takemymoney.md

Notes from "Shut Up and Take My Money" by Josh Kaufman

Link: http://vimeo.com/71250239

Every business has five parts:

1. Value creation
2. Marketing - "here i am, this is what i do, here is why you should be interested"
3. Sales - doing transactions
4. Value delivery - what does it take to give what i've sold to the customer?
5. Finance - money in is greater than money out, and is it enough?

How to find ideas? Look for ideas that are:

• More awesome
• Less awful

Also, look for hassles. Things that generally suck to do. The larger the hassle, the greater the business opportunity.

Remove friction; make a system move more efficiently. Even removing just a little can be worth a ton of money.

How does someone pick which idea is the best one to do?

10 ways to evaluate a market:

1. Urgency - how quickly do people need it?
2. Size - how large is the potential market?
3. Pricing potential - how much can you feasibly charge?
4. Cost of customer acquisition - how much is it going to cost to bring a new customer in?
5. Cost of value delivery - how much is it going to cost to deliver to a customer?
6. Uniqueness to offer - am i unique, or can someone else compete with out much effort?
7. Speed to market - how quick can you start selling?
8. Up-front investment - how much are you going to need to spend?
9. Up-sell potential - are there other things in the market that target customers want?
10. Evergreen potential - how much work is needed to continue keeping the product up for sale?

12 standard forms of value:

1. Product - tangible or intangible; one-time transaction
2. Service - intangible; for a fee
3. Shared resource - create once, let a lot of people use. software as a service, museum, amusement park, etc.
4. Subscription - buying now, but pre-commit to future value
5. Resale - buying something for a price, selling it for a higher price
6. Lease - buying something, letting people use it
7. Agency - selling something you don't own. brokering a transaction. example: Airbnb
8. Audience aggregation - collection people who have similar interests, selling access to those people for a fee. this is advertising.
9. Insurance - transferring risk for a fee
10. Option - giving people the ability to do something. example: support retainers
11. Loan - giving money in exchange for the money back plus interest
12. Capital - venture capital, angel investing

9 universal economic values:

1. Efficacy - how well does it work; does it work better than other options?
2. Speed - how quickly does it work?
3. Reliability - does it work all the time?
4. Ease of use - how much work does it take to understand?
5. Flexibility - how many things can it do?
6. Status - how does this make other people perceive the customer?
7. Aesthetic appeal - how beautiful is the thing? do people want to look at it; play with it?
8. Emotion - how does this make your customers feel? are they happy?
9. Cost - what does the customer have to give up to get it?

Outcome: prototype or sell sheet.

How to validate a market:

• Talk to your ideal prospects; real people who are in the position to buy
• Ideal method: collect pre-orders
  • ask if they'll pay. the goal is to either get their money, or to get feedback they wouldn't give otherwise
• At minimum collect email addresses; especially if it's not possible to collect pre-orders
  • if they wont give you an email address, they'll never give you money
• Focus on closing real sales as quickly as possible

Also: be sure to have fun