- Make sure you are putting money where it needs to go,in all aspects of the business.
- Know the lifetime value of your customer (Profit they generate – Cost to acquire = their lifetime value)
Most of these lessons learned come from a presentation from Xobni and Dropbox. You can see the presentation for yourself at: http://adamsmith.cc/from-zero-to-a-million-users-dropbox-and-xobni-les