It Takes More than a Great Product

As one of the judges at the recent Stadia Ventures Fall Pitch Day, I was blown away by the caliber of sportstech entrepreneurs pitching so professionally and passionately their unique and interesting solutions to the "divine irritations" that inspired their startups. It's no easy road as a founder, and I hope they felt our immense respect and support for their efforts and their missions. They were open and eager to learn from those of us with specific expertise and experience that might assist their process. The warm camaraderie and genuine fellowship amongst all the founders, judges, mentors, and investors left me agreeing with the inspiring Scott Shirley, CEO/Co-Founder of Pledge-It: we have all found "our people". We are competitive athletes and/or avid sports fans, who also know tech – I’m learning it’s more of a rare combination than I knew. The event inspired me to share my insights from the frontlines of leadership for a variety of sportstech startups, where I have significant scar tissue of my own, from raising money to pivoting business models to leading globally distributed teams and more. Paying it forward here.

Bringing your great product, maybe even your MVP, to those first customers is indeed exhilarating. Yet it takes much more than a great product to build a scalable startup. Beyond the incredible product you’ve developed, here are 4 things critical to reaching your startup's full potential:

1.    Customers: Pay close attention to user experience and customer support. As a founder, you simply don’t have the bandwidth to speak with every customer who might have a few questions or need handholding, though it’s helpful at first to be this front-line person for sure. You cannot rely on your business development or general ops team to have the patience, compassion and deep product knowledge needed to manage a frustrated customer in panic mode, most likely in a mobile environment, on a field or court. The best UX/UI and customer support people are worth their weight in gold. Apple has set the standard for UX and tech support, and the bar is high. Happy customers who will share their positive experience with your business with their peers is the best marketing there is.

2.    Employees: In addition to rockstar UX and CS people, bring leaders and staffers onto your team who have expertise that you do not have and diverse lived experiences that lead to better decision-making and more innovation. Fill in for your blind spots. Treat them as you would want to be treated. Fact: no one knows everything about everything. You can only be CEO, CTO, COO, CMO, CRO and CFO for so long before the wheels aren’t moving forward very fast and you’re too bogged down outside of your comfort zone to keep your nose above the water. Do what you do best, whatever that might be, and inspire everyone else to do what they do best.

3.    Brand: Why do you drive the car you drive? Why do you wear the running shoes you wear? Why do you drink your favorite beer? Because the brand speaks to you, and yes you love the product. Too many sportstech startups talk too much about the What instead of the Why. Tell a story. Resonate with me emotionally. Why do I need your product? What personal goals of mine do you help me attain? What problems do I have that you uniquely solve? Engage prospective customers with deep human truths, not just product truth. Marketing 101 may not come naturally to tech entrepreneurs, but again, fill in for your blindspots and don’t overwhelm your prospective customer with technical info that they just don't need to know to make their purchase decision. People make emotional decisions first, then they rationalize their decisions with logic.

4.    Smart Money: It’s critical to take in capital not only from your friends and family, but also from experienced strategic investors with domain expertise in your own space who become very valuable board members. They will be there not only to support you, but also to hold you accountable to milestones that they know must be hit to truly scale. They will share war stories of survival, how to stay strong in the midst of any one of a barrage of challenges you will face, and be there to talk you off the ledge more than once. Startups that are proud to be bootstrapping may survive and succeed as small businesses, but without enough capital to scale what they’re doing well quickly, without the much needed experience to scale, their growth is inhibited. The best investors and board members will care deeply for what you’re building, know your marketplace well and be your biggest cheerleaders, as they will usually dramatically succeed only if you do too.

Yes, product matters. Arguably more than any of these other things, as without it, there is no business. Product is the #1 experience a customer can have with a brand. Yet, even as you continually learn and iterate, fail fast and move on, pivot where you must... product alone won’t bring you grand success. If your customers don’t evangelize the product to their peers, if your employees don’t feel your respect and loyalty, if your brand stands for nothing, and you don’t have the smart board of investors with deep domain expertise in your space, you may ultimately succeed, but more as a small business than a truly scalable startup.