Do More Faster India, 2nd Edition

Theme Four: Product

From an outsider’s perspective, startups are often synonymous with their products. After all, that’s the only connection most people will ever have to your company. Therefore, if your product sucks, your company sucks. We are certain you’ll agree that many of products, at least on the Internet, suck. You do the math.

We often talk about one of the common startup killers at Techstars—making a product for which there is no interested market. Techstars accepts just 1% of the startups that apply, and we choose the best of the best. But even in this select group we find that at least one-third of those startups are attempting to build a product that they want, or that no one wants, instead of what the market wants. Every year, this is one of the key things that happens at Techstars—products get dropped, and new ones are born. You can’t hide from a lack of market at Techstars. It stalks you and threatens to kill you.

The best entrepreneurs we know are obsessed with their products. Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter and previously the CEO of FeedBurner, wakes up each morning with his product on his mind. Rob Hayes of First Round Capital talks about how to pivot when your product isn’t working. And Jeremy Achin and Tom de Godoy of Datarobot regularly improved, dropped, and re-created products in building their company.

You’ll find that much of this section is about how to get to the right product, not about the tactics of building what you imagine the right product ...