"Most startup founders don't want to prove themselves wrong. There's an inherent bias, they hear what they want to hear, and they go seeking the information to prove themselves right because they've attached themselves to their idea." -- Kenny MacKenzie
Kenny is an expert in product-market fit and market validation and has been mentoring startup founders for many, many years.
After creating his own startup, raising money, building a product, launching it and seeing it fail because of a lack of product-market fit, Kenny spent loads of energy trying to reflect on those mistakes so he could understand the causes of startup failure and the tactical and strategic frameworks and practices that will improve the chances of business success.
He identified very common types of cognitive biases that early-stage founders will face, such as a lack of product-market fit, false positives, and not knowing what problem you're trying to solve or who you're trying to help. These things lead to errors of judgment that will surely kill a startup.
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to act like a scientist/private investigator, find the right problems, experiment and learn from customers before you write any line of code or build anything. This will improve your chances of being a successful startup founder.
"You're not a developer, you're not an engineer, you're not an entrepreneur. You're a scientist/private investigator. Think of the market opportunity as a crime, there is a criminal out in the loose and they keep hurting all these different people. You're trying to understand that criminal's pattern of behavior. The criminal is the market need. You're investigating, not trying to force your will on the world. Once you understand a meaningful problem that people have, then you can start being the visionary." -- Kenny MacKenzie
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Links from this episode
Kenny MacKenzie on Linkedin
Find Better Problems Worth Solving - Ash Maurya
The Mom Test Book - Rob Fitzpatrick
The Value Proposition Canvas - strategyzer
Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice - Anthony Ulwick
Outcome Driven Innovation - Anthony Ulwick
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