Getting Your Idea to Market | Torsten Kolind

So I had just a couple of pieces of advice that I wanted to share on how to get the ideas to market, just based on all these learnings. The first thing is about listening. Because us as founders and entrepreneurs, we love talking about our projects. We're passionate about them. And there's nothing better than pitching yourself and explaining why the world is going to be a different place with what you have. But what I have found is that when you very carefully listen, you don't try to pitch what you have, you listen to what people say, and no one is going to tell you to your face, unfortunately, that it's a really crappy project you have. Everyone's going to say, oh yeah, that sounds kind of nice, oh that's great, that's probably fine. And so you don't learn very much from that. But listen for the subtleties. Like, see, are they saying, I need to buy this tomorrow? Like, can I buy this? How does this work? Are they just trying to be nice? And there's so many little subtleties in there, tone by how they give feedback, their opinion about it, their advice on what you should do next. If they say, yeah, you should probably go home and iterate on this 3 times, what they're essentially saying is it's a really bad idea. It could get good, and it may be a good market. But really try to listen more than you pitch, especially at networking events. I had to learn that the hard way. I mean, as a Dane and as an engineer, We don't do networking. Like, we go in somewhere and, you know, you don't talk to anybody, of course, but if you have to talk to someone, you go up and you shake hands, and it's almost like a logic exchange of, oh yeah, I'm doing this, and what are you doing? And you're just like trying to be nice. And Danes are always like stuck with each other for the entire evening because no one knows how to get out of the networking situation. So I'm just sharing with you that over the 7 years I've been here, I had to learn how this worked. And that's one thing Silicon Valley has done fantastically well, is this constant exchange of feedback. So all I'm doing, especially for those of you that are also international, make sure that you get used to that process and make sure that you learn from those interactions. And it's not just about exchanging business cards, for those who still use those. It's not just about being polite and meeting the right people. And oftentimes you go to an event and there's some VIP investor. That person is probably not going to remember you and is probably busy doing other stuff. Sometimes you get a lot more out of talking to everyone else who's there. So just like the point of listening, I think, is probably the number one piece of advice I can share. It sounds obvious. Pivoting, testing, experimenting, A/B testing. So there's a reason why it's called A/B testing. It's not called A, B, C, D, E testing. When you do an A/B test for your product, You can only vary one thing, right? So if the great thing about an A/B test where you only vary one thing is the data will be very clear. You will know this worked and this didn't work. So in many cases, what I see is that multiple things change. So you're like, yeah, no, we did a bit more marketing and we rolled out this new, we changed the header of this here and we put this up here on the website, and then I also went to another country and I pitched it this way. And whether it goes better or worse, You learned nothing from that. You think you learned something, but you learned nothing from that. It may have turned out that it was because it was spring and not fall that all the users clicked on that button, and now you think that's going to drive you forward. So really be scientific and logical and structured when you test. And make sure you do it properly. Make sure you pivot when it's time to pivot, that you shut down your little pet projects like the wall I told you about before, and really be organized and structured in how you move forward. It's some of the hardest things to do for founders. Because we're creative and free-flowing by nature. Force yourselves to be structured, organized, and do those tests so that you really move forward and you learn stuff. Let your customers pay. I mentioned Intel before. So the first iteration of the software, Intel effectively paid us to build that so we could sell it to other companies. That's not exactly what I told them. But the effect of doing it is that they paid up. We built what they needed. But we, of course, built it in such a way that we could sell it to other people. So whenever you do new features or think of new products, it's always good to think about let customers drive that development. It means that you have to raise less money, which is nice. But it also means you're more likely to build something that people actually pay for. So always think about— so many of you will be drawn into consulting, especially in the early phases. You want to build something scalable exactly like us. And they'll say, no, actually, but can you come and do this for like a week, or do this little program, or help me with this report? It's so easy to be drawn into consulting. When you do that, make sure that what you do is scalable and sellable to other parties. So don't just do that project or platform or consulting for them. Make sure that it's something that fits your plan and can be sold to others. It's hard, but at least think about it. In terms of fundraising, how many of you have raised any funds at all? Yeah, like— You know, a third. Raise twice as much as you need. And it's totally fine to be open to your investors about that. When you go out and you talk to people, you say, here's my plan. It says I'm going to need over the next 6 months $100,000. So I am asking for $200,000. I also had to learn that. It's totally fine to ask for more because everyone, you know, because of all the pivoting and all the unexpected stuff that happens, you're going to need more money than what you're raising. And it's actually totally fine to ask for that. You don't have to have a plan that shows $200,000 to ask for $200,000. So just keep that in mind. Investors don't want you to run out of money. They, of course, want you to be ambitious and grow, but make sure you raise more money than you actually think you need. And then just like a final note, even though talking to your customers is really important, and even though they can give you all this feedback and they can help you move your product forward, you have to also remember that when your gut feeling is that this is going to be really, really fucking awesome. And even if the clients don't understand, even if no one is able to pick that up, sometimes you have to go with your gut feeling. And there are so many examples of that. As I think Henry Ford famously said back 100 years ago with the first car, he said, if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, I want a faster horse. Yeah. And that's probably what he would have built if he wasn't bold and said, no, I'm going to build a car. No one else had cars. No one asked for cars. No customer surveys came back and asked for cars. And the same thing happened with the iPhone. Elon Musk is a great example of this as well. Not everything is developed by asking your customers. It's a really important tool. You should use it wisely. But sometimes as a founder, you also just have to go with it and make it happen. Thank you.