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In this episode, I am sitting down with Luke Szyrmer, an experienced product manager from London, to discuss his new book, Launch Tomorrow.
Alex Makarski: Hello and welcome. This is Alex Makarski with another episode of StartupGizmo. And today, I have with me Luke Szyrmer hanging out with me from London on the opposite end of the pond, but he’s sporting a nice shirt that says University of Pennsylvania, I take it. So I guess there’s a story coming up.
Luke is a sought after authority in all things lean and startup and is the one who runs Lean Coffee events in London. And he is an author of Launch Tomorrow, the book on launching a startup, a tech startup, I presume, that hit number one on Amazon in its category recently. So, congratulations on the book, Luke, and welcome to the show.
Luke Szyrmer: Thanks, Alex. Yeah, it’s great to catch up with you.
Alex Makarski: Awesome. So what’s up with this Pennsylvania theme going on here?
Luke Szyrmer: Well, I grew up in the area. But I went there a while ago and graduated. And it was a good time and it taught me quite a lot, did economics there a long time ago. But somehow I got into IT and it stuck on me for 20 years or more at this point in various forms.
Alex Makarski: Right. So what led you to writing a book?
Luke Szyrmer: So the main reason is that I, at some point, tried to create a product that I thought would be relevant for hedge funds here in London. It was about the time YouTube was becoming a thing and it was a video website, and aimed specifically at that vertical, which at the time I thought was a great idea and I put a lot of heart and soul and savings into it.
And after basically launching it, it turned out that they weren’t really all that interested and it didn’t resonate with them pretty much at all. And I realized that even though I, from a technical standpoint, had something that was working, that clearly wasn’t enough that I very much had a marketing problem.
And at some point, about two or three years later, I discovered the work of Eric Ries – The Lean Startup – and one of the things that he advocates there is going out and speaking with customers, interacting with them long before you even started building some sort of product just to be able to really understand who it is that you’re creating something for.
And over time, the part that I found the most interesting was something that he briefly described in The Lean Startup over a couple of pages, it’s using a landing page to test out a product idea. So, it’s kind of like a smoke test. Originally, the term “smoke test” comes from electrical engineering. So basically, if you plug it in, does smoke come out of it? So, here, it’s a slightly different connotation. So, basically, it’s just a quick test to make sure that if you are going to go in a certain direction, from a marketing point of view, there is actually somebody who’s there, who’s waiting for that product to be made.
Alex Makarski: If it’s even worth putting any more effort into it.
Luke Szyrmer: Exactly. Exactly, that’s the whole point. And it’s a slightly different way of approaching the whole topic than, on one hand, customer development, which I just mentioned because there you’re trying to get lots of information and speak with lots of people. And it’s also a different kind of conversion rate optimization where you already have something that you’re selling and you just want to be able to sell better.
And that mentality, that framework, other than that sliver within The Lean Startup and occasionally mentioned here and there, nobody is really covering it, and I realize that it’s something worth testing on its own. So what I did was I went to cycle Leanpub which essentially led me start writing a book, basically describe a book, without necessarily having it done yet and to see if people would start buying.
And lo and behold, people did start paying me even though it wasn't done. -
Having just sold his high-tech / edu-tech business, this serial entrepreneur set his sight on saving the planet.
But instead of hugging trees and staging protest rallies, he is building a cool, fast, and affordable electric bicycle. With that one product, Andrew Greig is working in disrupting several industries at once:
* Transportation
* Entertainment
* Healthcare
* Education
* Internet Services -
EPISODE NOTES
* Introduction
* Why Startup Gizmo
* What to expect from the show
* Why subscribe
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, this is Alex Makarski and welcome to Startup Gizmo.
This is episode number one. Thank you for checking out my new venture, which is this very podcast you’re listening to.
I’m going to keep it super short today. I will take a minute to explain the reason why you might want to subscribe to this podcast, what to look forward to in the future episodes, and how to get the most value out of this content.
The reason you want to subscribe to this podcast is simple: It’s the awesome people that I’ll be bringing here and interviewing. From the guy who’s working on some super sexy tech designed to disrupt adventure sports, transportation, and education, to the early-stage Silicon Valley CEO with several successful exits behind his belt.
And from the founder of the leading nutritional brand in the UK to a guy who had invented a product that saves lives and then got squeezed out from the company he had created by his new business partners. (Much like it happened to Steve Jobs when he was fired from Apple by the board.)
Here’s how this show is going to be different, and I hope, BETTER, than so many other “talking heads” startup podcasts out there.
The most important criteria for someone to be on the show is that they come to the table with something INTERESTING. The judge of what’s interesting and what’s not will be yours truly. And, you know what, I’m a very curious guy and I like getting to the bottom of things. So it is my intention and my hope to become a very good curator of content, people, and things that will provide you with a lot of value.
But please, please, please, help to co-created this show. Reach out to me email ([email protected]) or Twitter (@startupgizmo) with comments, questions and suggestion. Let’s make this a two-way street.
Before I sign off here, I need to ask you to do something very important. If you’re not driving right now, go to startupgizmo.com and subscribe with your email. When you do that, I am going to give you three things:
* Transcripts of all episodes.
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So, once again, go to startupgizmo.com now and enter your email there now.
This is all for today. Thank you and talk to you on the next episode.
