“Build it, and they will come” is a dangerous mindset in the startup world. Even if you create a great product, building a successful company around it can be nuanced and challenging. In addition to product development, you need to find and prove product-market fit—then repeat and scale through sales and marketing.
About the Speaker:
Chris Gardner is a partner at Underscore VC, a Boston-based firm investing in bold B2B software founders.
Chris is a resident builder, happiest when he’s hands-on with a project. At Underscore VC, that means identifying and investing in uniquely qualified founders, and then helping to build their company in any way needed: networker, salesperson, mentor, coach, psychotherapist, even drinking buddy.
His tinkering and building extend to his personal life, where you’ll find him getting hands-on in any manner of project. Car maintenance? He has a lift in his garage. Music? He’s recording an album in his barn studio. Cooking? His BBQ ribs are the stuff of legend. In short, if he can get his hands on it, he can master it (except golf; don’t ever ask Chris to play golf).
Though he’s known as a FinTech entrepreneur, Chris is a self-professed nerd and technology omnivore who, prior to Underscore VC, spent nearly three decades at companies focused on speech recognition, video streaming, mobile marketing, mobile messaging, e-billing, and document management. His last five roles all resulted in exits that created good outcomes for employees and investors.
Most recently, Chris was an executive at PayPal and led their P2P, PayPal Here, and In-Store payments products after Paydiant, the company he co-founded and built, was acquired by PayPal in 2015. Prior to that, Chris was CMO and head of products at ExtendMedia, a video content delivery and commerce platform software company that was acquired by Cisco in 2010; SVP of Products and Marketing at m-Qube, North America’s leading premium SMS mobile payments provider that was acquired by Verisign in 2006; and VP of Products and Marketing at edocs, Inc., an e-billing, payments, and customer self-service company that was acquired by Siebel Systems in 2004.
Chris earned a BA in Communications from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst a really long time ago.
Want to dive deeper into Startup Secrets? Explore the interactive Startup Secrets Sandbox for frameworks, insights, and tools to help you build and scale your startup: https://bit.ly/3Cwv0nK
Great video. I am impressed and it is so useful for me
When my brother and I are praying for Rain 🌧️, we realised we need a product that scales to "Bearing Technology".
#Knots
When my brother and I are praying for Rain 🌧️, we realised we need a product that scales to "Bearing Technology".
#Knots
Thanks for the shout out 🙂
Present from Indonesian prof
How does this concept apply in hard engineering fields like mechanical and chemical engineering? You're trying to build a product through coding and product sales but create a whole manufacturing process to produce a product.
I would not listen to a word this guy says.
The key framework introduced is the SLIP model, advocating that products should be Simple to install and use, have Low initial cost, provide Instant and ongoing value, and Play well in the ecosystem. Furthermore, its important identifying a minimum viable segment to ensure early, repeatable success!
very enlightening, confirmed a lot of notions I already had and added several more on top
Maybe I am slow but I did not understand the Youtube reference in the beginning.