Investor Connect Podcast

Flywheel Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The flywheel concept comes from the industrial world in which a large mechanical flywheel gains momentum from small steps and eventually creates enough momentum to generate its own motion. In the startup world, the flywheel effect refers to an alternative to the sale...

Agile Development Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Agile development takes an iterative approach to building software. Instead of one monolithic development, agile proposes incremental changes. Agile is a useful mental model in the startup world as it fits well with the startup dynamic. Startups use agile developme...

First and Last Mover Advantage Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In startup markets, there are advantages to being the first mover and advantages to being the last mover. Here are some advantages of being a first mover: The first mover in a market can gain market share due to the lack of competitors. The first mover...

AARRR Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. AARRR stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue It's the mental model for the customer lifecycle. In growing sales this model breaks down the process into stages and steps which the startup can metric as follows: Acquisition -- find users through mul...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Christian Napier, Founder / CEO at Rakonto Inc. Located in Sandy, Utah, Rakonto Inc. provides a platform that allows organizations to harvest contextual or tacit knowledge, through simply talking. They remove the friction inherent in the process of requesting, recording, receiving, transcribing, transforming, curating, and sharing tacit knowledge,...

Inversion Mental Model Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The inversion mental model generates new startup ideas by inverting the problem. By looking at the problem in reverse you can ideate new product solutions and business models. This technique tests the assumptions and gives us a new way of thinking. For example...

Earned Secret Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The earned secret mental model postulates that you should have some information that most others don't before launching a startup. The earned secret gives you an edge over other startups through a key insight into the customer or industry. Those outside an industry hav...

Minimum Viable Product Mental Model Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The minimum viable product called MVP tests the market before building the final product. The MVP is designed to gain customer feedback and show market validation to the investor. It tests the riskiest assumptions with small experimental products....

Product Market Fit Mental Model Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Product market fit is a mental model that demonstrates your product meets the market's requirements. It's a key milestone in the journey of the startup as it's the point of inflection for growth and later scale. Without product market fit the startup...

The Idea Maze Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The idea maze is a mental model for how a founder sorts through the plethora of ideas to find the right one on which to build a startup. There are many choices including the problem to solve, product to build, and how to monetize. In navigating the idea maze for your s...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Justin Izzo, Lead Data and Trends Analyst at Dropbox DocSend. Located in San Francisco, California, Dropbox DocSend enables companies to share business-critical documents with ease and get real-time actionable feedback. With DocSend's security and control, startup founders, investors, executives, and business development professionals can build bu...

The Babe Ruth Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The Babe Ruth effect mental model comes from Babe Ruth who once said: "I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big." The mental model postulates that it's better to take big risks than to avoid failure. Eventually, the big risks will pay off a...

Regret Minimization Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The regret minimization mental model helps you make difficult decisions by projecting yourself into the future and looking back on the decision to be made. Jeff Bezos once said, "I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this." Today you ar...

Disruptive Innovation Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The disruptive innovation mental model describes a simple innovation starting at the bottom of a market and then moves up the curve to overcome the industry incumbents. This mental model was first defined by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator's Dilem...

The Why Now Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. "The why now" mental model builds the case that now is the right time to launch and raise funding for a startup. Timing is key to a successful startup launch. Launch too soon and the market won't be there. Launch too late and the competition will be too far out in front...

Introduction to Mental Models Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. A mental model according to Wikipedia is "an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world". It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts, and a person's intuitive pe...

This is the Investor Connect Hot Topics program. I am Hall Martin, the host of the show in which we dive into current topics and how it impacts the startup space. I hope you enjoy this episode. _______________________________________________________ Thank you for joining us for the TEN Capital Hot Topics Program where we dive into current topics and how it impacts the startup space. For more episo...

Product Roadmaps Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The product roadmap is a shared resource that outlines the vision, priorities, and direction of a product over time. It aligns the goals of the company to deliver the product and sets the expectations of the customer. The first product is the minimum viable product...

Pre-seed Product Work Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The minimum viable product is one of the more challenging products to design. There are many choices and limited resources available. In designing your MVP consider the following: Scope into your core technology in building out the first version. Eliminate as m...

Product Reporting Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. It's important to track the key metrics for your product. Here's a list of numbers to capture: Customer acquisition cost -- the cost to acquire a customer. Customer lifetime value -- the total revenue received from each customer on average. Churn rate -- the percen...

Product Usage Metrics Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Metrics are a key tool in product management. In managing a product track these metrics: Customer acquisition -- track the performance of the product in acquiring new customers. This is often done broadly across all products but should be done by each product a...

Product Development Process Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. There are many approaches to product development. Here are some approaches companies use: Defines the ideal process. This lets the process work out from project to project. Systematizes development activities. The core systems are made available to the te...

Gamification of the Product Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In designing your product consider adding gamification to it. Here are some key elements to consider: Include goals for the user to accomplish with the product. This makes it engaging for the customer. It also provides a benchmark on how much the customer...

User Experience Design Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The user experience of the product must be designed into the product from the beginning. Here are some key points in researching the user experience: Understand the user's goal and what they are trying to achieve. The user may be trying to generate a report or...

Product Data Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Product data is the information about the product used for product management purposes. Here are some key data points to capture and maintain: Customer tests for new product features. Capture A/B test data into a central repository as the answers may be useful for build...