I don’t know if you’ve ever been a part of a startup before, but for the last 8 months I’ve been working on my 2nd one with 2 other guys. It’s been a lot of work but today is the biggest day in the history of our startup. Nearly 2 months ago I had an early breakfast meeting with an attorney who works for the target market of our new business. (For anyone that has never been in a startup before, here’s a word of advice… get used to 6:30am meetings!) He knows the industry well and hears their complaints, so it made sense to pull him into our CRUSH CLUB to give us feedback as we develop this new startup.
After showing him the concept that we had been working on for the past 6 months, he was very impressed and gave us a few pointers on things that we should continue working on, but he concluded by saying, “Guys, if you build this, every person in your target market will use this software.” We had spent the previous 6 months developing the concept in coffee shop meetings with our Crush Club, so this was not breaking news to us, but this attorney went on to say, “In fact, if you can make these few tweeks and show me the changes, I’ll personally line you up with some of the biggest players in this field that I work with so that you can show them the idea. They’ll love it.”
Crush Club 101… if you are truly solving a need and the person that you are meeting with is somewhat experiencing the same need (or knows people that do), then it will not be hard for them to set you up with the type of person that will help you refine your idea and eventually buy your product.
That was 2 months ago. No Fast Forward to today. Paul, Geoff and I have been working for the past 2 months to refine our idea based on the feedback of our Crush Club and this attorney. Right now I’m sitting in a Dunn Bros coffee shop typing this blog post as I’m getting ready for our second meeting with this very busy attorney. The plan is to take him out for sushi, show him the progress that we’ve made off of his ideas, then ask what he thinks (open ended… we’re not selling him)… then by our last bite of sushi, we’ll know if the 8 months of hard work have been worth it… or if we still need to use our Crush Club to search for the correct business to build.
I can’t wait… but this is what it feels like to be in a startup.
good luck!!!!