ISSUE #56

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GO FORWARD THOUGHT OF THE WEEK ➡️

The one email you should read this Black Friday 🏴 (it'll save your business

You’ve probably heard this stat before: 90% of startups fail.

To think you’ll beat those odds is the kind of balls you need as a founder.

But that’s a double-edged sword. I say that from experience, as I recently helped save a seed-stage startup from failure.

The thing that makes it possible for founders to invent a business from nothing is the same thing that often kills it.

Our egos.

Ego is a blindspot; it puts you on the ground if not checked properly.

What’s your problem?

Your business exists because it addresses people’s pain points and challenges, right?

But I see over and over that founders don’t exactly know the problem they’re solving for their audience. They think they’re servicing one customer when they’re servicing another.

How can that be? Well, that’s where ego comes in.

They want something to work so much that they fail to listen to the actual data from the customer. I’m talking about things that are right there in the open: public comments and Reddit threads where people are specifically discussing their issues.

So, the first question I always ask startup founders and their teams is, "When you say that you know something, how do you actually know it and validate it?"

I ask that because it’s human nature to fall into mental traps like confirmation bias.

So, one of the exercises I always focus on is my A.C.T. framework, which covers the three essential aspects of marketing: audience (A), communication (C), and tactics and touchpoints (T). (I made a free A.C.T AI tool you can check out or read this article for more details.)

You have to drill down with some specific questions to get past any faulty assumptions:

• A (Audience): How do we know it's our audience?”
• C (Communication): “What are we communicating to them, and how do we know it’s working?"
• T (Tactics & Touchpoints): “What are the triggers and touchpoints that move them through there?”

That’s a great way to get in touch with where your weak spots are. Then I do one more thing.

Bridge the gap

The way I knew the AI startup would fail wasn’t rocket science: they were running out of cash and not getting any additional funding.

Their ego was clouding it all.

They blamed the market.

Instead of listening to signals, they shouted into their microphone on Zoom calls that I suffered through.

The real problem was they weren’t focused on compelling use cases and proof of concepts.

They failed the “make people give a shit” test. They were getting high off their own supply.

I’ve seen this a lot: tech startups often get stuck on how good their technology is instead of showing people how to sell that transformation.

What I ultimately did for them was I used a tried and true copywriting framework called the “before-after bridge”:

• Show the world before your product
• Show the world after your product has transformed their life

After all, people ultimately buy into better versions of themselves.

Once the startup started to do that, they were able to raise additional follow-on capital.

“Fast nos” turned into maybes.

And maybes turned into term sheets.

That enabled them to focus on generating proofs of concept to get in front of their customers quickly.

That feedback and reaction led them to more transactions. And those transactions led them to things they could bring back to the investor.

Ideas + action is typically the tipping point that leads to traction.

The trick is not to let your ego trip you up!

If you know someone suffering from this (is it you?), I’d be happy to help. Just hit reply to this email.

Thanks for reading — I really appreciate YOU!
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- Pete Sena​

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Thanks so much for reading this edition of The Forward Obsessed Founder — you can also check out this issue on the web [Link].
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