Fisher Steve - The startup equation : a visual guidebook for building your startup

Copyright 2016 by Steven Fisher and Ja-Na Duane. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-183237-3
MHID: 0-07-183237-8

The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-183236-6, MHID: 0-07-183236-X.

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All art in this book was created for The Startup Equation unless explicitly noted.

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This book is dedicated to Ja-Na.

She is on the cover with me but is really the reason this book is written
and in your hands. She is my wife, my life, my best friend. And from my
two page wedding vows, I reaffirm to always be your partner in fun
and adventure, your lover, your sounding board, your co-pilot, your sous
chef, your copyeditor, and your best friend. And to always flush the
toilet and remember to put the seat down when I am done.
Love you, babe.
Steve

Love you too.
Ja-Na

In Memory of Karl Baehr
A Teacher, A Mentor, A Friend. And yes. Profit is good.

Contents

Acknowledgments

W e want to thank our parents (SteveTerry, Carol, and Joanne, Ja-NaMike, Leslie, and Cindy) who really dont read business books so they wont know they are in here unless someone tells them.

We want to thank Caleb Sexton who was the creative glue who put up with Steve and interpreted his haiku and sketches to turn them into graphics that made sense.

We want to thank Kate Rutter who really got the essence of the Startup Equation and so clearly and quickly created sketchnotes that anchored each of the element chapters.

We want to thank Britt Raybould who patiently proof-read, edited, and re-edited our book to prevent this from becoming Ulysees 2 , but without the stream-of-consciousness style that made that book great. She is awesome.

We want to thank our agent Carole Jelen at Waterside who understood the vision of this book and helped us find the perfect home for it.

We want to thank the team at McGraw-Hill, including Casie Vogel, Peter McCurdy, and most importantly, Donya Dickerson, who has been patient, creative, and just plain awesome.

We also want to thank caffeine and sugar, two elements that are not in the Startup Equation, but both helped us write this book.

Finally, we want to thank all of the entrepreneurs out there for whom this book is written. You are the pioneers, the explorers, and the rebels who create things for the world we never could imagine. You make this world a better place. This book is for you.

Foreword

W hy dont you just fix that?

It was a late summer night at the office. Many of my friends were on romantic dinners or exploring Colorado on their bikes. I, however, was tucked away in an office drinking warm beer with some other stressed out software developers. It struck me that all these startup friends had never worked together. These three developers are now lifelong friends, but before that night had not really had a chance to work on something together. One of them had a problem with their newly launched application, and I happened to know just the right person to fix the problem who joined us at the office that night. There should be a way we can work together on projects.

Why dont you just fix that?

I could have left it there. I could have just passed on it. It could have joined thousands of ideas in the trash can. For some reason that night, I jumped to action and within an hour, I had a website, ticketing system, and blog post with just a single line written, Lets do this.

Looking back, the launch was both structurally embarrassing and completely perfect. No logo. Under 200 words describing it. No venue. No partners. No sponsors. No money. I wasnt known nor very connected. I chose the name Startup Weekend, which was so generic that people claimed to have heard of it before we had even done anything. Even with all these obvious flaws, something big started happening: people were actually signing up. We had five people. Then ten people. Then thirty. Then, just three weeks later we had eighty-eight people show up to a small office above a bike shop in Boulder, Colorado.

Startup Weekend was born.

We all gathered at 6 p.m. to discuss what we all wanted to build. Ideas went around about event organizing, finding friends, parking, trail mapping, and voting were presented. This group was having a hard time building consensus, until we began discussing a product idea. Thats when we struck gold. Thats when we had consensus.

We made a voting application for groups just like us. Or we tried to. Throughout the weekend we picked a name (VoSnap), selected a programming language (Ruby on Rails), created a marketing plan, and created a group cheer (voooooooo-snap). We had all the functional things of a startup, in just one weekend, which was against everything we were told was possible. But it worked, because we had the basic elements of our own Startup Equation.