 So I'm going to be doing a little bit more of these videos on a week to week basis, a little quick tidbits about certain topics. A couple of days ago I had a poll and a couple of things you guys wanted me to talk about is startup advice. And so this is a common question I get on a day-to-day basis and something that I actually think about frequently when doing new projects. And that is, how do you start a startup on a shoestring budget? Or I should have rephrased the title. How do you collect enough evidence before even putting in time into a startup? Because at the end of the day, money is a renewable resource. Opportunity cost is not. And I think more and more education and research, or I would say research, but more due diligence should go into opportunity cost. I think opportunity cost is not studied very well and that's the most important commodity, which is time. Time is non-renewable. So let's begin. So the first thing is nothing new. I've mentioned this before. It's starting with something called the startup lean canvas model. What most people do when they come to a startup is they have a lot of assumptions. Let me put it that way. They assume they have a brilliant idea and this brilliant idea will be loved by many people when reality, for the most part, your brilliant idea is moot. No one cares about your idea. And so what I like to do, and this can be applied to more than just startups, you can apply it to anything really, is I like to take your high-level thesis, your 30,000-foot view that you have and brain dump it into these categories when it comes to lean canvas model. So obviously for me, I like to start at the beginning of the lean canvas model. So if you're following the mouse, value proposition, fundamentally, any startup, whether it's B2B, B2C, whether it's software, whether it's a product, whether it's data, whether it's advertising, whatever different business models you're looking into, you're solving a fundamental problem. Ideally, plural, you're solving problems. So the first thing I like to start is the value proposition. What are the problems your startup is solving? And you just jot it down and you work around this, right? So you work at key activities, resources, channels, revenue streams, cost structure. I'm not going to really dive too much into lean canvas model. I made videos about this in the past. It's pretty self-explanatory. Great books to read about this is like the lean startup model, Rockefeller habits, scaling up by Vern Harnash. These are good resources. I'll leave a link, I'll leave a link in the video below for this, but print this out, make multiple copies, do a lot of iterations, but this is a great template to mind up the ideas that you have when it comes to your startup. Now, I want to iterate this again and again and again and again. And this ties into the whole thesis of anything you're trying to do within a startup scene is what problem are you fucking fundamentally solving? If you look at the data of why startups fail the most, the first one is timing, which is hard to gauge. I mean, it's very, very difficult. Sometimes I have a, you know, sometimes I always laugh. It's like literally majority of a lot of these successful companies is all timing. It has nothing to do with how brilliant you are and the magic team needs all timing. Mind you, yes, the execution and the quality of employees you have does matter, but you can have the best execution, the best employees, but the timing's off. It's not going to help you. So really doubling down and finding a problem and trying to solve it. And so I like to spend my time more in due diligence and talking with your potential people. And when my people, potential clients or customers, whether that's B2B or B2C is really identifying the key problems they have. And so you really need to focus on what is the problem. Not identifying the problem in your head and you only justifying it. It's really going out there and talking to your customers and really identifying that these problems exist. And then going back to your lean canvas model and filling in that problem. Because if you find a pain point, a fundamental problem or problems with your clients, then you can pre-sell a bunch of stuff, which I'll get to in a moment. And so when you're looking at the problem and when you're looking at identifying key problems within certain verticals, B2B, B2C, this ties into product market fit. So I said at the beginning where timing is off. Timing goes directly into product market fit. You can have a great product, but the timing of the product is off. You can have a great product, but the product might not be yet ready for maturity. And so product market fit goes into a trifecta. It goes into timing of the market. If the market is ready for your solution, it goes into the quality of your product. And then finally it goes into does anyone really give a shit about the product that you have? For the most part, that's a big problem in the startup scene. Not too many people really care about your product. And so really doubling down on product market fit, how do you do that? Well, everything I mentioned so far cost you nothing, just time. So you have your lean canvas model, you go through all the different sections, you identify the problems. Then what I would do, I would literally scrape LinkedIn, I would scrape, yellow pages, I'll scrape Google Maps, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if it's B2C or B2B, I would make a list of all potential clients that you have. And I would call every single person up and I'll talk to them about their problem. I'll sit down and talk and sit down and talk and sit down and talk. I can't repeat this enough. Sit down and talk and then get market feedback from them and then go back to your product market fit and see where there's a fit in there. Go back to your lean canvas model and update it. This is all before you, before you get a business name, before you get incorporated, before you invest a penny, this is all free stuff. You know, you need to be spending time on this before doing anything else. And so let's say now you have strong enough data points that you do have a decent product. And remember, remember this is still in your head, you have a decent product and people want to buy your product, meaning not necessarily there's a price point or you haven't flushed out how your product will work or how it looks, but more or less the general idea of your product is solving an initial pain point with your clients. Let's say you flush that out and you have enough data points to continue. What most people will do then is they'll then spend money on development, whether that is a physical product or a digital product. No, I don't recommend that. Once again, we want to be very lean. So a product I like to use is Envision. You don't have to use Envision. But basically what Envision does is wire frames a digital product. So I'm just speaking on a digital aspect here. So whether it's a SaaS product or some type of online solution for a problem, you can go to Envision and wire frame your whole product in real time without building it out. Like it's one of the most powerful tools possible. You don't have to use Envision. You can go on Upwork. You can go on any of these freelancing websites and hire somebody for like two, 300 bucks to build out the wire frames of how your product works. And then you can go back to your clients that you were talking about your potential clients you're talking to and be like, Hey, this is how it's going to look like. This is how the flow and they can do in real time. They can actually experience your product without you building your product with Envision. Now, I know a lot of you saying, Hey, I don't have any coding skills. Well, I'm not the best coder myself. So this is a huge trend happening in the startup scene is building without any code. One great platform is Makerpad. Makerpad is pretty much almost like drag and drop stuff. You can you can drag and drop. I consider the duct tape version of coding. You can duct tape the general wireframe idea that you have in real time. So let's bring you up to speed. You have your lean canvas model, you spoken with people, you figure out generally your product market fit what people want. Once again, by talking back and forth, you went to Envision, you've built out the visual UI, UX, how it looks and how it's going to behave, right? That's from a 2D aspect. Now, once again, by talking to your clients, you've had enough data that you can actually build that a duct tape. I mean, like Jimmy rig duct tape version of this. And this once again, it's pretty much free. It's pennies on the dollar for this is pretty cheap. You can hire people to do this. Total cost for everything you're doing so far is probably underneath like two, 300 bucks. Like it's still super cheap. You can now duct tape your SaaS idea. You can duct tape your digital idea or whatever you want to build some technical startup without knowing a line of code without investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in development. And so what do you do once you have this duct tape version? Well, it's not fucking rocket science. You go back out to your clients and you show them what you have and you literally fucking sit over their shoulders and you see the music and you collect data points and more data points and more data points. They tell you what they like, what they don't like, what features they want. You go back to, you know, make her over here, make her pad and you iterate off of that. And why are you doing all this? Well, it's very simple. You're working off the minimal viable product idea, minimal startup momentum or minimal startup investment costs when it comes to finances because if you're building on a shoestring, the commodity that you do have is time. The commodity that you don't have is money, but it's a double-edged sword. Time is not renewable. Money is renewable. So you have to balance it out at the beginning. And what you're doing right now is you're pretty much doubling down on really identifying a problem, doubling down on getting your foot in the door with clients, then using your product, what are you investing upfront capital costs on building anything and then just giving you data feedback, man. This is where the magic happens. Market feedback, data feedback, market feedback, data feedback. And so let's say you're not doing a digital product. Let's say you have a physical product. Well, this is the whole world of Kickstarter, Indiegogo. And the process is exactly the same. So instead of you using, let's say, maker pad or any of these like no code platforms or envision, you would still go out to your customers. You'll still talk to them like, I don't know, let's I'll do something in real time. This is like, this is for a coffee maker stuff over here. But let's say I have these headsets, I would then generally be speaking, I would have, I would have, I would go to a 3d printing shop. There's a bunch everywhere, or you can even probably buy a couple of like decent sized models off of Alibaba or Aliexpress. And you would then show them your general concept, right. So with any manufacturing, you have a general prototype, you have these maybe like generation one to generation four prototype before you have the first alpha release to the public. You have these prototypes to show them to your clients. Once again, not spending a lot of money really focusing on having a solution for a problem you've identified the problem. And then you can use platforms like Indiegogo or this one's Kickstarter here where you presell your products. Once again, what you're investing is in time at this point, you don't have money, you haven't really yet proved that people want to buy, for example, in our case studies headset or in this case study, a fucking coffee maker. So what they're doing, they're raising money for roughly $40,000. So they're pre-selling the coffee maker. What's the cost of them to set this up? Really nothing, maybe 500 bucks, some video stuff, maybe they know how to do the video stuff in just time, market, email people, do growth hacking, just get the message out there. And so this all goes back to pivoting. So you've identified the problem, you've done your due diligence, you've created Jimmy rigged, whether it's a digital product, a maker pad and using a vision, or you've done Kickstarter. Now you go back out there with your initial first alpha release of your first generation product, whether it's digital or physical, you give it to your customers. And this is where a lot of people screw up is you don't iterate fast enough. Iteration is the key to success like in nature, iteration, iteration, evolution. And so you got to get your product back in the hands of your customers, and then you got to take your pen and paper and sit down with your customers and talk to them, see what they like, see what they don't like, then improve the faster you can iterate both on your digital product and on your physical product, the better quality solution you have for the problem. That's pretty much it. It's not really rocket science. And finally, I would add this, once you do have some momentum, you have sales coming in, you're identifying a proper product market fit, I'd recommend getting a good advisory board. This is something if I, if I had a time machine, I would rewind back, I would, I would get advisory boards on my startups, and I would give them proper equity. I would hunt down the best people that would help me accelerate my startup, whether that's a physical startup or a digital startup, and I have different verticals. So whether that's people that specialize in marketing, logistics, or they have a massive network effect that can open up and do, let's say a leverage play, they can bring their network for leverage, I would give them really good equity, none of this like 0.1 you want them to have good incentives for your company. Let's say you say 5% for your advisory board and maybe five to 7% for your employees, depending on the size of your company, depending if you're doing venture funding or not. If you're not, if your company might be profitable just by yourself, I would save 10% for good advisory board, you know, meet every single quarter. They can exponentially help your company, you know, they can open up networks, they can help you with fundraising if you need it in the future, and just having them on your board, where they've been there, done that, and they can save you so much headache, it's worth every penny. So this is how I would approach running a startup on a shoestring budget. At the end of the day, it's just time, it's your opportunity cost and it's your time putting it into everything. And it's not you jumping to conclusions, don't make assumptions, assumptions will kill you, spend more time on due diligence and use the tools that we have today that are almost free, that can validate the idea that you have, and they can pre-sell your idea to your clients so you're not wasting your time. So I'll leave you at that. If you guys have any questions about this, leave a comment below this video, make sure to subscribe, and I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.