Beat The Big Guys

Speed. That’s how you’ll win. Specifically, it’s the speed of your learning flywheel.

Table of Contents

• What’s The Learning Flywheel?

  • 1. Imagine

  • 2. Build

  • 3. Demo !important

  • 4. Launch

  • 5. Reverse Demo !important

• Leverage

  • Market IQ / Customer IQ

  • Product IQ

What’s The Learning Flywheel?

Imagine → Build → Demo → Launch → Reverse Demo → Repeat

The faster you run this the more competitive your product will be.

1. Imagine

Your mind, as a founder, is the moat.

Time spent imagining details to delight customers will pay off in retention.

Don’t underestimate retention because without it, you won’t grow. All your acquisition efforts will be wasted if you can’t keep customers.

2. Build

3. Demo !important

SHOW what you’ve built. Friends, target customers, and everyone interested can take a peek. Reach out. Be proud of what you built and wow your prospects.

The goal of a demo is to have your prospects interrupt you and ask questions when things don’t make sense or if they have any questions.

Demos are not sending a link to someone and saying, “Hey, what do you think?”

Get on a call and demonstrate your product, service, or feature.

For services, demo a free service like an audit or a strategy brainstorm.

DO NOT SELL. Demo calls are for research and building your market IQ.

4. Launch

5. Reverse Demo !important

After you monitor usage using analytics, reach out to your users with a request to get on a 20-minute call.

In this call, ask users, “Show me how you would use product/feature.” Take notes and ask questions after.

For services, you want to ask how customers are using what you taught them or what you created for them.

What’s great about these calls if you record them is they can serve as testimonials too.

Leverage

Running “The Learning Flywheel” increases your market IQ, customer IQ, and product IQ. With higher IQ you can outwit the competition.

Market IQ / Customer IQ

By demoing your product to different prospects you get a feel for who your product is for.

For me, I showed Caravan Notes to tech bros, writers, academics, founders with newsletters, and employees.

Writers, academics, and founders were interested. Tech bros were not. Employees, half-half.

Not only did I know who was the right fit based on reactions, but I also knew which features appealed to which target.

Reverse demos boost customer IQ because you now know the customer’s perspective

Watching customers and prospects use your product informs both your marketing and customer retention strategies. And the more you do this the more your customer IQ will grow.

Product IQ

Armed with higher market and customer intelligence you can start creating more powerful features, products, and services that serve your targets better.

The tiny startup advantage here is the lack of miscommunication that can occur in bigger teams.

Usually, salesmen talk to prospects and give incomplete info to PMs. PMs then use their filter and give incomplete info to designers and developers.

Between the speed this chain is completed and the complete info at each step, small startups have a clear advantage.

More complete info + speed of execution compounded over time = small team domination.