THE Successful Startup Guide, From A Startup Incubator Program Manger

📲 The Cold Open

Lessons from the week.

Launch Letter has officially gone international! I made the journey safe and sound to study abroad in Spain! Unfortunately, the entrepreneurship side of things has been on the back burner this week because of my travels. To keep Launch Letter rolling, I took the time to reach out to Eli Finn, the Program Manager of SJSU’s SpartUp Incubator and asked him some questions!

He shared with me many of the most valuable lessons he’s learned running a startup incubator. Among them are how to start, crucial skills, and common mistakes. Stay tuned for all this and updates on my goals!

🗞️ The Eli Finn Interview

Wisdom from the Program Director at SJSU’s SpartUp Incubator.

1. What do you think are the first steps someone should take once they have an idea? What are the most common mistakes and successes you see from early stage startups?

There are a lot of different and valid ways to get started, but I think the biggest hurdle people get stuck on is lack of real world action. Try to fall in love with working on the idea, not talking about it.

Over planning can be a real killer. Put things out there, talk to people (Preferably not your friends, at least not ONLY friends). Find out WHO will pay you, and then figure out what you can give them that will make them want to pay. Get started on something that people can test, and get feedback as soon as you can. 

The most often success I see is getting users early, like really early. That opens up a world of feedback, which is the quickest way in my opinion to do something that helps people.

2. Whats one or two crucial skills that you've seen from successful founders at the incubator? How should people go about developing them?

The best skill to have is to be really good at talking to people, especially customers. The book The Mom Test is really fantastic to learn more about that area. One thing I hear people asking a lot is "what if I had X that could do Y...". You just get a lot of crappy feedback/validation. People will just smile and nod, and lead you down the wrong path.

One of my other favorite skills is saying yes. Somebody asks you to go to a founder dinner with them? Go. Somebody wants to pay you to solve a problem that isn’t exactly what you set out to do? Give it a shot. Just keep saying yes to even the smallest opportunities and good will follow

3. What are the most common pitfalls you see that stop projects from becoming successful? How should you avoid them?

Lack of a really strong value proposition, especially to a customer base that has money. Being a university incubator, a lot of people are working on student-facing problems. Those are definitely interesting and important, but it is a really hard market to make work. Students typically have little money to spend, and the stuff they do spend on is typically out of the area that incubator startups are usually in.

4. Any general networking advice? People talk about it a lot, but what does productive networking really look like?

Go to as many things as possible, ask more about others than you talk about yourself, and try not to be a "desperate" networker. A lot of people start going to networking events when they NEED a job, or NEED investment, but that puts you at a pretty big disadvantage. If you can be genuine and talk about what you’re interested in, people are way more likely to want to connect.

(P.S. I edited the answers a little bit, but the essence is still the same)

(P.P.S Go checkout Eli on LinkedIn! I’m sure he’d be happy to elaborate on anything if you reached out)

✅ Goal Progress

This week, I haven’t made much progress on my two goals. Getting adjusted to study abroad here in Spain has been very demanding, and I haven’t found the time (outside of writing this edition) to work on it in a meaningful way.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a plan. I have a roadmap for the AI text tool all laid out, and hope to integrate with the OpenPhone API to make it more seamless by incorporating the context of each specific client for a given conversation.

On the Launch Letter side of things, I want to try and grow through mutual partnerships (Like the one in this weeks edition!) Theres a lot of great people with great communities out there, who I think can benefit from Launch Letter, so I need to up my networking game!

Expect more experimentation with the format over these next 5 weeks to see what clicks and where I want to take Launch Letter in the future.

🚗 Fast Four

Four quick bullet points to think about!

• 🧰 Tool: Less of a tool, more of a suggestion. Color code your calendar app of choice. It helps everything click in my brain and its much easier to look at.

• 🧠 Mindset: Step outside your comfort zone. You’re more capable than you think and you’ll thank yourself later for pushing yourself to grow.

• 🔥 Build Idea: Make a location tracking app for study abroad programs at various universities. Find My is clunky, and universities might want a more permanent solution to track their students and their safety abroad.

• 📈 A Mistake From The Last Week: I only packed one extra set of clothes in my carry on, and of course the airline lost my main luggage. Fortunately it arrived a few days later, but I’ll definitely bring two extra sets from now on!