- I don't know if you know this, but I know this channel is
about go to market, but I can code
like literally my college degree is in computer science.
This is a double-edged sword.
It means that in my 15-year career in software and in SaaS,
and being a founder and a CEO and everything that I've done,
whenever I come up with a SaaS idea or a software idea,
it means that I can go build it
over the course of a weekend.
This is a double edged-sword because half the times
I ended up wasting months building the wrong product
because I could,
and I just kept thinking it was this one feature away
from it going boom.
Now, other times I ended up with an idea like Taw app,
which was my last company, which went on
for years and raised venture capital and then exit it.
So, here's a big question.
How do you actually avoid wasting months building,
the wrong product when you are starting a software company?
What are the exact steps that I follow now,
that I coach other founders to follow,
so that you can reduce the likelihood of failure
reduce the number of months that takes to find out
whether you've got a winning product
and actually dramatically transform
how you actually start software companies?
So, in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles that you absolutely need to know,
the three steps you can follow to actually start
your software company and make sure that,
you're not wasting months building the wrong product.
And when you follow these,
you'll be able to dramatically increase the chances
of you starting a successful software company.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK,
and on this channel I help SaaS founders,
like you, grow your size business faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
from having been a founder from now coaching founders
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So, be sure to hit that subscribe button
and that bell icon
that way, you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK Energy.
Now, if you are part of this community, if you're part
of my coaching programs, my people, welcome back.
It's so awesome to see you over here.
I'm really excited to bring you this episode
and just awesome to see you over here.
This community's growing faster than ever,
and it really means a lot that you're here.
It really means a lot that I get to serve you guys
in this way.
It really means a lot that you're sharing these videos,
and you're coming back,
and you're commenting and smashing that live button.
All that like really honestly fills my day
and really livens up our team.
And so, really from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
It just really means a lot.
So, in this video, I'm gonna dig into
the three steps that I follow now,
every single time I'm starting a software company
or SaaS company, every single time I'm doing it,
or every single time I'm coaching a founder to do it,
and I call it my MGP framework.
That's right.
You're not reading this wrong
I'm not trying to just pivot it for no good reason.
It's not the MVP, minimal viable product.
I think, that is misleading for a lot of people.
It's my MGP product.
And those are the three steps
that I'm gonna walk you through in this episode.
So, if you're excited to dig into step number one,
on how to actually start a software company
without wasting months building the wrong product,
gonna smash out like button
for the YouTube algorithm and let's dig right into it.
So, step number one is instead of starting
to think about your idea,
which I'm sure is brilliant, I thought so too
for some of my ideas that I wasted months on.
Even though, if it's a brilliant idea,
where you wanna actually start is start with the market.
Step number one and the MGP framework is
to actually think about what market am I serving?
Just because you have a great idea
and you think it's great doesn't mean the market,
the people you're gonna be selling it to is gonna think
it's all that great.
Oftentimes what I and Baby TK has done this,
where I would spend months building the product
and building the product and building the product
and falling into what I call the one more feature trap.
And every single time I'm like,
oh, I should sell this to people.
And I'm like,
no, no, no, we just need to get this feature,
and it'll be perfect and everyone's gonna buy.
And then, you end up losing months
doing the wrong thing.
Instead, and this is something that I learned
over my 15 years and being
in software and building successful software companies,
I was able to kind of contrast what I did right
and wrong between the ideas that worked and took off
like Taw app and other products
that I've been part of,
and the ones that just did it and what worked well
for the founders that really took off
as they went through my coaching programs
and the ones that didn't.
And the biggest thing I learned was the greatest founders,
the ones that were truly successful didn't start
with a product.
They actually started with a market.
And so, what you wanna ask yourself is
for your software idea
what is the market you're going after?
And there's three things you'll always wanna check off.
Is it an urgent problem?
Is it an important problem?
And do they have budget, which is another really polite way
of saying do they have money or are they broke?
The three things combined an urgent problem,
an important problem,
and a budget is the trifecta you want in a market.
Now, in this channel,
I've talked about venture back companies,
and I've talked about bootstrap companies,
and I've talked about micro-SaaS companies,
software companies come in different shapes and sizes.
The size of the market doesn't matter.
In this scenario, what you're really trying
to figure out is, is there even a market that you can go
after where this problem is urgent,
important, and they have money to solve it.
If they don't have these three things,
no matter how amazing the product,
no matter how amazing your sales and marketing is,
it's constantly going to be an uphill battle
trying to convince a non-existing market
or a terrible market to actually buy your products.
You're better off not wasting months building that product.
And so, the first thing you really wanna do is
define who are these people?
What is the market?
Do they have an urgent, important problem?
Urgent and important,
and do they have the budget?
So, that's step number one.
And I know like for the engineer in me, it's like,
no, let's just like go build it.
It's gonna be so cool.
And like I know like certain parts
of your brain starts to get turned on
and attracted and you're like,
oh, we can use this API and this API starts,
and then all these things start to come together
and you're coding it in your mind and you're like,
let's just go build it really quickly.
Stop yourself, trust me, baby TK, learned this the hard way.
Stop yourself from doing it,
and just go do step number one,
first understand what market you're serving and understand
if there's an urgent important problem,
and that they have budget,
because you'll save months building the wrong product
and more importantly, you'll land on a product
that you should be building is solving an urgent,
important problem with
for people that have budget
and it's gonna be a lot more fun to build
and go the long run.
Like my company Taw app where I built
that first version over a weekend, but it was out
of doing the right market research,
and then, it just took off,
and I worked on it for nearly eight years until I sold it,
and then, exited that company that bought mine.
And so, it was just an incredible journey,
and that's really what you want, right?
Not just build something,
and then, never see it the light of day.
Okay. So, that's step number one, market.
Step number two of my MGP framework is go-to market.
Now you'll notice step number one is market.
Step number two is go-to market.
I'm still not talking about coding.
I'm still not talking about building the product.
I'm still not talking about the features.
I'm still not talking about the cool APIs you're gonna use.
I'm still not talking about
how that one more feature is gonna really make
everything go boom
because you don't know anything yet.
This is step number two in the MGP framework.
Step number two is you flush out your go-to market.
If you know of a market that has the urgent problem,
the important problem and has budget, that means like, okay,
there's a problem to be solved over here with a product.
Let's first now figure out,
can we actually go to this market?
Now, the questions I like to ask founders,
and I like to ask myself is,
do I have any unfair advantages in going into this market?
Meaning, do I already know a lot of people in this market?
Do I already have an existing network?
One of the things that really makes a difference in success
for software companies is if you also have domain knowledge.
Domain knowledge is you actually understand this domain.
Maybe, you know, I work with a lot of founders
in across my go-to market programs where they have a lot
of domain knowledge in construction or in healthcare
or in legal or in like some weird part
of e-commerce advertising or in forklifts
like, there's a case study coming on that,
which I'm really excited about.
That is what we call domain knowledge
because no one else in the world knows
as much as that founder about that specific market.
That's an unfair advantage and that's domain knowledge.
And if you have those two things, it means that,
you're more likely to be able to go
into this market because you know a lot
of people that can introduce you to a lot of people.
You speak their language,
you understand how they work and how they think,
which makes you more likely to be able to actually introduce
a winning product into this market.
If you don't have domain knowledge,
if you don't have an unfair advantage,
then maybe, you need to go back to step one
and think about is there a better market,
where I do have domain knowledge
and an unfair advantage,
where they have an urgent important problem with budget?
You can start to see how these two things together
help, use, triangulate on the right problem to solve,
where you have an unfair advantage,
where you have domain knowledge and the problem is urgent,
and the problem is important, and they have budget.
You starting to see the power in this.
Now, before I go into step number three,
let me just pause here for a second.
I'm very much aware that,
most startup advice is about the lean startup
or build an MVP or just get the product out there.
And I recognize that,
that is the most common knowledge out there.
And trust me, baby TK followed that advice
and lost months building the wrong product.
Are you starting to see the power?
And even if you time box these two steps to an hour
or two hours or three hours before you start coding,
and you just do a bunch of Google searches,
email a bunch of people, call a bunch of people,
if you start to ask some questions to really vet out
these set of things,
where you are gonna dramatically improve
the chances of you hitting a winning product.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
If you're starting to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below,
and also smash out like button for the YouTube algorithm?
It really likes it when you do that
because this is what we're trying to do.
We're trying to show you a better way
to build software companies and SaaS companies,
so, you don't have to make the same mistakes that I made,
and others have made and that we have all learned from,
and you don't need to make it again.
You can make new mistakes
and then have (indistinct)
these successful software companies,
and then, teach others the new mistakes
on how you can avoid them.
So, those are the first two steps.
Now, before I go to step number three,
let me just also tell you,
if you're in this stage
where you're in the pre-revenue stage,
you're flushing out your software product,
your SaaS product, whether it's micro SaaS,
bootstrapped or VC back, you're really trying to figure out
like, what's the right product?
What's the right market, how do we get that fit?
How do we get to initial revenues?
And you start to wonder, you know,
how do I actually think about the market?
What is an urgent problem?
How do I think about my domain knowledge?
I run a weekly webinar, it's completely free.
That goes deeper
into these core principles for this specific stage.
You don't have to go anywhere right now,
I'll link to it below to the webinar, it's completely free.
It's 45 minutes.
It's action packed,
goes into specific details on these principles.
You can check it out after this video, but right now,
make sure you smash that like button.
And let's go to principle number three.
So, principle number three, finally you're like,
oh my God, are we ever gonna build product?
Yes, step number three is build the product.
But here is what is most important.
What you want to ask yourself is
in this two steps where I've identified the market,
where there's an urgent important problem,
and I have the domain knowledge and an unfair advantage,
can I build a product that is 10 times better?
Can I introduce a product that solves this urgent
and important problem for this group
of people who have the budget
with my domain knowledge and my unfair advantage
with a product that is 10 times better
than what's out there or how they're doing it right now?
Because here's the thing,
software today is very competitive, which means that,
unless your product is 10 times better,
it reduces the number of clicks
from a hundred to like, two clicks to get the problem solved
or uses AI to completely automated
or it completely streamlines the process
or it automatically syncs the data instead of importing,
unless it's 10 times better,
it's gonna be very hard to convince these people
in this market once you get to them to actually say,
hey, you should use our product as a startup
which no one's heard of, right?
Sending the power in this.
And so, what you have to do is keep going through
these three steps.
You're essentially saying,
okay, well the market, is it urgent, important problem?
Cool, do I have an unfair advantage in this?
Do I have domain knowledge in this,
and can I introduce a product that's 10X better?
No. Okay, let's go back
to the market again, tweak the market.
Let's look at the go-to market piece,
and then, let's look at the product.
And you almost kind of look
at these three things over and over and over.
And as you do this,
you essentially embrace this MGP framework
where you triangulate it on an idea where you're like,
oh my God, we gotta build this thing.
This is the thing.
And then, you can actually build the minimum viable product,
and you can quickly test it.
You can avoid the one more feature trap,
and you can actually bring it
in front of these people in this market and say,
hey, what do you think about this product?
But if you actually follow these steps,
where you actually say,
cool, what's the market I'm going after?
Is an urgent important problem?
And how do I go to market to do these?
Do I know these people?
Do I know some people and can they introduce me?
Can I get into network effects?
Do I have domain knowledge around this?
Do I know how to speak about this?
And then, you build a 10X product.
If you follow these three steps,
then you're 10 times more likely to actually be successful
in building and starting your software company.
Now, that you know what the MGP framework is
you may be wondering,
hey, hang on a second.
How do I define what an urgent and important problem is?
How do I figure out if they have budget at all?
You may be wondering,
well, what does a go-to market look like
for this early stage?
Like, how do I show them my domain knowledge?
How do I tap into unfair advantages that I have?
You may also be wondering
what does a great 10X product look like?
This is exactly why I run
a more in depth, 45-minute webinar.
It's completely free
doesn't cost you anything except your time,
but you're gonna save months of building the wrong product,
if you follow this.
In this 45-minute webinar,
this is for founders who are in the pre-revenue stage
and looking to get to initial revenues
or even that pre-idea stage and really honing
in on the right idea and you wanna get to initial revenues.
This webinar goes into my key principles
on how I actually launch SaaS companies,
launch software companies,
how I hone in on these key principles and core idea,
how I test it in the market,
and how I deploy it to actually launch software companies.
It's completely free.
All you need to do is just go to
tkkader.com/webinar, tkkader.com/webinar,
and inside of that, you'll get access to it right away.
I run it weekly.
And when you're in,
you'll be able to watch it at your own pace
to really understand what these core principles are,
and how to adopt them,
so, you can launch your successful software company.
And most importantly,
you'll be able to embrace this MGP framework,
instead of wasting months building a wrong product
using the MVP for framework.
So, complete transform how you approach starting
software companies.
I know, this framework works really well,
because I've used it myself and I've actually helped tons
of other founders actually use this as well,
which has accelerated their path
to getting to initial revenues.
So, just go to tkkader.com/webinar.
You go access to it right away.
Also, if you got value from this video,
please smash out like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
I also drop an episode,
like this, every single Sunday with actionable strategies
on how to grow your SaaS business faster,
how to start software companies.
So, be sure to hit that subscribe button and then bell icon.
That way, you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode.
And lastly, if you've got a fellow founder,
a team member that we get value from this video,
please share this video with them.
It would just mean the world to me and my team.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
If you're part of a WhatsApp group, a Slack group,
if you're part of any sort
of community and you think that,
those community members would get value from this video
please share it with them.
Also, it's easy to (indistinct)
these videos at link to them, and completely free.
And also check out that webinar, tkkader.com/webinar.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK and I'll see you the next episode
or inside of that webinar.
(uplifting music)