Sandy Jen: Stick to a Timeline

Let me tell you, the number one thing I get asked about is how do I find a co-founder? So if you have a group, keep the group. It's really lonely to be an entrepreneur by yourself. Like, I know a lot of founders who are single founders. The burden, the stress, all of that on a single person is just really tough. So if you have an idea, great, like, go find people who are passionate about it as well. But if you have a group, and you don't have an idea, that's fine too. So either way, but if you can find a co-founder or a group of people that you want to do something with, that's probably— I would— that's the best way to go, just because you can share the stress. Yeah?

So Eric Reis talks about the story about Meebo, and then he talks about something like validated learning, and then when you think about it, you can say there is a lot of Do you need to have money to sort of COVID the risks that you take? Because if you're going on the path of validated learning, that is, you're doing and then at the same time you're learning, right? So do you need to have the money to cover the risks that you take? That's the first question. And then the second question is, how do you know that you have the right product? As you said, Do you have filters you have to take your idea into just to make sure that it passes all?

[Speaker] Yeah, so the question was, if you decide to commit to a startup, do you have to have the money to cover that risk? So if you don't get a job or have to pay rent. And the second question was, how do you know that the product is right? So for the first one, obviously, if you are, paycheck to paycheck, that's a little bit harder to take the risk. I ended up saving some money, and I didn't have student debt, which is a huge fortunate thing that I had in my life because my parents were able to pay for my education. The thing, advice I give to folks who are trying to figure out the balance between sort of spending the money, sort of using their savings to go and make that leap versus getting a job or doing it part-time is that you need to set a timeline. Right, and so folks who say, okay, I'm gonna just do this for 2 years. I need to have a product by this time, a team by this time, and I need to launch something by this time, gives you a timeline that you can work with so you can at least plan. So if you are strapped for cash or you're strapped for finances, set a shorter timeline or figure out some way to make sure that you're reaching those milestones, and so it's not some open-ended ambiguous venture that sort of just sucks everything out of your bank account. Out of your bank account. For the second question, which is how do I know I have the right product? You just don't. You don't know if you have the right product. The only way to find out is to launch something and to get feedback. And even when that happens, you still don't know until you sort of see success. And so that's the market risk part that I was mentioning, that spectrum where if I build it, will they come? You just don't know, right? There's no magical formula. Like why did Instagram succeed and why did some other company didn't? Like why did Snapchat, become how it is and how another company that had a similar idea didn't get there. A lot of it is timing, a lot of it is the right product. There are certain nuances within the interface that you just have to get right. Sometimes it's by accident and serendipity, but there's no general like, okay, I got it, ready to go. You just have to try and see what happens.