#ac14

Not-lead characters that I adore beyond reason: An Advent Calendar

Day 19: Denny (Ralph Richardson) in The Citadel [1938]

 - Happy Birthday Ralph! (19th December 1902 - 10th October 1983)

Let's face it, it's a peach of a role, but I'm not sure anyone else could have wrung such erratic joy from it. The Citadel is a pretty worthy film, so it's good to have Ralph being his eccentric self all over it, in nice counterpoint to Donat's youthful earnestness, but what's really glorious about Denny is that he's both jester and conscience at the same time. If he were just a drunken wastrel it would be funny but not touching, but he's a man who has ideas and ideals, who gets his hands dirty, who wants to improve things. He's all direct action: he'll blow up a sewer with home-made nitro-glycerine, but it's because the water's filthy and spreading typhoid and the council won't do a thing about it. 

Not-lead characters that I adore beyond reason: An Advent Calendar

Day 14 : Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles) in Compulsion [1958]

You knew Orson was going to turn up at some point in this advent calendar, didn’t you? Unlike that other prince of the supporting role (Peter Lorre) not many of Orson’s characters hold a place in my heart, and while I spent a good day arguing with myself about whether Harry Lime is a lead role or not (pros: title character, everyone constantly talking about him, show-stealer, evil yet magnetic; cons: minimal screen time) and deciding hell yeah of course he is (also, I adore Orson’s performance but Harry IS despicable), it wasn’t hard to choose my fave supporting role.

Compulsion is a cracker of a film, all crisp black and white and seething with ambiguity and amorality, and of course Dean Stockwell’s face is very pretty. And then it turns into something else entirely with the introduction of Jonathan Wilk. Up to then it treads the same ground as Rope (albeit more stylishly, and for me, all round more interestingly); then suddenly we’re into courtroom drama and ethics and the morality of the death penalty, argued beautifully and with great humanity and weariness by a convincingly aged-up Orson.

Not-lead characters that I adore beyond reason: An Advent Calendar

Day 13 : Travis (Breckin Meyer) in Clueless [1995]

Ah, Clueless. There are few high school films that have even one boy I’d like to hang out with for much time, but Clueless has three; Christian (for the classic film fangirling, obvs), Josh for pretty much everything including boyfriend duties, and Travis for, um, also boyfriend duties?

You’ve got an idea for a startup – good for you. What most people don’t realise is that ideas are worth next to nothing.

  The majority of startups change their idea markedly between start and success. What you really need to focus on is the problem your idea addresses. Make sure that, above all, you’re solving a real problem.

  Focus on the problem and see that your idea is one possible ‘solution’ of many. And whilst it might be the ‘perfect’ solution in your mind, you ought to be open to changing your idea should the market demand it. Now, if the problem you’re trying to solve is something big – world hunger, say – whilst commendable, it’s rather difficult to tackle directly.

  What you want to do first is try and find a small subset, a niche if you will, of the problem to solve. In the instance of world hunger, you might try focusing on hunger in a particular region, group of people, or period of time (think a ‘world hunger hour’ initiative).

  Chances are your problem is a little closer to home, maybe something you’ve experienced personally. It’s important that the problem isn’t too personal, meaning it’s not a problem experienced by only you and two other people around the world (unless of course those two other people are billionaires willing to part with small fortunes to solve said problem). In other words, make sure that there is a market for your problem.

  Don’t get too caught up in the size of the market and all that jazz, for now, rough estimates (such as big, really big, ginormous) will do the trick. Above all, make sure you’re at least reasonably passionate about solving the problem. Startups are marathons, and it will be passion that sees you through to the end.

  OK. So you’ve got your mind around thinking about your idea in terms of the problem it solves, and you're reasonably confident it’s a real problem shared by others. Time to validate that assumption by doing what's known in startup parlance as ‘getting out of the building’. You need to find people who suffer from the problem you’re trying to solve.

  You want to find out if they do indeed suffer from said problem, how big a problem it is in their lives, and how they currently go about solving the problem – be it using a competitor's solution, taking a different route to avoid facing the problem, or hacking together their own solution to the problem – the latter being your best case scenario.

  Sadly you can’t just go up and ask someone those questions directly, as people being people, will generally just give you the answers you want to hear.

  There’s a couple of techniques you can use to get around this. The easy way that is somewhat useful; namely asking open ended questions that indirectly address the problem (e.g. “so what are your biggest problems at work?”) and following up when appropriate for more detail (e.g. “OK, you mentioned ‘x’ being a problem, can you talk more about that?”).

  Or the hard way that is very useful, which involves actually trying to sell your solution to said problem. Really go through the process of selling it (this may require a few props, perhaps a landing page or slick PowerPoint), it’s tough, but a worthy exercise to get real feedback.

  Again, because people generally want to be supportive, if you ask them directly what they think of your idea, most will be positive, unwittingly giving you a false picture of reality. Ask them to buy your solution and things quickly change. You start hearing excuses, AKA real reasons why your idea doesn’t quite solve the problem they have. Or you hear that the problem itself is not that big in their eyes.

  It might even be that the problem is one they never knew they had. Conversely, if halfway through your pitch they have their wallets out, cash in hand, you know you’re onto something! Note that you shouldn’t actually take anyone’s money before you can deliver on what you’re selling, at least not without their consent and understanding that you’re validating an idea at this stage of the process.

  Aim to speak to a half dozen people (phone is fine but face to face is better), and validate that the problem you’re trying to solve exists. At which point it’s time to put a framework around the business case.

  Mercifully, long gone are the days of the 50 page business plan, with forecasts, projections, and many, many words on paper. Today it’s all about the ‘lean canvas’ – a one pager that covers all the important bits of your business, and how they fit together. You can find an online version of the lean canvas, as well as an explanation of what it is exactly that goes into each section of the canvashere.

  The purpose of the canvas is to make sure you’ve properly thought about the various parts of the ‘business’ around your solution. Don’t get too attached, don’t spend too long getting it perfect. It’s important to understand that most of what you put into the canvas are assumptions and educated guesses.

  As you delve deeper into the problem, gaining insights and understanding that you didn’t have when you first started, you can (and should) update the canvas to reflect this.

  In fact, you get the most out of the lean canvas by treating what you’ve put in it as a basis for what you need to ‘test’: Treating every assumption about your business idea as a hypothesis to be proven or disproven.

  Just how you go about that will be the subject of the next article in this series, so stay tuned! And remember #2015istheyear.

Previous article: The year for my idea #2015istheyear

Next article: Interview with Ash Davies, founder of Tablo.io

This is the first of a series of articles that first appeared on StartupSmart here.

Click on the links below to view subsequent articles in the series:

How to validate your idea over Christmas 

Interview with Ash Davies, founder of Tablo.io 

'Manual First' the fastest way to an MVP!

Interview with David Chung, founder of etaskr

Interview with Asher Tan, founder of CoinJar

A New Years resolution to measure

Greetings and salutations!

  It’s that time of year when we look back on what was, and ahead to what’s next. It has been a huge year for startups, from Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion to Melbourne’s own LIFX raising a $12 million A round from Sequoia.

  There’s been more than a few local success stories, and we’ve been lucky enough here at AngelCube to count some of our alumni amongst those. Australia has even got its very own Startup Show. The local startup scene is rocking!

  No doubt you’re looking forward to some well-earned R&R over the Christmas/New Year period, spending time with the family, spending money on the family, eating enough food to feed a small family… And as you sit there, eyes glazed over in a food induced coma, you think about how the years fly by, each faster than the last.

  You start reflecting on what’s going on in your life, what you’ve achieved and accomplished, and what you haven’t. Chances are good that if you’re reading this, one of those unfulfilled ambitions is to run a startup.

  The good news is, now is the best time, bar none, to do something about it! You’re already set to make some New Year’s resolutions right? Make one of those resolutions the commitment to starting. Do something about that frustrating problem at work. One thing that would make your life, or the life of someone close to you, that much better. That stroke of genius which will change the world and make you so rich that you could literally buy Christmas next time it rolls around.

  Now for the bad news: if you stay on the couch, nothing much will change (surprise surprise). This isn’t a 12-month gym membership that you give up on by February, nor is it 12 months without drinking that you forget by Friday. It’s simply a resolution to start.

  We’ll cover what you need to know to get your startup off the ground over Christmas with some follow-up articles. But for now it’s on you to make that commitment. Write it on your hand. Tape it to the back of the toilet door. You can even tweet about it – we’ve got you covered with a snazzy hashtag – #2015istheyear – should you decide to do so.

  Remember; there’s no idea too crazy; no idea too small; no idea too ambitious. No one is saying your idea has to change the world. No one is saying you have to make the next Facebook, or be the next Elon Musk. But you have to do something. Otherwise it will be the end of 2015 before you know it, and you’ll be sitting on your couch, eyes glazed over in a food induced coma, reflecting on how the years pass by ever faster, and your startup dreams remain unrealised.

Remember:#2015istheyear