Can You Explain Your Startup to My Grandma?

Put Your Startup Through The LightBulb Test

You read that right. My Grandma, not yours. I love my Grandmother dearly. She does not love technology dearly.

“If you can’t explain something simply, then you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein…probably

Every startup should solve a problem. Your target audience is simply the person/people that experience that problem. When you explain it to them, they should have a lightbulb moment where it just *clicks*.

Now, my Grandma may not be your target audience. I’ll admit. I used her as clickbait.

Unllleeeessss she is your target audience…In which case, I didn’t use her as clickbait.

The lightbulb test: testing the amount of time it takes, on average, for people to achieve the lightbulb moment from your story.

The lower, the better. If your lightbulb test takes more than 30 seconds, then you’ve got serious work to do.

Your potential users have thousands of other companies and platforms vying for their attention. They don’t have time for you to sit them down and walk them through the various facets of your startup. You need to be able to communicate the value proposition simply.

The value proposition is not how powerful your tech is. It’s the solution that it provides the user.

It’s easy to become self-righteous here and say, “Oh, if they can’t understand my value prop, then it’s their fault and I don’t want them!”

Have fun having no users.

People only care about the hole that you drill. They don’t care how you drill it. Now, there will always be a select group of people that want to know more about your tech. For Google, it’s the developers and the marketers. For Ethereum, it’s the developers and the investors. But 99% of blockchain startups cannot build a business based around investors.

If you are a founder and you can’t articulate your value proposition in 30 seconds or less — and actually have your target audience understand it — then how can you expect anyone to get all of the value from your platform that it can offer?

At its core, marketing is about storytelling. Entrepreneurship is about storytelling. Think about the story you are telling. Tell that story to everybody you know. A/B test your introductions, explanations, and illustrations. Have an internal stopwatch from the time you begin to tell your story to the moment they get the lightbulb moment. Keep optimizing and bringing down the time it takes to hit the lightbulb moment.

I founded Influenc(r) as a marketing accelerator for mid, to late, stage startups in the Blockchain space. I bought BTC at $200, ETH at $7, and my business partner bought ETH in ICO. We’ve been in this space for a little bit now.

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I’d love to chat with you! Email me anytime at tristan@influencr.me.