Week #7 ODNC - Eye on the Capstone
Hi, I’m Kavir! Here's recapping Week #7 of ODNC1.
If you're new here, I’ll be chronicling the 10 weeks of ODNC1 with key takeaways of events, noteworthy quotes, and my perspective while I build in public. Subscribe to get updates:
We're entering the home stretch of ODNC1 after getting in some building and shipping reps. Now the conversations are centering around the capstone project that is due by March 21st!
It’s the true test of this program to be able to ship something meaningful within 10 weeks — all while balancing various aspects of work and life. A goal that is made infinitely easier with no-code.
In the midst of all this, we had a Fireside chat with April Dunford, who’s the author of the book on positioning, Obviously Awesome. Here are 3 takeaways from it! Enjoy:
April Dunford
What is positioning?
Positioning is the framing of your product and giving it context.
April does a wonderful job of simplifying the concept of positioning. Positioning is nothing but context. Everyone has a frame of reference that they try to make sense of the world.
If you're in the startup world, you must’ve heard the phrases: Uber for X, Airbnb for X. You might think they're outdated now. But they excelled at giving the product a frame of reference that others understood, which is what positioning is.
On the mechanics of launching
Launch is not a day.
April goes on to break it down like this:
Pre-Launch: Priming the audience (via influencers, etc.).
Launch: Hype days. PR releases. Etc.
Post-Launch: Continue Marketing Campaign.
Momentum-Launch: Talk about successes.
Post-Post-Launch: "One more thing..."
Imagine resting all your hopes on one day. It's a mindset which adds undue pressure. You should ship quickly and often. David Siegel, CEO of Glide gave us these insights in Week #4 about his YC days.
Launch as soon as possible. Ask yourself what prevents me from doing it tomorrow. If you don’t have a good answer, just do it tomorrow.
On being flexible with positioning
Early founders should be open minded about what they're building, and not fall in love w/ ideas, so they can position their product in the way that best matches customer needs.
This one is key. It’s very easy to fall in love with the solution rather than the problem. Customers don’t care about your obsession with the product. They only care whether they are able to make sense of it and that the solution creates value for them.
If you want to catch more quotes from the chat, check out Jelmer Pe's notes and read April's guest post on Lenny's Newsletter.
My Build in Public Journey
Last week I launched Ycprep.app to the world. This week, I shared some “Build in Public” stats and learnings of my launch on Twitter.
What's up for me this week:
Make progress on the Slack onboarding bot using Autocode
Ship v1 of the Landing page for the capstone project
Outreach to 3 founders in the space
I wanted to share another reflection of the Global Build Weekend, this time from ODP fellow, Godwin Chan.
That’s it for this week! See you next time.
Follow me on Twitter @KavirKaycee!
Subscribe to get this delivered straight to your inbox