Last Friday, I attended the Group Mentoring with Llew Jury, at River City Labs. It was a great event that sent me home with some essential tools. The first one was the correct way to fill out the business model canvas. For me, this was a refresher. Still, it’s always good to remember that your focus should be a problem -> customer - > unique value proposition -> solution before moving on to other things. Many startups make the mistake of either trying to start with the solution and looking for a problem. Alternatively, having problems, solution and customers but not having a unique value proposition.

The other concept Llew Jury talked about was market product fit, instead of product-market fit. I think this is a very venture capitalist way of thinking about it. I have heard Steve Corlett express that he isn’t as concerned about a business’s product beyond it can effectively address the problem for which there is a market. I don’t think inventors and innovators want to hear, but it’s true. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one is willing to pay you for it, you can’t make a business out of it.

The completely new concept I learnt during the group mentoring was the SaaS Mission Matrix. Llew Jury credited Edward Ford’s Advance B2B Blog post on the topic. The matrix posits that the same sales strategy does not work on businesses of all size. You can’t be hands-on and in-person with a small business who have a meagre customer lifetime value. Likewise, you can’t be hands-off and automated with huge enterprises who are injecting millions of dollars into your business. So you need to work out what you are and focus on the sweet spots. I would like to kickoff a SaaS business one day, and I know that marketing can make or break, SaaS. So getting introduced to the SaaS Mission Matrix made the trip to attend worthwhile.

Following the SaaS Matrix, Llew went on to discuss marketing. It wasn’t anything new per se. But I liked how Llew laid it out (see photo). I need to start marketing Start with Tinni. So I need to start thinking about personnas, marketing channels, brand positioning etc.

One of the last things Llew covered was how to raise money. It flew by quickly. But the biggest take away was that sales speak louder than anything. But he also mentioned team building, and once again, personality tests made an appearance. Llew said that his venture firm uses the Belbin model of personalities. I am currently working on writing an article for Medium on personality tests. So I’ll talk about Belbin more there. But it fascinates me how big personality tests are in startup land.

Llew Jury ended the session with some book recommendation. He recommended Good to Great, Scaling Up and Secrets of Sand Hill Road. I will be adding them to be Audible list, Overall, it was a good session, and I would recommend attending the next one!