Statement

I am determined to start my own company because I admire successful founders and because founding is the path that will teach me the most.

Meeting the needs of customers is the fundamental problem. For a product to be successful, someone has to want it bad enough to pay. I’ve spent the last four weeks trying to understand customers in the manufacturing technology space via an outreach campaign with mixed results.

My outreach started very broad, narrowing in week-over-week:

I had 36 calls, summarized below:

The idea here is that enough problem-seeking calls with the right stakeholders will surface an issue that is well suited for my software skillset, pressing enough to warrant a solution, and urgent enough to motivate a design partner relationship.

I am pessimistic about this path because I have no product intuition due to lack of domain expertise, I don’t have a compelling story useful for gaining access to people, my cold outreach success rates are not good, and none of the problems I’ve surfaced so far are urgent.

I see a couple paths to becoming more optimistic about my prospects in the manufacturing technology space:

1. Pair up with a cofounder with strong domain expertise.
2. Acquire my own expertise by writing a blog or getting a job as a controls/automation programmer at one of these organizations.

(1) is an okay option, but introduces the new problem of identifying a cofounder that fits this niche profile and is compatible with me. Additionally, I insistently would like to be CEO, and in this arrangement my true best fit is the CTO role.

(2) is achievable, most likely through seeking employment. Establishing a content presence would be difficult because many products worth investigating require an enterprise relationship to access them, and additional information will need to be discovered via interview.

Choosing a new domain is the best option. But how to choose?

I’ll need to challenge an assumption I made prior to selecting the manufacturing technology domain. The assumption I made was that selecting a domain outside of my previous expertise was an important thing for me. I found the raw challenge of this attractive. What better way to evaluate and demonstrate your competence, than starting a successful venture in a new intellectual territory? However, I’m beginning to think that founding will be difficult enough without this added dimension of domain novelty.

Let’s consider a few quotes from Paul Graham’s essay:

“The verb you want to be using with respect to startup ideas is not "think up" but "notice." At YC we call ideas that grow naturally out of the founders' own experiences "organic" startup ideas. The most successful startups almost all begin this way.” “When you find the right sort of problem, you should probably be able to describe it as obvious, at least to you.”

Additionally, consider that the first key question presented in this episode of YC startup school is:

“Do you have founder-market fit? Are you the right team to be working on this idea?”

I have an idea that was organically noticed, obvious, and for which I have great founder-market fit. At Citadel, I observed a team of quants suffocate under the weight of poor data infrastructure. I even wrote down a few documents summarizing the key problems they were facing, and pitched it as a project. The problem space is similar to the one solved by Airbnb’s Minerva. Given my background in backend relational database development and in various data engineering capacities at Citadel, I am eminently qualified to work on this problem.

My thesis is that this pivot will immediately have positive effects on my outlook. The network of potential customers immediately becomes much larger, and the story I will tell them to gain their attention is more compelling. Familiarity with the space will provide me product intuition, allowing me to more quickly begin work on an MVP. Lastly, I’ll also have a much stronger neuronal base from which to begin my content presence.

That all sounds pretty good to me.

Reflection

It’s worth taking a moment to consider a few things I learned, enjoyed, appreciated, and pondered over the course of my manufacturing technology investigation.

Learned

• When validating a business idea, it is not enough to just speak with users. You also need to speak with decision-makers and purchasers, who may or may not also be users.
• I became better at navigating large organizations using LinkedIn search.
• I became more comfortable seeking introductions from my network. Many people I engaged with were forthcoming and helpful.
• I improved my customer interviewing skills by repeatedly having calls. My later calls were much better than my early calls. This was due to improved domain knowledge, and studying “The Mom Test”/YC materials.
• I became more knowledgeable about manufacturing engineering.

Enjoyed

• Outreaching and interviewing users is a very different type of work from all my previous experiences.

Appreciated

• It was pleasant to get in touch with people in my network that I have not spoken with in quite some time, and to be helped by these people. I am grateful for everybody who assisted me along the way.

Pondered

• Diving into my network on LinkedIn reminded me of all the talented people I’ve engaged with over my life. Conducting yourself well and meeting good people leads to great relationships that endure over time.
• While doing outreach, it is important to be highly available. If you are going to be scheduling an unpredictable frenzy of calls with people from a variety of time zones, make sure to keep your evenings free.
• It is not rational to feel psychological pain when seeking introductions. Connecting people and assisting others is a great joy in life. In groups where this is the norm, everybody benefits.
• Writing is always the correct tool for thinking. Spinning in your mind is unacceptable. If there is some great and unresolved thought in you, the only way to conclude the line of thinking is via writing.