A conversation with Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics co-founder Hiten Shah
It’s not every day that I get a chance to chat with someone who has raised over $15 million in venture funding (and also happens to have 2,845 times more Twitter followers than I do).
Hiten Shah is a master marketer and serial entrepreneur. He has launched three successful startups, including a consulting business right out of school, a self-funded SaaS startup called Crazy Egg, and venture-backed KISSmetrics. He’s a self-described professional problem solver. That simple, he tells me.
You can tune in HERE to listen to our full conversation. Anyways, here’s 5 things I learned from our conversation.
#1. There is no reasonable excuse for not getting customers today.
Today, Hiten believes it is easier than ever to reach people. He told me, “There is no excuse to not get customers (at least a few) for something today.”
Why? Everyone and everything is online. Often times, he witnesses teams put time and energy into beautifying and building the “perfect” product, only to find out that the market does not need it or want it.
Image Credit: Clinkle Homepage
I’ve been there. We built a Tinder for Jobs app. Turns out, employers didn’t need or want it. For more info on that epic failure (I mean learning experience), here’s a Medium article I wrote about it: 99 Problems But a Bit Ain’t One: Why My Startup Failed.
#2. I would figure out distribution and marketing before I even have a product.
How do you market something that doesn’t even exist? Crazy idea… just talk to people. If you know you are going to build something for a certain market, just go out and talk to friends, friends of friends, even strangers.
Everyone uses the internet. In almost any industry, you can even just start blogging about your product idea. If your writing is damn good and timely, you just need to get a few people to read about it and many more will follow.
You can be a “nobody” in a random country, and you can still get attention if you put a well-written article out there.
Image credit Business2Commnunity
As a tangible example, read about out how Mint.com Founder Aaron Patzer did the same and sold his company for $170MM.
#3. Get off your @$$ and get to know your customers.
How do you really understand a potential customer? It is just like anything else. You have to be around them and talk to them.
For B2B business, try to shadow customers or attend conferences. Go to their parties. Hang out in the lobbies of conferences and talk to the attendees (especially useful if you can’t afford a ticket).
Image Credit: Business Insider
For B2C products, there is a not a huge difference in strategy. Hiten suggests you need to do one of two things:
- Go even deeper in your understanding of your customer.
- Build a ghetto version. You can’t always trust what consumers say they’ll do. So sometimes, you just have to build a janky version to see for yourself.
We ourselves are trying to heed the advice of simply getting out there. Here’s our story of How We Got Our First 5,000 Users By Daring to Leave Our Desks.
#4. You still need a great product.
Hiten acknowledges that, of course, you need a great product, because there are so many options out there today. Nevertheless, you need to understand and think about how you are going to get customers first.
This serves a dual purpose. You’ll have marketing ready when you are ready to launch, and you’ll build the right product in the first place. After all, the product is for them. Now that Hiten has started building products, he follows a simple framework that he says any good business needs. It’s pretty simple.
Great Product + Great Distribution = Good Business
- Great product. You need a product people love, and something people will tell their friends.
- Great distribution. Otherwise, nothing works, nothings grows.
There was a time when he believed that he could build a great product and then figure out marketing. He rejects that mentality today, warning against “building product and then figuring out the market.”
#5. On raising money, you have to show not tell.
So you want to raise money? Just know, gone are the days where a pretty PowerPoint is enough. You need to get some traction before approaching investors. You have to show not tell.
Image credit: Gawker
Investors want the product and team already de-risked before they invest. At the end of the day, investors can be pickier with more and more startups looking for funding (and the cost of getting a prototype out there lower and lower). Oh and if you hear a story about someone raising money with just a pitch deck and a vision, it is probably because they’ve already done “it” before, meaning they have a track record of success.
You can also learn to show not tell in the way you actually pitch. Here are some tips from Brad Feld, investor and co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars, on Show Don’t Tell — Especially In Video Pitches.
Altogether, here’s my biggest takeaway from chatting with Hiten:
“Your greatest competitive advantage is your ability to understand your customer better than anyone else.”
Kindly recommend or share this article if it was helpful :)
OR…