How do you identify opportunities?

According the Steve Blank, McClure, and the many of the mentors/VC/advisors in Silicon Valley, this notion of hitting the ground and asking your customers seems to be the route. Customer development is a huge step in identifying problems as well as opportunities. User-centric design and product seems to be a winning strategy.

But what questions do you ask, how do you phrase questions, how do you conduct usability test, and how do you objectively find opportunities.

If I asked, “would you like to see pictures of nearby bars and restaurants when you searched for a rental?”. 9/10 people would say yes. But if you phrased it, “would you rather see pictures of nearby bars or floor plan information”, the answers would be drastically different. I also like forcing negatives, eg “What are three things you dislike about this idea?”

When doing customer development, seems vital to be able to objectively solicit information from users.

On the other side, many entrepreneurs believe much can be determined by data and research of trends. How many people are searching key terms, how have other startups have launched the feature set successfully, etc.

Personally, I’m a fan of just asking a sampling of your customer base.

“It takes only five users to uncover 80 percent of high-level usability problems” Jakob Nielsen

So elite companies tend to poach when seeking top talent.  This is because the best people are usually not unemployed or surfing craigslist for jobs.

On that note, why do VC’s not poach more?  (Not for employees, but for investments)  Would seem logical that startups seeking investments are less likely to be rockstars than startups that do not need investment.  Again, there is actually a lot of complexity involved and yes, most startups need capital just to get off the ground.  But why not try to reach out to entrepreneurs/startups at a greater clip than just relying on deal flow from inbound pitches.  I know this happens, but it seems more passive.

In a big city like SF with tons of students and entrepreneurs, you would think there would be more late night spots to work and study. Been trying to find the best ones, so I’m going to keep an ongoing list of spots open late in the city.  Here is also a pretty thorough list: http://www.posthoc.com/24hours.htm  (Will update as I visit them)

24 hours

Laurel Heights – Starbuck – http://www.yelp.com/biz/starbucks-coffee-san-francisco-110

Polk Gultch – Bob’s Donuts – http://www.yelp.com/biz/bobs-donut-and-pastry-shop-san-francisco

Noe Valley – Happy Donuts – http://www.yelp.com/biz/happy-donuts-san-francisco-2

Inner Richmond – Allstar Donuts & Sandwiches – http://www.yelp.com/biz/allstar-donuts-and-sandwich-san-francisco-2

Laurel Heights – Lucky Penny – http://www.yelp.com/biz/lucky-penny-restaurant-san-francisco

SOMA – Starbucks – http://www.yelp.com/biz/starbucks-coffee-san-francisco-136

Union Square – Cafe Mason – http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-mason-san-francisco

Open till 2 am

Union Square – Sugar Cafe – http://www.yelp.com/biz/sugar-cafe-san-francisco

Open till Midnight

Open till 10 pm

Western Addition – Cafe Abir - http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-abir-san-francisco

Inner Sunset – Blue Danube – http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-danube-coffee-house-san-francisco

Had dinner with a few entrepreneurs/ a few VC folks; group included the COO of italki,com, CEO of Circolos.com, folks from DFJ… My takeaway is that entrepreneurship in China is a vibrant and growing opportunity, especially for ABC’s.

Seems that business models that work in the US are being quickly brought to China and working well. Literally, exact knockoffs of the US sites down to the pixel. Makes me wonder how much is about management teams, iterations, marketing, branding, community outreach, etc… when it just seems that the marketplace is the core component here in China. Be a fast follower on a solid product and maybe that’s enough.

Other technologies that I think can do well as a knockoff in China:

Vark.com
Techmeme.com (or any meme site)
Anything mobile. Cell phones are everywhere.
Yelp.com

Pretty impressed that the Chinese gov’t would block both Facebook and Twitter.  I understand the “logic” behind blocking Twitter (and youtube); it’s a tool to broadcast ideas.  But Facebook is similar to email, more a communication tool to your network than a broadcast tool to the world.

The web is still an equalizer, but seems to come with some caveats here in China.

14 hour flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai was a bit exhausting, but I’m finally here in Shanghai.  Literally at a Coffee Bean near Jing An Si (Jing An Tempe).  It’s been 3 years since I’ve been back to China, 6 years since I lived here, and it’s changes quite a bit.  But here are some random notes in Day 1:

1)  Sat next to a US citizen who’s teaching english in Shanghai.  He pays $60 a month for his apartment.  Might as well be stealing from the Chinese.

2)  After sitting on the runway for an hour, they announced we could get off the plane.  The entire plane went up in a loud cheer.  Chinese people – 1 Swine Flu – 0.

3)  Taxi driver spent the entire 45 minute ride explaining to me the system behind Shangna’s… chinese brothels.  I proceeded to tell him that is illegal in the US, and he prompted relied in Chinese, “That is stupid.”

Man, there are lots of people here in China.  I forget what it’s like to get bumped on a minute by minute basis.

As the NAA Conference nears, I’ve been thinking about questions the industry would want to ask Tony Hsieh, Jeremiah Owyang, and Pete Flint. Instead of guess what the space would want to ask,

What would you want to ask Tony Hsieh, Jeremiah Owyang, and Pete Flint?

Put your questions in the comments below and I’ll try to ask it during the Thought Leadership panel Saturday morning.

See you all this week!

About the Panelists:

Panelist #1 – Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Tony Hsieh has grown Zappos.com from $1.6 million in 2000 to over a $1 billion in revenue in 2008. Before Zappos.com, Tony co-founded LinkExhange which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million. After LinkExchange, Tony founded a startup incubator called Venture Frogs, which invests in early stage startups.

Panelist #2 – Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research

Jeremiah Owyang is a senior analyst at Forrest Research and a leading expert on social computing, social media and interactive marketing. Jeremiah’s blog was ranked 19th by Advertising Age, he has consulted for large brands such as Hitachi Data Systems, and he is a speaker and educator at many conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW and CES.

Panelist #3 – Pete Flint, Founder of Trulia.com

Flint founded Trulia.com in 2005 and it now is one of largest and fastest growing real estate Web sites in the United States. Trulia.com has over 5 million unique visitors a month and has raised more than $33 million in funding. Prior to starting Trulia.com, Pete was part of the original launch team of lastminute.com, Europe’s largest online travel company where he was responsible for Interactive Marketing and Business Development. During his 5 years with the company he helped it to grow to more than 2,000 employees in 12 countries and over $1billion in annual transactions. The company was acquired by Travelocity in 2005 for more than $1.1 billion. Pete earned his Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Oxford and his MBA from Stanford University.

The recent months, the hot topic in the multi-family housing industry has been social media. There are those who understand it, those who are experimenting with it, and those who deny it’s existence.

As we gear up for the NAA educational conference and the social media panel with Tony Hsieh, Jeremiah Owyang, and Pete Flint, I have noticed that there are some people that have never heard of large companies like Zappos.com. 

So to reward those who know what Zappos.com is and want to see Tony, Jeremiah, and Pete discuss Social Media, but cannot afford tickets, NAA has graciously sponsored a contest to give away 1 FREE NAA CONFERENCE TICKET and 50% off 1 NAA CONFERENCE TICKET.

Enter the contest and see if you are a social media guru.