#116 How Product Ideation Can Drastically Reduce Your Startup Development Costs (With Rich Cristina)

Speaker A: Did you know that as much as 42% of startups fail as they just couldn't find enough people interested in buying their products? So let me ask you a question. How much time and money have you already invested in building a platform, developing features that you think that people want to buy, might want to use, yet you are not sure because you haven't really gone into a product validation or ideation strategy. The build it and there will come mindset can work for some people, but uh, let's be honest, it's really risky and costly for your business. And to create a fantastic product, it's not enough to guarantee success. So the key to product validation and achieving product market fit lies in answering a crucial question. Are, uh, you solving the right problem that customers will pay for and will fall in love with your solution? If you are unsure on how to tackle that, well, you're in luck because in this special episode I'm bringing to you some fantastic guests. Rich Kristina, the co founder of mentalabs, the principal director of Founder Institute London, and uh, just a startup guru and expert. Rich has a wealth of experience transforming startups, uh, taking ideas to reality. Welcome to the Mary Poppins of Startups live show. I'm Nalima Kangu from Athena Leaders. As a tech consultant and startup advisor, I will answer live the burning questions that you have on your way to see. Subscribe and tune in every week for top tips to meet amazing guests, startup founders, investors and more. More importantly, sit back, relax and let's welcome to the stage Rich Kristina. Hi Rich, how is it going?

Speaker B: Hi Nayeli. I'm um, going really well. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker A: Uh, it's, it's a pleasure to finally have the discussion with you. And um, as for those who don't know, I'm also a director on um, Founder Institute London and we've had a lot of discussion and I've had the pleasure to see firsthand the magic that Rich can do with startups. So I'm really excited to have this discussion here to help anybody listening to really start thinking on how on the best strategy to grow their startups. But first, let's discover one platform which is up and coming and excited and needs to be on your to do list. Rich, can you tell us a little bit more about mentalabs?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Um, uh, thank you for that wonderful introduction. Um, I uh, just have to concur that you know, working with you, uh, recently, uh, helping founders, um, in this um, area has been uh, a real Privilege. Um, so thank you again for having me. So whilst we've been working in the accelerator program, um, which is a fantastic program, we've graduated hundreds of founders through that and seen them go from a concept to launch. In that discovery, uh, we as one of the lead directors we found a potential gap in the market where some founders were not ready for a formal program or like an accelerator and they were shying away at this early stage uh, for giving away equity as well. So this continuously was staring me in the face over the years know, running the accelerator and I thought, and I was being asked by some of these founders to mentor them outside of the program. Um, and I thought I got to explore this. It keeps coming up. You know there seems to be, this is my hypothesis, there seems to be a founder needing ah, help, has an idea, is busy working full time or busy in life, family, et cetera, and can't commit to an accelerator, uh, in terms of time and the way accelerators push founders through, uh, quickly and they want to do it more on demand in their own pace. So that's essentially what the platform is. Um, I've gathered a pool of wonderful experts and professionals in their own right and people who are experienced in raising funds and starting their own companies and experienced in startups essentially. So they're on the platform and they're accessible and you can, you know, founders can book them um, in our blocks without the need to commit to anything long term. So no subscriptions, no giving away of equity, just hey, I need to drop in, spend an hour with an expert say like yourself, get some gold nuggets, go away in my own time and work on that and come back as and when I need. So it's, it's the on demand go to market difference, uh, the difference in our go to market rather. So that's essentially uh, mentor labs right there.

Speaker A: And one of the um, one of the things that I also find attractive when looking at mental labs, not just from the perspective of the founders, but when I look at it from the perspective of a mentor, uh, or an expert in the industry, whichever field that will support the startup ecosystem is being able to have a place where I can have one to one discussions uh, and really build that trust with different founders. I go to a lot of networking events or meet a lot of random people. Even on LinkedIn there are people that contact me. I've seen your live show and I had a specific question about XYZ or yes, we can grab a, usually the first chat allocating to people. So I Usually have like a 30 minute discussion but then after that there are people who are not prepared to go into a deep relationship. But maybe because they don't personally know me or maybe because they don't feel like they're at that stage or they just kind of want to touch the waters. And as from a founder perspective, being able to use mental apps and say, actually if you really want to have an hour dedicated, uh, to us working together, here's the link, let's have it there. Um, it's easy for me. I don't have to think about payment structures, I don't have to think about invoicing. And um, we go there, we have this, the discussion, I leave them some review and I can just conclude my life.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's, it's an interesting, interesting perspective that you bring to that. Um, we, you know, all the, all the mentors on our platform have uh, run businesses in their own right and they offer different services to founders and it's almost like, if I could refer to it like a testing ground as you say. So it's like, well look, you know, you're meeting, you get reached, uh, you get reach outs all day long on LinkedIn, you get through network events as you said and there's a lot of people saying, hey, can I have some of your time and can, you know, can we discuss this? Yeah, if you're a mentor on our platform, you can quite easily just give out the link and say, here, book some time with me. And obviously that will like you say, it streamlines that process. It's, you know, it's a no brainer for a mentor. Um, you know, we pay the mentor of course and uh, it's all automated and it's just, it's just easy. But what we expect mentors to then if, you know, because there's got to be a synergy, you know, the founder has to like the mentor, the mentor has to like the founder, uh, etc. And that's really important when I call it a testing ground. So instead of a founder having to commit to a mentor's services, which will be a lot more expensive because it's a long term program of some kind, for instance, or they're going to do more work. This is just almost like an initial consultation in that hour, deep dive into some problems, get a feel for the founder's issues. The mentors obviously got an hour to discuss several of them and write up some actionable feedback and go, well there you go, um, this is what I would do. Here's Some actionable feedback and that's an important part of our platform's brand promise. All our mentors will give actionable feedback. It's not high level discussions because a lot of YouTube videos and content out there, which are, which is all good content to start a founder off, but to then take it to that next level, which is, you know, let's dive into a couple of issues you have and deep dive and unpack it. They can do that in that initial consultation on our platform before they might commit to something more long term with the mentor. So they're testing the mentor out. The mentor's testing the founder out in a sense. And um, there's. This is that gap that we have discovered between a founder, you know, we like affectionately call them entrepreneurs. You know, they got good ideas, they talk to their family, their friends, they scope it out that way and they might talk to some colleagues and. But they're just going to some free events and just, you know, talking about it. Then it's the founder that's ready to commit and says, um, I think this is a good idea. And I'm now going to spend my spare time, evenings, weekends, while they're working full time, researching and putting the bare bones of a, of a business plan together. And then it's like the choice is go on to an accelerator or a formal program or test it out first on a platform like Mental Labs and get that first bit of feedback into what they're doing. They go to market their idea and so on, so on. So yeah, I hope that answers your question and made a little bit more sense of the context of where we're positioning this platform as that stepping stone into the next step with mentors or other programs.

Speaker A: Yes, definitely. I think there's a lot of value in there in terms of the mentors and as well as the founders. Looking at your experience when we, as I was mentioning in the intro, you've been everywhere in the startup world and as we kind of touched upon to, we talked about that a little bit when we were preparing for the episodes. You've had such an amazing career that uh, has helped you to see very different facets of how startups work and grow and really from the inside and from the outside. Now this question is kind of open ended and I've always wanted to ask you that question. What annoys you the most? Well, what are the few things that annoys you when you start working with an early stage startup?

Speaker B: First I'd ask, why are you laughing? Nayeli, you know me too well. How Much time do we have? Uh, no, I'm kidding.

Speaker A: Exactly as much time as you want.

Speaker B: Okay, look, all seriousness, um, I think. Yeah, look, I think I could break it down into two sort of areas. Um, a lot of founders come to us like, I, however they, you know, whether it's thinking of them joining the accelerator or talking to me personally as a potential, uh, client, um, they think they're ready for funding. Um, and look, you would know as much as anyone that, you know, sometimes founders do get funded really early and it's very conceptual stage they hit. You know, they find that that magical angel that just loves them as and their team and the concept and they haven't got any traction and, you know, will invest early. Um, but that's rare from my experience. Um, and I just think that a lot of founders think they're investable or they're ready and they're really far from it. Um, and that's for a lot of reasons without unpacking that. So just to answer your question, to come back, you've got to stop me from going down rabbit holes, because I will. But just m thinking that they're investible and they're not. That would have to be the biggest key point. Um, and that would then, okay, well, why aren't they investable? There's a lot of things that we work on in terms of all the areas. Are they solving the right problem? Is it the right solution to solve that problem? Are they talking to the right customer? Very specifically? What Drilling down to Persona detail, not high level. Um, they go to market, what's in their pitch deck, etc. What are they saying, how they're forecasting the market, etc. And the opportunity to an investor, there's so much that has not been worked on thoroughly. When we meet these founders who say, oh, we're ready for. I'm looking for investment. When I say, how can I help you? It's really interesting that you don't get founders saying, I think I need help with my customer development, or could you look at the Persona of my customer, who I think my customer is? Or could you look at my product and dive deep into the product and tell me if there's anything I could do to improve that? Um, it's always funding. Yeah, so that's probably one.

Speaker A: But I guess this also extends from one of the things that's been happening a lot. I think obviously with the current, the current crisis, which has been current for a while now with the current crisis that led to investor tightening up their belts, is this all, uh, things that kind of starting to change the messaging a little bit. Because before that, what I saw a lot on LinkedIn, especially for those who have a good idea they coming onto the startup world, maybe they don't, they don't have a startup background or they don't even have a technology background coming onto the world. And what they see in terms of messaging was get investments as quick as you can, get investment to run as fast as you can. Not so much thinking about bootstrapping and how to do bootstrapping. Well, which product ideation and validation is actually a really strong tool for a company that will start bootstrapping and the first friend and family around and the likes and of course as the product grows as well. Do you think that this messaging has an impact on the perception that as a startup, uh, my first, my first priority is to get funding rather than thinking about, yes, I know that funding will be important at certain point, but is it going down that road at the beginning? Is it actually right for me? And even in the future, the VC world or VC funding, is that even right for what I'm building in the first place?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, a few things from that. Um, you know, I think in your last, one of your last podcasts, you were interviewing, um, a lady that you guys are talking about how founders can test and start getting some proof of concept without having to actually build an MVP in the form. Like an MVP doesn't necessarily mean building some kind of platform that, um, their end goal would be, uh, in terms of a product, you could use tools like WhatsApp and some other tools I recall from your discussion. You know, so they're the things that. Because let me ride back to the start of that question. If what are you using that funding for? What do you need that funding for? Is usually the question I ask. And most of the time I get, um, it's to build the product and it's to market the product. Well, you know, there's a saying, you know, it's, you know, nail it before you scale it. So if you don't nail it, meaning getting your product market fit, how on earth are you. So what are you scaling? What are you going to market? You know, certainly, like I think I mentioned to you at the start of this that we're testing some, you know, LinkedIn ads at the moment for our platform. But, you know, we're not, we're not needing investment for that because it's just testing, testing, messaging, testing, you know, different platforms and, uh, do a B testing on lots of different things, messaging, images, etc. So, um, I just think, you know, why do you need, I would be asking why do you need the funding and if it is to, you know, to market the business? Well, what are you marketing? You know, have you got, do you actually know that this is exactly the version? You know, if I was, to be really honest with you, I don't know whether our version is the one we're going to end up with, but it's the start and it's after eight prototypes to get to the beta and then from there it's like, let's see what happens here. Um, so that's that. And then I guess, um, you know, to build. Coming back to what you said, well, if you, I need that money to build. Well, why are you building it out? What have you done? Show us the steps, your progressive steps of different basic prototypes that showed the basic functionality of what you're trying to achieve in terms of solving the problem for this customer. But if they're leapfrogging ahead, especially a technical founder, not to, um, pick on them, but you know, those who have the ability to build something quickly and probably at a lower expense, rather end up building things that they haven't tested correctly. And that sort of swings back into something you said earlier about the validation stage, which is something that, you know, that I work on with founders.

Speaker A: I'm, um, glad you've mentioned specifically, uh, the technical founders. There's a lot of discussion, um, again, why the discussion focus a lot on the assumption that technical founders have an easier life when it comes to building their tech startups compared to non technical founders, which I believe it's kind of really accurate because you can be a non technical founder. Of course, the issue of understanding technology and how to piece the things together could be a huge learning curve. Yet as a technical founder, I found me as well, coming from a technical background and building my own company, uh, what I see a lot is that there are a lot of different skill sets that really forms an entrepreneur and a founder. I could be good on the coding aspect, understanding a platform, but it doesn't actually mean that I can even describe that in a non technical jargon way that will push investors or customers to run a mile. So I think it's really good to keep that perspective in mind when we look at technical founders and go back to the question, am I building the right thing before I can even start thinking about the tiny features and which platform I'm going to use, which language and all those kind of things.

Speaker B: Yeah, Absolutely. And I just, you know, when, when I've worked with founders in the past, both within the accelerator and out, um, doing it once is just not enough. And uh, what I'm constantly saying is it is a, it's a constant process. Um, you know, we're still doing it, we're still testing and you know, we've got a pretty much a full blown beta product out in the market now. Um, but we're still grabbing founders and saying, hey, test this, try this. What do you think of this? Is that the right price? And you know, are you expecting the right features on this page and that page, it just is continuous. And what we see is quite often I've done some testing, I've got what some founders have said or, sorry, that was in my case, some of my customers are saying, all right, we're ready to build, we're ready to go. Um, we've got this, uh, initial validation, but I just think it's a continuous journey. M. Ideally hold on to some early adopters, some people that, customers that you've. Potential customers you've spoken to right at the beginning and bring them along on that journey and show them different versions of, you know, whatever your prototype is, um, whether it's like a basic tool, you're using the existing tools like WhatsApp, whatever it is, and then just continuously adding and showing the new versions. And it's going to get to a point where you say, I've got enough yeses and people, individuals giving me the nod here to say this is exactly what they need to solve this problem. But then that's another whole discussion about how do you get buy in and are they really just nodding their head and the whole process. I think you've heard me talk about this before where, you know, using the mum test is a, is a good one. Um, and not, not interviewing customers in a biased way. And that's also another problem. Um, I see. If, if I was able to circle back to one of the things you talked about, um, asking about what are the things that sort of frustrate you? Um, it's the funding, but it's also not doing enough validation or doing the validation properly. I've sat in interviews with clients who asked me to and founders of all kinds and they sell the idea, you know, wouldn't this be a great, would this be great to solve your problem and say, well, you know, they're going to most likely say yes, because most people don't like conflict and most people are just going to agree. Um, but yeah, if Anyone hasn't read the Mum, the Mum test book. It's definitely a book to read because it gives very specific and excellent examples of what not to do in terms of interviewing your customer and the types of methods to be able to genuinely flush out the truths rather than someone trying to put on a facade to you just purely out of kindness. Because that's quite a human trait. We want to be nice to the person. Yeah, sure, you know, yeah, that's, yeah, I do agree with you, you know, but they, they're not, they're smiling and grinning but you ask them to take it. Pull, pull out a, a credit card or would you mind, you know, if I got you to do a pre payment or whatever version of that you do to really show they're telling you the truth and they would pay for this. And so I think, in summary of what I'm saying there is the quality of the validation work, um, is usually not up to par in most cases.

Speaker A: And to add to that, I say also just use your family and friends as a practice interview rather than a real interview because your family, friends, some of your colleagues, depending on how close they are to you, might say yes to whatever you're building because it makes sense to them or maybe because, uh, they don't want to upset you, they want you to feel supported. They will answer question based on what they believe would be good for you, but not review of this was a product in the market that someone I don't know was building or how would that answer that? Now, one thing that I'd like to go back to that you've just mentioned, Rich was on, um, this idea of going out there, uh, as part of the validation first. It was a repetitive process. You do it once, you do it twice. And as you've mentioned, mendeleye, probably the eighth iteration, but it's not finished as you're still going out doing a little bit of work, going out there testing the market, testing the messages and the likes. Now, when it comes to the people that you involve, especially when it comes to things like surveys and interviews, can you talk us through a strategy that startups can implement as well so that they don't suffer through the struggles of first, where do I find those people? And secondly, when I go back the fourth iteration, who can I go to and ask for feedback?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Okay. Um, so I have a strategy that I find works where I talk about going out wide, casting the net out wide first. So in order to do that, I mean I've heard other professionals and different Individuals that have experienced in ideation that, you know, they do it the opposite way for me, cast out the net wide. Um, and to do that that is finding online audiences first. And there are a lot of tools that you can use to do that. Um, one of my favorite tools to use is Prolific. Um, we brought that into the accelerator and we had a nice partnership with the guys and they came in and did a talk and showed uh, how, showed the founders how to use it. But essentially it's an audience building tool. And you can say look, I think my audience, because this is all assumptions, remember, I think my audience is male, female, both with children, without children, living in this demographic, you know, this area, earning this sort of money, this type of job, um, what else can you put in there? I think even religious beliefs, um, lots of things like that. And you can build a Persona that you're assuming and you can send out. What you do is you basically connect. You do a survey using survey tools.

Speaker A: SurveyMonkey.

Speaker B: Ah, obviously Typeform is one that I like using. You create your survey and they're free. If you keep your survey Questions down to 10. Um, and if you don't and you want to ask more, I encourage you to ask more. Uh, the first couple I would do as the free tool. Um, so you can see this is really not, you don't need funding to do this. Um, and um, uh, you know, as you get more and more involved and deeper and deeper, then you might want to pay and they're very cheap. You know, it might be £25amonth. And then you can ask lots of different questions and you can do um, uh, things like you know, if they answer yes to this, go to that question. If they answer no, go to this question. So it gets quite, it's, I'm making it sound complex, but it's actually quite easy to use. Then you would probably be looking at spending anywhere between £50 and £100 on Prolific to go out to around about 100 individuals to 200 individuals. It does depend on how you set it up. Now I think to myself, okay, if I went out to 200 individuals who I think my audience, what a great start. Okay, then you would look at those answers and responses. And here's the thing, Nayeli, this is a real crucial thing. Interpreting. It's one thing going out and doing all that work and getting the data. The second crucial thing is how you interpret that data. And I see too many times where I've asked for the, for the responses and I've asked for the Founder summary. And, and they're putting people in the yes pile that they're kind of really not in the yes pile. If you really look at their answers and there are a number of tricks and tools without, um, I won't go down a rabbit hole here. Um, but you know, there's ways to ask certain questions. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this? Um, and then somewhere down further in the, in the questionnaire, ask the same question but differently or ask them to free type. And it's amazing what, what information you get from people when they free type. Yeah. So there's a lot of different little things you can do, but that's just, just the start. But then out of that, let's say you did it for 100 people. Um, you probably find 30 or 40 that you go, aha, here's our potential customer here. Discount these guys. Right. Because they're not our customer. So like in our case, not every founder is a customer that we see. It's a very specific founder. Uh, and we didn't know that until we did these surveys until we started fine tuning about where that founder is, what their mindset is. You know, the mindset of not wanting to join an accelerator and the reasons behind that. We dug deep, deep, deep into those issues. We why is it a problem to join a three month accelerator? Why don't you want to give equity, etc. We learned everything there could be to learn about that, those issues that those founders were having. And then we send out another survey and we kept those 30 out of the hundred we wanted. But then we added more new, uh, um, respondents. And as we kept going, I think we did like five or six, we kept fine tuning our questions and digging. And here's the key. Understanding our Persona more and more as we went on then, because I think some of your listeners will go, what about, um, face to face interviews? Then we took some of those 30 from the front, from the front, uh, of all the first interviews and started asking, would you mind because you can chat to them. Nayeli, would you mind if I got some time face to face on a zoom call and you might give them something, you might say, look, you know, for doing so, if you join the platform when we release it, we'll give you this, that the other. And it's interesting how many people will come forward and say, yeah, yeah, I'm happy to give you some time. So then start after. So what I was in summary, casting it out wide. Learn. It's almost like an iteration of your product, you know, your interviewing process or uh, your validation process is the same. So learn, adjust your questions, learn, adjust your questions, start adding some uh, face to face interviews and then that process continues. And most of we don't do the surveys anymore because I think we had up to 500 last count. Um, and now we're, you know we've done about 150 or so face to face interviews and that continues because of our learnings. I don't feel that look, you can go straight into face to face interviews but I think the learning curve is quicker and this is my point. The learning curve is quicker for a founder to understand their uh, uh, customer better and the relationship their customer has with the problem they're trying to solve by doing the wide net version, that strategy and doing so with online tools. And then they can come in and start digging deep into face to face interviews from what they've learned from the, from the online version. I hope that made sense.

Speaker A: Yes, it makes a lot of sense and I'm going to play it back. Um, just a quick summary. Um, as there's something that you've said there is quite exciting and my question is right away but I will come back because what I love about your, what I love about what you've just described is a slight change in the way of thinking of many people out there. Some people might put in my first they my heavy uh, survey of a few questions in addition to the structures and what to ask and what not to ask. That's one thing on the side but usually there's no goals of how many responses we would like to have and they might stop at having 2050 and that's the entire validation or uh, the entire initial service part of the ideation. So I've been working with founders that come and says oh yes, we've done just the one round of going and asking questions and that's it. Whereas from what you're saying is a continuous process. Just as you will develop using what is agile or whatever flavor of agile that you use. You look at what are the features that we're building and we do that in two weeks sprints. The same mindset happens at the very early stage when you are still going through the ideation either of a new startup or a new product feature that you will uh, build. And I think that's definitely worth emphasizing as it's not something that you do once but don't as well go for 500 responses at the beginning and stop there.

Speaker B: And that's what a lot of that's what a lot of founders do. If I could add, sorry Natalie, but yeah, and that's what a lot of founders do. I've done 500. But then what do you do with that and did you ask the right questions and you know, what came out of those discussions or the results or the answers that you got? And a lot of founders actually, you know, are just interpreted, interpreting that incorrectly going look, this founder said, sorry, I'm saying founder because it's for me. But this customer said um, yes. And it looks like they, you know, they're interested in this product but it's so far from whether they will pull out their credit cards, pay for it. It's so far, yeah.

Speaker A: And then the other thing that I think uh, is quite exciting and a mindset shift on the way founders approach doing this research is to really nurture the pool of people that they've already had, especially those who have answered questions and left their details, even an email. If someone has already done that then um, use that and use different techniques to make sure that when you go back to future round, if that matches the Persona you want to continue with, how do we invite them to continue answering other questions or maybe eventually to one to one stage in terms of interviews and the likes the aspect, I love to tag onto that. Think about that as even just research can actually be a marketing tool. So the people who are vaguely interested could be your first potential customers and you don't know about that yet. Most people, they will go do the really hard work to maybe run interviews which is even more time consuming or do surveys. They have all these emails but they don't think about how do we nurture them to keep them engaged even if we are not launching a version of a prototype or an MVP later on.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, I always encourage um, founders uh, that when they're doing these interviews, whether they are online tools, whether they are um, face to face, uh, in whatever format, you know, even asking someone like we're all out and about and busy and we're in you know, co working spaces or at a bus stop, you know, or in a coffee shop. You know I've in a Starbucks once on one of their, in uh, in Vauxhall they have this great big um, communal table and I was sat there waiting to get to another meeting, um, thought go in for a coffee and I just was overhearing a couple of people speaking next to me who were seemingly working on a startup. Um, and I just piped in and then gave them a few comments and, you know, some feedback and, you know, they said, what are you doing? And I said, all right, fantastic. And so on the spot, just obviously I couldn't get out my, my interview questions and make it formal, but I thought of the top few questions I'd want to ask them from those, uh, list, uh, of survey questions and then just ask them and then mentally noted it and just said, um, okay, um, would you guys mind, you know, um, joining my mailing list? Yeah, love to. Right. And they're still on the mailing list today. Um, so at every opportunity, not only, you know, asking, you know, people, uh, surveying them informally rather than formally, uh, but ask them to join to your point, join your mailing list. And you can build up a mailing list pretty quickly. You know, we built up several hundred real fast. Um, but just anybody that we spoke to, inviting them to a landing page which just, you know, asks for email details and some basic information. So, yeah, a very valid point. And it's a start of a community that you're building. Right? Um, and then, you know, as it grows and they tell other people, etc. And on, on off it goes. And it's a shame that you get, you know, you see some founders who go through this process, get the product, a basic version of their product or an MVP out, and they got no audience. So hang on, haven't you spoken to, let's look back here. Haven't you spoken to 300 people? You told me how have none of them been invited to a mailing list? Which again, is free, you know, if you use mailchimp up to a certain point. Right. So this is not costing money. You don't need funding.

Speaker A: Exactly. You know, you don't need funding, especially when it comes to getting the, this type of traction that will eventually multiply. On that aspect, I've got one question. Um, in terms of how do you, how would you build a mailing list and get enough people interested when you are focusing more on a B2B? Because sometimes B2C reaching out to B2C customers could be different than reaching out, uh, to B2B customers. Before we get to that question, we're going to go through our quick firearm questions. So I've got a few questions that will help us to get into your head even. Okay, just to go and see there. I mean, I'm really excited.

Speaker B: This could be dangerous. Yes.

Speaker A: Warning everybody, don't go anywhere because you don't want to miss that. The first question is the most difficult one. Are you in early birds or a Night owl.

Speaker B: Uh, oh, that's. That's why I'm hesitating is because sadly, on both. Yes. So burning the candle at both ends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm often seen working late at night, um, just because I have a second wind or I will think of something after dinner and go, oh, I'll just jump on and do that and then get distracted. And then the next thing, you work until late at night. Um, but I definitely am an early bird at the same time. So, uh, that's kind of sitting on the fence, I realize. Sorry. But yeah, I am both sides.

Speaker A: There's no, there's no right or wrong. It's actually interesting to see how your energy level and how you manage that. Uh, and I use this question, in fact, to encourage founders to look differently at the 9 to 5 when you found that there's no Monday to Friday and there's no nine to five. So, uh, it's interesting to see how yours is not even just early bird and not just.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's not. No. I, I mean, I. Obviously I'm doing other work besides, you know, while we were getting mentor labs, my co founder, Liam and I were getting mental labs off the ground and built. Um, you know, we've both got our, our jobs, you know, uh, if you like to say our day jobs. Um, and, and that's. It's really challenging. Like 2023 for me was, you know, cut down on trips away. I'm always traveling cut down on, um, you know, social, uh, uh, events and get togethers and not seeing people that you would normally see friends and family as much. Um, and it was just, it was a bit of do or die and we, you know, it was like, you're either going to cut this out to make room for working on your new project, and that's what we've both had to do. And it's. It's been tough. Um, we've had our moments. You know, I'm not painting this in any sort of rosy format. We're just like every other founder where we've pulled our hair out, literally. Um, and. And, you know, just like we've had our moments of just despair and thinking, what. What are we doing? And, you know, then we had to m. You know, pick ourselves back up and we fell off the horse a few times along way. So don't worry. It's. It's normal for everyone.

Speaker A: Thanks for sharing that openly. Sometimes there's, uh, A lot of people underestimate the journey of, uh, being an entrepreneur, as many of us have gone through what you've described, Rich. And in fact, last episode, when I was speaking to, uh, the guest, Catherine Ann Reed, she mentioned that she went to a networking event, and someone at the event described being an entrepreneur, being a founder, as close to being a psychopath. Now, 100% agree on the word psychopath, but what I do like about that description is people who have a passion that, and go through a lot of sacrifices, and despite everything else that could be happening in their lives, they have a clear vision and they have the drive to. To go. But it doesn't mean that there we are not going through the highs and lows of wanting to build something. And the other reason why I really love what you just said and opening up so, you know, transparently to our audience. There's also the assumption that if you are someone who's been in the startup world, like you've had for several years, pretty much an expert, that the journey will be just straightforward. And a lot of people forget that there is still a journey, regardless of the experience that you've had in the past.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. You know, like, I was on a call on some office hours with one of our founders from the past cohort, and we're just talking about hustling. Um, and, you know, he was asking me, you know, something specific about, you know, how would I do this and that and that and get in contact with this person. And, you know, we jumped on LinkedIn and found that person and found a few avenues as to how to contact that company. Um, and I said, there's no magic formula. Like, I'm not sure if you're looking to me to go, hang on, I can click my fingers and make that happen because of my experience in the ecosystem. But, you know, those that know me know, you know, I've reached out to a lot of people lately, you know, to look at how we can collaborate, how we can just help each other. And the important thing is not, you know, not being the one always asking for something, but how you can help the other side is that the other party as well. So without going down a rabbit hole on how to network and partner up with people, but it's just, it's the same for all of us. You know, we've had our highs and we've had a lot of lows in this journey, and it's not easy. You know, we might have some extra insights into the ecosystem and maybe some more contacts perhaps, but it's just as hard for us to do this as it is for any founder Starting on

Speaker A: that note, uh, what is one mistake that you've made that founders should watch out for?

Speaker B: Um, just one.

Speaker A: Let's just stop at once.

Speaker B: Okay. I think, um, so my co founder Liam is a UX designer and I've got very much a product background in tech startups and I think we have built a beta and our tech partners call it beta plus or MVP plus because it's quite a substantial product and it's generally not the version you would probably see for a startup like us, but we do have the expertise in house as well as, um, a tech partner that has given us the ability to produce something a little bit more complex. And I feel we've even suffered from the putting too much into the product in terms of features and things. Uh, even though we had prototypes that we tested and got a lot of feedback on what, you know, founders wanted to see and so forth, um, it's a complex beta, you know, and I think we, you know, having our time again and I, not speaking out of school, my co founder is not here. But, you know, I, um, really do believe that, um, we could have trimmed things up and done things a little more leaner in terms of beta product we released.

Speaker A: Yeah, interesting to hear that because that's something I see a lot as well in startups. Is very easy to get excited, especially when you have the, uh, inside knowledge to run with that. The last question on the quick fire round is what is the best day of your professional life?

Speaker B: Oh, well, um, the best day.

Speaker A: Yes. And for anyone listening orich didn't get. I don't send those questions to my guests or. Rich is thinking really hard right now.

Speaker B: Yeah, I am. Of my career.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Um, I would like to think it was my realization that I wanted to work with startups. So I know that probably is a bit of a broad sort of response, but, um, I, I was on the. I was asked to join a founding team in Australia for it wasn't really a tech, more of a traditional sort of marketing consumer goods company. I was asked to join that. Um, I at the time had no idea what a startup was. Um, and I had the privilege of joining a small team and growing that company from scratch. I recall the, uh, CEO taking me out for dinner and us writing ideas down on napkins and things. Um, I came from that background and he'd heard, you know, my experience and he thought, I want this guy to be, um, on my founding team. Um, I was a kid, literally I was half my age, so I'm just going to Leave it at that. Um, but look, ten years, uh, of, you know, we grew that company and, you know, there was an exit, um, and everything we saw, everything I saw in my experience that I gained from starting a business from nothing to it turning over 50 million was incredible. And I think, you know, when, when that went, when there was the exit and the parent company, um, uh, the company that bought, uh, uh, uh, the company out was based here in the uk. And then they asked me to come over for a contract. And without getting into that detail, um, that was for a few years. And then I was like, well, okay, what do I do with myself? And that was when I actually spoke to a career coach and formally employed his services. And when he sat me down and said, have you ever thought of working for startups? And as I said, I had no idea what that was. And then he took me to a, um, startup event. And I just remember sitting there thinking, this is exactly what I want to do. That was about 10, 12 years ago, I think. 12 years ago. Um, and I was excited by the buzz. I was excited by people getting up and talking about the companies I were launching. And, you know, this is the tech side of things. Um, there were tech companies, some of them. There were some pictures at that event, and it was just like a light bulb going off in my own head going, I want to work in this sector. This is what excites me. Because this career coach could hear the excitement in my voice as I was telling the story about this company we started in Australia and how we grew it from nothing to what we grew it to. Um, and yeah, so I'm not sure if that's a bit of a long winded response. Yes, it was a long winded response, but you know that I was very excited to understand that I really want to work with new companies and founders and help them launch their business.

Speaker A: Thanks for taking us on the journey because I could actually see Rich changing age in my mind. I saw like a Netflix movie.

Speaker B: Lots of. Of hair.

Speaker A: Exactly, Lots of hair. And as you go into the startups, it is a world and the hair gets left

Speaker B: as the frustrations grew. No, you don't need funding. Not yet anyway.

Speaker A: And that's definitely the message for today. You don't need funding. Stop building and really focus on the customers and what you on. We're getting towards the end of the episode. Uh, but I cannot miss the opportunity of having Rich Christina here and not tackle, even very quickly tackle the. The challenge of validating or even being in the aviation space or stage of your startup when you are looking for a B2B. So Rich, what are your some advice that you can give to a startups? Uh, really struggling to figure out what are the best strategies to get companies especially when we want to look at interviews and contacts and just their interest even to add ah, them on the mailing list as you suggested earlier in this episode.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Look, I appreciate it. I'm more a B2C guy. Um, so I've put that caveat down but certainly have helped a lot of founders who are doing B2B um, especially you know like a SaaS product, et cetera. And I don't think it's anything that other that your audience wouldn't know already. And I come back to that comment about hustling which I had with the previous uh, founder before this interview. Uh, and you know you've got to hustle and that means doing everything like getting into commute. Like I spent most of the weekend trying to get into a whole bunch of Facebook groups and I got rejected by half of them because you know, I wasn't the right person and all that. That's, I'm, you know, come back to that, you know, conversation, uh, of you know, we're the same as everyone else but you know, it's getting into those community groups and getting trying. If you're, if you're a founder with a great product that you think is great and solving a great problem that other companies have, then go and speak about it, tell us why you think it's a problem and what you've discovered about this problem as such. Um, and look for community groups to have those discussions and start becoming the expert on that topic. Expert, um, and that goes without saying on LinkedIn and posting and writing blogs and posting about it and you soon will get picked up and notice that you know, you're the subject matter expert on this problem. Um, and you know there are a lot of um, groups on LinkedIn, Meetup, etc. Where you can go and speak or you could just post, create a basic landing page and start putting those posts on there like you're doing Nayeli. You've got a plethora of videos where you've got all that content. Now you become an expert, you know, once you start developing such content. And that to me would be the way to build an audience. And you know there is obviously the reach outs, you know. Hey Nayeli, I see you're, you're a mate with so and so who's a project leader of Xyz company. I'd love an introduction or, you know, a networking event is. I really can't say enough how important I was living at. I, I might as well not have had my, my flat at the time when I first, uh, you know, joined the ecosystem. I wouldn't hesitate to say I was at probably three or four network events a week. I met everyone I could meet. Um, and just, you know, and you know, again, without going down a rabbit hole, it's not to talk about how to network because there is a way to network, but just, you know, how can I help you? How can I? And Joe, when you come as the new kid on the block and you're green and go, hey, I'd love to work in the ecosystem and I know nothing about it, you're the expert nailing. Most of the time you're like, hey, I'm going to show you because you love to share your experience so you can come at it as green as that. Or once you get your footing, um, then start saying, well, how can I help you as well and how can we help each other? And then off it goes. You know, I've got several thousand connections on LinkedIn now, um, and there's usually someone I can find if someone needs to be introduced to someone. But yeah, it's, it's not easy. That's that there isn't any magic pill that you can take and go, all of a sudden I can build, um, you know, uh, you know, an audience of a thousand or two thousand companies but you know, without getting into a marketing discussion, because this is a marketing expert, um, ah, discussion. There's all sorts of things and offers and promotions and early offers and things that you can offer these companies should your product be interesting to them. So for the first early adopters or early companies coming on board, uh, or using a company as a test, I know specifically one of our alumni has doing that with three or four companies with his SaaS products. You know, what better way to test your product and give it to them? Say, hey, use this and tell us what you think. And in one case another one I just thought of, one of those customers is becoming an investor in one of our alumni's business. There's lots of ideas and lots of tricks. There's no one easy way, but it is a hustle.

Speaker A: Thanks. And I think you've actually shared quite a few. So if um, you're listening, you really want to get into the B2B space, stop listening and moving and doing whatever the hell you're doing. Take a pen and paper and write down all of the ideas that Rich has mentioned and go through them. And if you are stuck, uh, and you want to find experts that can help you insert some of those ideas and take you further, remember that Mentor Labs is an amazing platform where you can have a onetoone discussion with a mentor that is focused on helping you understand your idea, giving you idea brainstorm with you and moving you forward without having to worry about establishing a long, long term commitment when you first start. But of course if you want to, then Mental Platform can also support you with, with that and more. Thanks so much Rich for, for being a wonderful guest on um, this platform. And before we go, um, is there anything else that you want us to know about you, how to reach out to you and more importantly about the Mentor Labs launch?

Speaker B: Uh, thank you Nayeli for having me. It's been a fun and enjoyable discussion. You always uh, bring the fun to the discussions and make it really interesting. You're to going great host. Thank you. Um, so yeah, it's been a real pleasure to be here. Um, uh, just in case um, listeners want to know, we are Mentorlabs Tech T E C H. Uh, that's where you can find the platform. Um, and uh, yeah, basically the beta is out. Our desktop beta is ready so it's out there. Um, we're currently building the mobile responsive version in the next week or so. But yeah, that's where you'll find us. And uh, hopefully uh, founders can uh, can find the right mentor for them to help them get their uh, product launch.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks again to the others coming to this episode. And do remember that we go live once a week and if you have any questions specifically targeting product and platform, I'm already here to help you as I've done with several other startups. But do remember dream build and play. Let's design a happy and productive workplace playground together.