Name: Nail It then Scale It
ISBN: 9780983723608

Nail It then Scale It

Why do most new businesses fail, yet a few entrepreneurs have a habit of winning over and over again? The shocking discovery of years of research and trial is that most startups fail by doing the "right things," but doing them out of order. In other words, human nature combined with our entrepreneurial drive puts us on autopilot to become part of the 70% to 90% of ventures that fail. From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the Nail It Then Scale It method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate.

What Hacker News says

nprateemApr 2023

You might consider how a company (or individual) ought to decide which products to develop in the first place. Ideas are cheap. Companies often have a portfolio in different stages of development. Alternatively individuals need to decide which to focus on. In larger companies, product development typically includes cross-functional teams. While ideas can come from anywhere, without validating the market (and therefore understanding the market) odds of success are slim. Therefore marketers often aim to validate an idea's potential before moving through to MVP and staged releases.

You seem to believe that marketing's job is just to promote products. It's not. Under competent management, marketing should be involved with ideas early in the process and feed into the product teams to help them build things people want. Then, through iterative feedback, products can be improved to achieve product-market fit. Anyway, plenty of books on the subject. I like "Nail it then scale it". Good luck.

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sotuMar 2023

Atlas shrugged, Minto Pyramid Principle, Nail it then Scale it

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golfinho23Oct 2022

Nail It Then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation Book by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom

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papaver-somnambJan 2022

Founder of Vivid, maker of Vivid Trace for Atlassian Jira and Confluence. Landing page:

https://vivid-inc.net

I'd like to put this up (primarily the landing page) for constructive critique. Hopefully there is an opportunity for all of us to learn here.

While there are some people behind the scenes and many outsourcers, I have been doing all marketing by myself. Crucially, I recognize that I have a severe lack of skill in this department. I've been running this business for 8 years and have "enough" skills in value creation, customer development & support, etc. The product has traction, it solves real problems for currently paying customers. BUT after reading much Indie Hackers etc. and HN items on marketing like

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29538355

marketing feels like a gaping void to me. And that deficiency has been acting as a dis-abler to the business. So, last week, I decided to dive into the deep end of marketing.

The current landing page was completed several months ago in 2021 October. Perhaps it's a reasonable image of my current thinking and abilities. Transforming customer problems into messaging was interesting and even fun, but I still find writing to be excruciating. I believe in focusing on the desired outcomes for people, and in truthful representation of reality; so that should be on the page. The main purpose (CTA or Call To Action) is for the reader to start a 30-day free trial. The landing page content is structured to be later divided into targeted landing pages, one per profession (software dev, QA tester, lead, etc.), and also one per vertical (insurance, banking, manufacturing, and so on) where current customers are (also thinking case studies here). Each landing page will harmonize well with targeted SEO and ads.

Point of interest: This is how I have grown in terms of awareness of marketing, off the top of my head:

Early 2010s: Importance of SEO, on-page SEO (WWW), "The SEO Periodic Table", Google Webmaster / Search Console (or whatever it was called). Business Model Canvas. Customer Development (marketing materials speak in the customers' own language). Book "Nail It then Scale It" by Nathan Furr. Pirate metrics, AIDA. Customer Experience, and in particular Customer Journey and touchpoints.

Late 2010s: Features/Advantages/Benefits (FAB). Importance of positioning & declaring your niche amongst the competition, Book "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" by Al Ries. Jobs To Be Done. Headline writing. Tone, phrasing.

This week: Initiated Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns to build up high-intent top-of-funnel leads. Book: "The 1-Page Marketing Plan" by Allan Dib (pragmatic + really good so far), "Obviously Awesome" by April Dunford.

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MarioTAug 2021

I'm a founder of a SaaS company and can provide some insight that I am surprised is not really written clearly in this thread yet!

There's three types of innovation.. 1. What you think people want 2. What they tell you they want 3. What they actually need

Most startups die because their product strategy is #1, the chances your view of the world is going to be adopted by people with many different circumstances is very low. The few think, lets go talk to people, but then die due to misdirection.. customers aren't PM's, they dont know how to solve problems but they know what their problems are.

so you must figure out what do people actually need..

You have two ways (well technically 3) to validate your idea 1. Quantitative 2. Qualitative 3. Resegment an existing market (questionable if you can skip traditional validation but your chances are better here than 1 or 2 above)

If you have funding, you can do quantitative. Build stuff and get it in front of your audience with paid acquisition/marketing.

#2 is the best if you want to be a scientist about things. Learn Jobs to be Done, start conducting interviews, find the problem folks have.. figure out if its a priority and a pattern.. there's lots of good JTBD literature out there, read it all.

#3 - segment an existing category. Take form building for example, you can build a form builder with limited features for a niche audience.. higher ed? (Qualtrics anyone?)

Hopefully this just scratched the tip of the iceberg for you and gives you some direction!

Just to clarify, qualitative research is less costly per dollar but does cost time. Check out the book "Nail it then scale it".

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user_agentJun 2020

This book is going to help you a lot with establishing whether you really can do it or maybe only have been fooling yourself:

Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation, Nathan Furr & Paul Ahlstrom

It's basically a unique primer on the exact topic you've been struggling with. I would buy it even if the price was like 10k USD. I think that speaks for itself.

I wish you luck!

No doubt that clarity of thinking and weighting risks is a no. 1 priority.

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