the startups.com platform about startups.comCheck out the new Startups.com - A Comprehensive Startup University

Categories

Browse Search

Loading...

Clarity

Dan Martell

Moncton, NB, Canada

SaaS Business Coach. Founder of Clarity - Angel Investor (33 companies). Co-Founder of Flowtown (Acquired 11'), Founder of Spheric Technologies (Acquired 08'), Mentor @ 500Startup, GrowLabs & theC100.org

$83.33/min

Dan donates to charity: water ($10,366.52)

1,334

1334 Calls

215

215 Reviews

18 minutes
Avg. call

Growth Hacking Entrepreneurship Lean startup Start-ups Growth Customer Development Social Marketing Product Marketing Metrics

Call me to talk about

Lean Startup and Product Growth Techniques

I'm a guest lecturer in Steve Blanks class at Berkeley, and a mentor to his Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. I've been applying the Lean Startup methodology and Customer Development practices in my startups for the past 5 years - essentially since I first heard Eric Ries give his talk at the Web 2.0 conference in 08'. I've also had the pleasure of giving talks around the world on Lean Product Development and Customer Development.

Eric is a formal advisor to Clarity, so we get to talk often about how we're doing :)

http://www.danmartell.com/conference-tour-sllconf-lean-startup-intensive-montreal-startup-camp-aim-conference-meshu-and-lessconf/

How to Raise a Seed Round

I've raised venture capital twice, for Clarity ($1.6M) and Flowtown ($750K). In my previous company, Spheric I never had to raised capital because I got smart about leveraging my receivables and customers to finance our 150% y-o-y growth.

Getting Started as an Entrepreneur

I've been starting companies for the past 10+ years. I've built 5 companies; 2 were complete failures, and the past 2 successes - with Clarity being my fifth and current startup. Via Clarity and various incubators, I've advised over 1,000+ startups regarding growth hacking, product marketing and fundraising. I'm also ridiculously passionate about helping others succeed in business.

http://danmartell.com/about

Answers 173
Reviews 215

Answers

Dan Martell answered

What is the best reference book to develop a solid business plan for an e-commerce retail sales site?

I don't have a book recommendation but I will suggest reading everything by Matthew Carroll on Quora.

http://www.quora.com/Matthew-Carroll/answers/E-Commerce

He's brilliant when it comes to financial modelling and biz models

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

E-commerce

Business Plan Formulation

Dan Martell answered

What is the number one thing a startup founder can do to ensure a seed stage investment?

Have a product that users / customer are using and continue to use. The goal is to derisk the opportunity for investors and the biggest risk is that you'll build something that nobody wants.

Once you have that, then try and find a big enough market and opportunity that justifies a venture investments (many startups don't).

And finally, once you do those 2 things - spend time building a list of investors near you, or that have invested in companies near you, then network your way via the entrepreneurs that raised money from those investors to get introductions.

Nothings guaranteed but those things will definitely help the probability of you closing a seed round.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Raising Venture Capital

Venture Capital

Dan Martell answered

What are some good hacks to get mobile app developers spend 20 minutes on customer interview or try out your MVP?

The best way to get developers to complete a customer interview is to go in asking for advice. Position the interview as some research that you're doing for a blog post or paper - that way the feedback isn't filtered based on it being your idea.

As for finding mobile app developers, the good news is that they're listed in every appstore on the internet. Maybe start with new & less noteable apps so that you get a good response rate from an email to the founder (usually the developer).

The other approach I've done is run ads on Facebook to a survey, or work with a company like SurveyMonkey.com to get answers (although I'm not sure if they can target mobile developers).

You can always use Clarity to reach out and conduct interviews - I do this often. Here's a search result for iOS developers https://clarity.fm/search/developer%20ios

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Customer Development

Dan Martell answered

What are the secrets to great user testing?

Listen, don’t tell. Conduct it on their computer. Fix the issues after each test .. iterate like mad, especially when you’re small / trying to figure it out.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

How can we reward our top users without money and without appearing too big brotherish?

You can start by personally emailing them and saying thanks. Doing something public without their permission isn’t cool. I send Direct Messages on Twitter, emails, all day thanking people.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

What are some ways to execute a kick-ass beta phase?

A few thoughts. 1) Get a diverse group (geo + backgrounds) to use it. 2) Invite people to use your product in person (on their laptops), 3) Measure the impact using www.survey.io – iterate and fix all the user flows.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

Looking for sources of “micro-angel” funding (~$100K) for a food start-up. Any suggestions?

High net-worth individuals familiar with the industry or credit cards. Visa can make an amazing investor, just be sure to ask for money when you don’t need it.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

What's the best way to implement a profit sharing structure in a small agency?

The key is to keep it simple at first and focus on rewarding the right behaviour.

You can start by setting a gross revenue goal for the quarter, share with the team, and tell them if we hit that, that everyone will get a bonus.

So in some sense, it's not about profit sharing at first. The reason for this is, profit can be manipulated and nothing most employees do can effect this.

Also, you may not want to share profit with all your employees.

So here's my suggestions for thinking through this
- who's going to participate (founders, senior staff, everyone)
- set a goal that you can all contribute towards. (Customer satisfaction, Gross Rebenue, etc)
- Get a baseline for the current number (what was the gross Rebenue for the previous quarter)
- Start simple and small and see if it impacts performance of the team. If it doesn't, then it's not working.

Pro tip: Report on the goal as frequently as you can so everyone knows as soon as possible if you're on track or not.

Hope that helps.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

The best ideas come from solving a problem your market has. What are a few ways to position yourself in order to more easily spot these problems?

One of the best ways to identify real problems in a market is to be a consultant and actually get paid to help solve the problem. Many great product companies started off this way (ex: Freshbooks, Hootsuite, Shopify, etc). They solved their own problem, and then build a solution so that others could use it.

If you're already a startup, and you're trying to refine and learn, then you can do more hands-on deployments for customers, where you actually go in and help them solve the problem with your software. Now, if you start to get paid by the hour to do this work, then you went to far.

Either your a service company learning and getting paid, so that one day you can spin out a product, or your a venture backeable startup and doing things that don't scale initially to learn how the customer thinks.

The best question I've ever heard to truly understand a customer is to ask "What do you do 3 minutes before, and after, you use our product". That's where the opportunity lies.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Entrepreneurship

Dan Martell answered

When should a startup hire a BD person?

Business Development, like Marketing, should be brought on when the product is ready. That usually means that there's a great understanding of your core customer, the use case, and a business model that scales.

I would suggest doing atleast 3 business development deals first to test the model, perfect the process (i.e. comp structure, requirements, marketing assets, agreements, etc) - then if they work, you can bring someone on to go after other identified (similar) opportunities.

Just because you have a lot of inbound opportunities to partner doesn't mean you should - be sure to focus on the product, API's (they are the future of BD) and business model to ensure they can support a successful partnership.

No sense in doing a campaign where you loose 30% of your margins if you only make 15% = You're loosing money on those deals.

It happens way more often then you think.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Start-ups

Dan Martell answered

What are the possibilities to make a business if I decide to publish my software as Open Source? How can I test if a business model works for me?

Typically open-source projects that end up generating a profit have an active product that's already being used.

So step 1. Is to open source it and see if anyone uses it - then you can make money in a bunch of ways.

Checkout Wordpress, MySQL, Linux for examples - but typically it's providing paid devices for either hosting, managing or customizing the software.

The hardest part is getting others to use and contribute to it.

Schedule a call • Share • Flag

Open Source Software

Reviews

Dan's a genuinely great guy who will try his best to understand your needs, without sounding like a sound bite. I’m not going to be able to say anything amazing about him that hasn’t already been said many times before. I can only say that if you are thinking about taking that next step and have some big boy decisions to make, well Dan can certainly help. Thanks again and keep up the good work! Wishing you well, always. Cheers~

Source: Clarity

Nice! Dan of course had the insight that I needed to move forward. Solve your own problems first. Passion is key. Stuff I was not aware of enough. Totally worth it, because now it changes what I'll be doing for the next few weeks.

Tom Jacobs Source: Clarity

Very helpful- wish I had more time!!

shamanth paramasibam Source: Clarity

He had very good insight to my project and gave very sharp suggestions. Thanks!

Wendong Ruan Source: Clarity

Had an awesome call with Dan, highly informative and a great validation. It was definitely a moment of Clarity.

James Balcer Source: Clarity

Greta insights, straight to the point replies, actionable and practical advise. Dan focuses on you and your questions.

Hannah Perez Source: Clarity

Dan was great, very helpful and easy to talk to.

Matt Davis Source: Clarity

It's always enlightening to speak with Dan. I look forward to the next time.

Kent Gustavson, PhD Source: Clarity

Dan gave me excellent advice for my new company, Go For Launch. If you're an entrepreneur, he will help point you in the right direction.

Brandon Uttley Source: Clarity

Great speaking to Dan. This platform is going to truly help a lot of people make better business decisions!

edward Wilson Source: Clarity

Dan is a firecracker, full of thoughtful, meaningful, and visionary insights. He's a great conversationalist who can get your brain flowing with new, exciting ideas in no time; Just the kind of inspiration I was looking for!

Erica Swallow Source: Clarity

Member since October 2011