Short YouTube dialogue (Ryan Deiss) contrasting quick, cheap idea tests with the harder, longer work of execution. SPEAKER B promotes rapid low-cost validation (example: taping a note to a dorm door to test peer-to-peer clothing sharing). SPEAKER A counters that entrepreneurship’s core challenges are deeply understanding customers, building financially viable fulfillment, and scaling sustainably (plan A, plan B, cash management).
Chapters
It is not about having a good idea. Having ideas is easy and trivial. The important thing is how clever can you be to come up with a quick and cheap and easy way to test it. I was meeting with a young woman and she goes, what I want to do is peer to peer clothing sharing. It would be great if we had this website and we could all post what we have and we could borrow each other's clothes. And I said, do you have a piece of paper? Yes, smartass, I'm a college student. I have a piece of paper. I bet you didn't say that right on a piece of paper. Would you like to borrow my clothes? Knock. And I want you to tape that to the outside of your dormitory room. Because if nobody knocks, this thing you think is so attractive might not be.
Eh? You still kind of have to have a good idea. I mean, like, the advice that he gave her wasn't bad advice, but I don't believe that the hard work of entrepreneurship is figuring out how to test something. The hard work of entrepreneurship is actually getting in the muck with your customers and figuring out what's the real problem. And then the hard work is figuring out how do we actually fulfill, how do we actually deliver this thing without losing money. And then it's how do we actually scale this thing sustainably? The hard work is coming up with a plan A and seeing if that works, and then a plan B when it doesn't, and so on, and doing all this stuff before you run out of cash. All of these things are harder than figuring out a way to test. So 5.5 on the scalameter. This advice is a little stale.
