The value of visualizing ideas quickly
As a startup, speed of iteration is a (if not THE) key competitive advantage.
Hey friends,
Last week, I kicked off this newsletter with a post about finding a customer to serve. Happy to share that I have been doing just that. Since then, I have had 16 calls (!!) with people in my network to learn about problems that they face. Thank you so much to those of you who spoke to me or connected me with someone.
The 16 calls were with people across a broad range of backgrounds. I spoke with tech managers (4), teachers who also tutor (4), recruiting leads (3), sales & account management leads (3), customer service leads (1), and a former school administrator (1). These calls were invaluable, introducing me to different worlds, problems, and solutions. They also helped me to calibrate the three criteria I had shared in my previous post for ideal target customers.
Now, I feel ready to prioritize, focus, and dig deeper. One area I’m going to be digging deeper into is tech hiring. Particularly, I’ll be looking to speak with more hiring managers. I’ve also got a few calls set up with bootcamps to understand how they place students at companies. If you’d like to chat about tech hiring or know someone who may be good to speak to, please hit reply and let me know!
Visualizing ideas quickly
In between research calls, I also wanted to refresh my building skills. A good friend and prolific maker, Ed Moss, shared some words of wisdom with me this week (I’m paraphrasing here, but the point is the same):
Work on being able to visualize your ideas quickly. This will allow you to get higher quality feedback and iterate faster.
I thought this was great advice. As a startup, speed of iteration is a (if not THE) key competitive advantage. When I hear about a problem from a customer, I want to be able to quickly visualize a solution and put it in front of them for feedback.
So, I thought I’d practice that skill this week by visualizing an idea that aims to solve a problem I have faced. This was the rough idea:
I found this post by Shane Doyle, the fastest way to prototype and test landing pages with Notion, and decided to build a landing page.
Writing good copy is hard! I was tempted to use tools like Headlime or Copy.ai but the struggle to write clear and concise messaging for the landing page was where the idea was getting shaped in my mind. It forced me to think through the idea holistically, including the target customer, product experience, pricing, and positioning.
I used Looka to make a logo. I attempted to use BotSociety to build a mock of the slack bot, but it didn’t turn out well. So, I just manually inspected and edited the html of slack in the browser to create the bot screenshot. And I used Typeform to create the sign up form, which actually embeds well in Notion.
In just a few hours, I had built a landing page for WeeklyArticle.Club in Notion!
The process of visualizing this idea also made me realize that I could execute an MVP of it without any code and just with some no-code tools like Typeform, Google Sheets, and Zapier! Check out the landing page and let me know if you have any feedback.
Next, I plan to practice using prototyping tools like Balsamiq to quickly visualize other ideas. Do you have a favorite prototyping tool? I believe Sketch and Figma come with a steeper learning curve than I’d want right now, so would love to hear about other apps.
Finally, the main value to learning how to visualize ideas quickly is that, with high enough fidelity, you can launch and learn. I leave you with this tweet that Ed shared with me and has been stuck in my mind:
tl;dw:
Build the thing, put it out there, and see what happens.
I guess this means I’ll be launching WeeklyArticle.Club soon.
Thanks for reading! <3
Thanks to my wife, Neely, for supporting me through this whole journey and also reviewing each of these posts.