Playbook: Success in Disrupt

Purpose: The purpose of Disrupt is to give you the knowledge and skills you’ll need to start a company. I’ve structured this program to move extremely quickly so every week you should be growing exponentially. Because we’re optimizing for speed, the products/problems you choose need to be easily executable - no, we aren’t trying to solve the world’s biggest problems in Disrupt. This program mimics accelerators like YC and Alchemist, but the biggest difference is you have specific objectives to hit, which is what accelerators should be doing! So I think you actually have an advantage.

I’ve had this reviewed by a bunch of successful founders/friends and they’ve helped me shape this program. This is what we wish we had before starting a company.

Here’s an overview of what you will be learning in Disrupt:

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Note: given our limited time, we will not cover each area in-depth over the next 10 months, but you should have some level of exposure.

The sessions will be a combination of:

  • Power-up exercises
  • Feedback circles
  • Skill building
  • Knowledge building
  • Expert guest speakers
  • Group Discussions

I will also provide a ton of resources on best practices in the areas above. I’m sure you’ll also find great resources to share with each other, and I’ll help you filter them.

My goal is to provide you with guidance, support, and best practices so you can accelerate your journey to solving big problems. I expect you to put in the work, iterate, and figure it out. Above all, I expect that you really want to learn how to build products and solve problems. If this isn’t something you really want, don’t do disrupt.

DISRUPT: OBJECTIVES AND MILESTONES

In Disrupt, you will find yourself doing 1 of 4 paths based on your product:

  1. B2C Free
  2. B2C Paid
  3. B2B $
  4. B2B $$

Note: You can change paths at anytime, just like in the real world.

Each path has its own milestones and objectives. This will help you prioritize what’s important and where you should focus your time to build a strong foundation and achieve long-term success. During Disrupt, your success will be measured on these milestones and objectives. However, you will also be measured on rate of failure.

So, you will succeed in Disrupt if you:

  • Accomplish a lot of milestones and objectives. OR...
  • Experience failures and make a lot of iterations and pivots.

You will not succeed in Disrupt if you:

  • Stay stagnant - low progress while not failing.
  • Don’t have valuable insights and experiences to share weekly.

PATHS

Below are the objectives and milestones for each path. These may vary depending on your product, but it’s generally what you can expect. I’ve only outlined the first stage of the objectives and milestones, since I’m not sure how many of you will make it to the next part. You know the ultimate goal - creating a unicorn company. But, baby steps.

B2C Free

Objectives: Stage 1

Get 2,000 users.

Milestones: Stage 1

Choose an idea. This must be something you wish you had.
Build a usable MVE that would satisfy your biggest use-case.
Use it yourself. Make iterations. Clean it up and fix the bugs.
Get 5-10 close friends/family to use it.
Get data. Do they like it? How often do they use it? What’s the analytics saying?
Either iterate or pivot. If feedback isn’t compelling, stop. If there’s sign of promise, make iterations/improvements.
Get feedback after improvements. Have the usage numbers increased? What are your users saying? If users like it, proceed to next step.
Get your friends/family to tell 2 of their friends/family to use your product. You should have 10-20 users at this point.
Create KPIs and success metrics.
Get data. Do they like it? How often do they use it? What’s the analytics saying? If usage doesn’t meet success metrics, stop or iterate. If it meets your success metrics, then continue.
Create a great FTUX (first time user experience). Make sure that any new users understand how to on-board to your product. This should be well designed.
Get data, continuously improve FTUX until there is low adoption friction.
Add necessary features and improve UI/UX to increase sharing.
Measure virality coefficient. How many people is each user telling about your app? If none, find out why. If app is not share worthy, stop. If it is, build sharing features.
Once you have 2,000 people using and sharing your product, proceed to Stage 2: Scale.

Success Metrics:

  • Engagement: Time spent per day using your product.
  • Virality: How many times users are sharing your product.
  • Usability: Number of downloads to number of active users ratio.

B2C Paid

Objectives: Stage 1

Get 500 sign-ups for “early access”/"waiting list”.

Milestones: Stage 1

Choose an idea that you think people are willing to pay for. If you’d pay for it, even better.
Identify your customer persona - what does your perfect customer look like?
Build a landing page for your perfect customer.
Test pricing models and validate through 10 customer calls with your perfect customers.
Hustle to get sign-ups (marketing, ads, word of mouth, social media, blogs...).
Look at the data, if people aren’t signing up, change the copy on the website. Test different copy.
Look at the data, if the copy isn’t working, talk to your perfect customer. Iterate your product by adding or changing features based on feedback, or testing new pricing models.
Build in incentives to share once a user signed up (see Robinhood case study).
Hustle to get sign-ups.
Once you get 500 sign-ups, proceed to Stage 2: Private Alpha.

Note: you will not have actually programmed anything until this point.

Success Metrics:

  • Relevance: Number of ad/post/content impressions to clicks ratio.
  • Conversion: Number of website views to number of sign-ups.
  • Virality: How many times users are sharing your product.

B2B $

Objectives: Stage 1

Get LOIs from 10 beta customers.

Milestones: Stage 1

Choose an idea that either increases revenue or decreases costs directly (clear ROI).
Soft validate your idea with 5 potential buyers through meetings or calls (no contracts/signatures needed).
Determine your ideal customer (position, company type, and industry).
Build a website, standalone deck, and 1-pager for your ideal customer.
Soft validate your idea with 3 more potential buyers (ideal customers) through in-person meetings (no contracts/signatures needed).
Design a realistic mock-up of your product.
Get feedback from the 8 people who gave you soft validation. Iterate - add/remove features.
Get them to verbally say, “yes, I would pay for this if you built it.”
Create a realistic demo video of your product using the mock-ups.
Develop your pricing model and get validation by talking to customers.
Use the content to get potential customers to sign up for your “free 14-day private beta”, commencing in 30 days. Beta period may vary.
Get customers to sign an LOI that includes a [discounted] price after the free beta period.
Once you have 10 LOIs, proceed to Stage 2: Private Beta.

Note: you will not have actually programmed anything until this point.

Success Metrics:

  • Economic Incentive: Total amount of money you’re generating or saving for your customer.
  • Virality: Number of customers that recommend you to their colleagues.
  • Personal Engagement: How quick are your customers responding to your emails? If it’s fast, it usually means this is important to them.
  • Demand: Ratio of total customer meetings to total signed LOIs.
  • Urgency: Ratio of number of meetings per customer to signed LOI.

B2B $$

Objectives: Stage 1

Create case studies with 2 well-known beta customers.

Milestones: Stage 1

Choose an idea that either increases revenue or decreases costs directly (clear ROI).
Identify your “perfect customer”.
Make a list of people that meet that criteria from companies with a strong brand name.
Validate your idea with 3 of these people.
Build a website, standalone deck, and 1-pager.
Get 2-3 of your perfect customers to join your “Customer Advisory Board” (CAB).
Use their insights to design a realistic mock-up of your product.
Get validation from 100% of your CAB that they would pay for your product, how much $ it would make/save them, and what the sales cycle would be like.
Confirm your pricing model with them.
Ask them to do a free “Proof of Concept” (PoC) with you starting in 30-60 days. Sign an LOI to do a free 30-day PoC.
Develop your product, and get their feedback and validation throughout the process.
Complete a 30 day POC (length may vary depending on your product).
Get feedback and iterate, add/remove features to make it valuable for your CAB members.
Get results of the POC, including financial impact, usability, and if they want to continue to use your product.
Create case studies with each CAB member. This includes a video, 1-pager, and webpage on your website (sound familiar?)
Once case studies are complete, proceed to Stage 2: Raising Money.

Note: If well known companies like your product and are willing to pay for it, you could be on to something. Investors will take this as a good sign and will likely give you capital to build out your idea further.

Success Metrics:

  • Economic Incentive: Total amount of money you’re generating or saving.
  • Sales Cycle: Length of time required to get a customer to purchase your product.
  • Legitimacy: Reputation of your CAB members.
  • Desire: On a scale of 1-7, how badly does your CAB member want to purchase your product?
  • Market Size: What is your Total Addressable Market (TAM)? How much revenue could you generate?

Founders you need to meet:

YC Alum (joined YC under 30 years old)
Enterprise (B2B $$$)
B2B
B2C
Raised $50M+
Meaningful company solving an important problem
Deep tech or science
2nd time founder
Acquired in less than 3 years
Acquired for $100M+
IPO'd
Thiel Fellow (make a google sheet to track who has messaged who)

VC's you need to meet:

Choose any 3 firms.

  • Sequoia
  • Greylock
  • Lightspeed VC
  • Khosla Ventures
  • Canaan Partners
  • Shasta Ventures
  • Storm Ventures
  • Mayfield Ventures
  • Google Ventures
  • True Ventures
  • Lux Capital
  • GGV Capital
  • Founders Fund
  • Accel Partners
  • US Venture Partners (USVP)
  • Kleiner Perkins
  • New Enterprise Associates
  • Andreessen Horowitz
  • Draper Fisher Jurvetson
  • Battery Ventures
  • Sierra Ventures
  • Menlo Ventures
  • First Round
  • Redpoint Ventures
  • Relay Ventures
  • Trinity Ventures
  • Index Ventures
  • Benchmark
  • Bessemer Venture Partners
  • Institutional Venture Partners
  • Floodgate
  • Felicis Ventures
  • General Catalyst
  • Collaborative Fund

Don’t expect this to be easy.

This stuff is hard. It will take dedication, effort, and hustle to crush it. In my eyes, you’re getting value as long as you’re moving. If you become stagnant, you lose. Whether you feel like you're succeeding or failing doesn’t matter. You will go through down times. And you will go through periods of excitement. That’s part of the roller coaster you will ride during Disrupt.