Advice From The Greatest Marketer and The Inventor of the Web Browser
Nugget from Gary Halbert and Marc Andreessen
Hello Friend!
I think today’s nugget is not only valuable, but it’s interesting because we have a completely marketing person (Gary Halbert) and a completely product person (Marc Andreessen) fully converging in their views regarding the most important thing in a startup.
For now, try to think what’s most important: product quality, team, or market?
👤 Doers
💡Nugget
🟠 Gary Halbert:
As you know, once in a while, I give a class on copywriting and/or selling by mail. One of the questions I like to ask my students is: "If you and I both owned a hamburger stand and we were in a contest to see who would sell the most hamburgers, what advantages would you most like to have on your side?"
The answers vary. Some people say they would like to have the advantage of having superior meat from which to make their hamburgers. Others say they want sesame seed buns. Others mention location. Someone usually wants to be able to offer the lowest prices.
And so on.
Anyway, after my students are finished telling what advantages they would most like to have, I say to them: "O.K., I'll give you every single advantage you asked for. I, myself, only want one advantage and, if you will give it to me, I will whip the pants off of all of you when it comes to selling burgers!"
"What advantage do you want?" they ask.
"The only advantage I want," I reply, "is A STARVING CROWD!"
What I am trying to teach you here is to constantly be on the lookout for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or at least hungry!) for some particular product or service.
🟠 Marc Andreessen:
The only thing that matters for a new startup...
I’ll assert that *market* is the most important factor in a startup’s success or failure.
Why?
In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup.
The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along. The product doesn’t need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn’t care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product.
In short, customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is to actually answer the phone and respond to all the emails from people who want to buy.
"Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter."
- Sam Altman (from his blogpost How To Be Successful)
I think this idea from Sam Altman can be applied here in the sense of spending more time on choosing the right market, work until you get a viable product and then test it against your targeted market. If there are sales or any kind of expressed interest, keep working on refining the product! If there is no market signal, try something new or ditch that specific project.
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of July 2024) contains nearly 2,000 timeless ideas (sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs — captured on books, interviews/podcasts and articles).
I call this Database the Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”. So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
💥 Stuff I Loved
I’m back in Barcelona! But on my stop in Madrid I spent some time with my good friend Eric Ramos, who recently started a Podcast and we recorded a conversation on his studio. Here’s a short clip of our conversation!
Happy Friday ;)
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!