Below are six key lessons I took away from the conference:

1) Order of operations is paramount

As in math, order of operations is important in growing your company and acquiring customers. Executing tactics, programs, and campaigns in the wrong order or with the wrong goal can be disastrous. In his keynote, Khosla Ventures investor Keith Rabois shared the optimal order for growing a tech startup he learned during stints at Square, Slide, and Linkedin. Here’s the order of operations:

• Develop a product
• Iterate & establish your product’s value
• Grow your customer base
• Experiment with growth hacking

2) The path to growth follows a process

In order to follow the plan Keith laid out in his keynote, you will need a better understanding of what growth looks and how to achieve it. In his talk, Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo shared the phases of growth that he learned while working with Dropbox, Eventbright, Xobni, and LogMeIn helping to grow their customer base. Also, check out this blog post for more info. But just to break it down, here’s the path to growth:

• Product/Market Fit
• Transition To Growth
• Growth

3) Sustainable company value only comes from real user-engagement

When most people think of growth hacks they think of short-term tactics that drive large spikes in key metrics like usage or customers. While these short-term tactics help drive startups, Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged explained that sustainable company value is all about real user engagement. In short, focus on tactics that increase real user-engagement, not vanity metrics.

4) You can validate your product in under 48 hours

Noah Kagan of AppSumo challenged the audience to figure out ways to validate businesses like Square and AirBnB in under 48 hours. After a lively conversation with seat neighbors, audience members shared ways they could validate each business, proving it could be done without any coding, design, and in most cases money. He followed this challenge by urging the audience to see if they could make their first dollar with the business idea they’ve been noodling on. Also, Kagan put together this handy resource outlining this topic that’s worth checking out.

5) Inception is not just a movie, it’s a growth hacking strategy

Josh Elman, Principal at Greylock, knows growth and shared his learnings from his time at Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with the audience by outlining a three step framework (Purpose, Inception, Adoption) for growing a startup’s customer base. While Purpose is fairly straight forward, Josh spent a good bit of time elaborating on the concept of Inception. This step covers how you make people aware of your product and the problem it solves. In his talk, Josh emphasized you need to train people to get the most out of your solution by spreading the right messages via your product (think how you can optimize your signup flow) and external communication like press (what story you are telling).

6) There are 3 ways to optimize for growth

Many marketers find it easy to get bogged down in how and where to optimize your product. To make it easy, Elliot Shmukler of WealthFront revealed three ways you optimize your product. Opportunities to optimize include:

• Reduce Friction — Make stuff easier to do
• Increase Incentives — Sprinkle in social proof and do a better job at communicating your products value
• Increase Exposure — Ask people to high value tasks in your product more often, more prominently, or in more places

Conclusion:

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and I appreciate all the work that went into this event by both the speakers and the conference organizers. Their hard work paid off.

Top photo credit: Jim Scheinman/Twitter

Enjoy!

About Noam

Noam Wasserman is a professor at Harvard Business School. For more than a decade, his research has focused on founders’ early decisions that can make or break the startup and its team. At HBS, he developed and teaches an MBA elective, “Founders’ Dilemmas,” for which he was awarded the HBS Faculty Teaching Award and the Academy of Management’s 2010 Innovation in Pedagogy Award. In 2011, the course was also named one of the top entrepreneurship courses in the country by Inc. magazine.

Connect With Noam

http://www.noamwasserman.com/
https://twitter.com/noamwass
“The Founder’s Dilemmas” On Amazon

In this episode, I am going to talk with him about the role of a startup CEO including how it changes from a team of three to a team of 50 people. Stay tuned to the end to hear Sam share how you can go about coming up with a big idea for your next startup.

Enjoy!

About Sam

Prior to Mass Relevance, Sam Decker was founding Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice, the leader in Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce technologies serving over 1,000 brands. Decker was responsible for building the company’s brand, products and platform. Before joining Bazaarvoice, Decker spent seven years of leadership at Dell, Inc. in marketing, online, CRM, and customer-centricity strategy. From 1999-2003, he led Dell’s consumer web site, building Dell.com into the largest consumer eCommerce site at $3.5B in annual sales, and established global best practices in merchandising, analytics, product management, and operations. Sam pioneered Dell’s customer-centricity strategy and customer segmentation using Six Sigma methodology.

Before Dell, Decker spent more than six years in the Bay Area leading marketing, sales and product strategy at B2B and media startups. Decker has authored two books on word of mouth marketing, serves on the digital advisory board for P&G, served on the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and posts occasionally at deckermarketing.com or @samdecker.

Connect With Sam

http://www.massrelevance.com
http://deckermarketing.com/
https://twitter.com/samdecker
http://www.linkedin.com/in/samdecker

In this episode, I am going to talk with him about his experience advising startups so that you can learn how to find, connect with, and leverage startup advisors for your company.

Enjoy!

About Bill

Bill is an entrepreneur and an investor/advisor to a dozen really cool tech companies. In his spare time he helps out at Capital Factory, 500 Startups and TechStars. Bill was the founder and CTO of Webmail.us, which Rackspace acquired in 2007. After helping to scale his email business, Bill spent a year working on partnerships and M&A at Rackspace. He left Rackspace in 2011 to peruse a new project. Bill often gives talks on technology and entrepreneurship and loves chatting with kick-ass entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world.

Connect With Bill

http://www.linkedin.com/in/billboebel
http://billboebel.com
https://angel.co/billboebel
https://twitter.com/billboebel

In this episode, I am going to talk with Kevin about what you can do to improve the entrepreneurial community and ecosystem around in order to foster innovation and improve your bottom line.

Enjoy!

About Kevin

Kevin Koym accelerates entrepreneur success. Kevin leads and coaches teams and individuals to innovate to breakthrough performance through doing more with less.

Championing the cause of startups for over a decade has given Kevin the chance to launch a number of companies across the world. The culmination of those experiences has led to the founding of Tech Ranch Austin, a venture accelerator for early-stage technology companies. Through Tech Ranch Austin, Kevin has optimized his ability to assemble the pieces necessary to get a startup functioning and growing quickly. Before Tech Ranch Austin, Kevin founded, or was on the founding teams, of 7 different startup companies and four entrepreneur networks in the US, Mexico, and Chile, that he continues to actively grow. And Kevin’s service to these groups was also recently recognized as “Technology Community Leader of the Year” for 2010 by the Association of Information Technology Professionals, Austin Chapter. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Kevin fell in love with the startup process while working for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer, Inc.

Personally and professionally, Kevin is defined by his ability to inspire both individuals and businesses to seize the technological and social revolution on the horizon in order to better their community as well as their profit potential. The key roles Kevin has played in a variety of startups throughout his life have enabled him to fine-tune his ability to replicate the success of helping entrepreneurs build what they never thought as possible before.

Connect With Kevin

http://www.techranchaustin.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkoym
https://www.twitter.com/kkoym
http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/
 

In this episode, I am going to talk with Charles about where the idea for Civitas Learning came from and what he’s doing to get it off the ground.

Enjoy!

About Charles

Charles discovered a passion for education while teaching high school students on the weekends during his undergraduate days at Stanford, and upon graduating translated that passion into the founding of multiple education start-ups. These early ventures included ClickSafety.com, an online safety training company, and Testakers.com, the first rich-media, diagnostic and prescriptive test prep tutoring application online. In 2002 his business was acquired by Kaplan, where he spent the next nine years as an in-house entrepreneur, launching several edtech businesses in the K12 and higher education markets.

Charles is a two-time CODiE Award recipient for excellence in software development and a former director on the Education Board of the Software & Information Industry Association. He speaks at educational conferences around the country when he’s not at home in Austin, Texas enjoying time with his wife, son and dog.

Connect With Charles

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/charles-thornburgh/0/405/146
http://www.civitaslearning.com/
https://twitter.com/CivitasLearning

Today’s guest is Dean Kakridus, the founder and CEO of nineten innovation.

In this episode we are going to cover all sorts of topics including:

• Why he launched his business
• How you can be a better service provider
• How startups like yours should select service providers
• Why design is so crucial to a startup’s success
• How startups can find the designers they need to make a great product.

At the end of the interview, Dean will share with us his philosophy on life and discuss actionable tactics you can use to alter the course of your life and be a happier you.

Enjoy!

About Dean

Dean has 18-years of experience (all within the high-technology industry) in industrial & product engineering, design, business development, strategy, startups, and generating value around innovative products and services.

As a lifelong tech enthusiast and Internet pioneer, Dean has worked across various technology industries including mobile, Internet, software, consumer electronics, personal computers supercomputers, and design consulting services. He has contributed to the development of many early web browser/ Internet service innovations and business models, including co-inventing the Google search-from-browser model, and enjoys solving big UX problems. He approaches all business challenges from a human-centered design & engineering perspective, knowing that revenues and profits follow quality and usability.

After four great years at frog design, he founded a new firm called nineten innovation. For big brands and startups alike, nineten is a lean UX, “un-agency” approach to engaging with just the right measure of outsourced creative talent, experience, and passion needed to deliver innovative, valuable and usable products & services to market. They’re the x-factor and difference-maker you trust to deliver transformative design and development work with greater effectiveness and lower cost than typical agencies because, unlike agencies, nineten is not in the deliverables business. They’re in the business of building great experiences that help people live well and creating winning results for both our clients and delivery partners.

Connect With Dean

http://www.nineten.net/
https://twitter.com/ATX/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kakridas
 

Chris is the director of the entrepreneurship program at the University of Georgia and a verified “value proposition guru.”

On this episode, I am going to talk with Chris about why you need a value proposition and how you can go about crafting one.

About Chris

Chris is an entrepreneur and lecturer at the University of Georgia where he teaches entrepreneurship at the Terry College of Business. He also serves as the director of the Terry College of Business Entrepreneurship Program. Certified as a business appraiser, Hanks provides expert witness testimony regarding the value of privately held businesses. He is also active in the funding and franchising of startups. He has owned multiple businesses, including music, e-commerce, publishing, and export ventures.

Connect With Chris

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-hanks/9/53/848
http://www.schoolforstartups.com
https://twitter.com/#!/ChrisHanks

Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book “Startup: An Insider’s Guide To Launching and Running a Business.”

On this episode Kevin is going to help arm you with the knowledge you need to build and market your product successfully.

About Kevin

Kevin is a serial entrepreneur – which means that he started his first company when he was 24 years old and has built companies in several industries (and had 3 exits) since then. He is still building startups today, serving as an executive for the latest successful acquisition (Classified Ventures, Chicago). He also has the privilege of being a business advisor and mentor for startups internationally.

He recently wrote the book Startup: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running a Business, a unique guide that a fellow entrepreneur recently called “The single best book on starting a business that I have ever read”. He guarantees that it will improve your business.

Connect With Kevin

His Forbes.com Profile
http://www.KevinReady.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinready
https://twitter.com/#!/keready

During his career, Mark has co-founded several companies including echo, which he sold to Ticketmaster and has held a board seat on several companies including StudioNow. Most recently, Mark founded a company called FLO {thinkery}.

On this episode, I am going to talk with Mark about what he learned during his career that led him to launch FLO {thinkery} and how he did it.

Questions Answered

• What is FLO {thinkery}?
• Where did the idea come from?
• What about this idea really got you fired up?
• Why didn’t you pick one of your other ideas?
• How did you know this was the right opportunity to pursue?
• What were you looking for in a business idea?
• Are you modeling flo after another company?
• What was the first thing you did once you had the idea?
• How did you go about building the team around you?
• Who are your customers?
• What does your sales process look like now?
• What did you learn from your time at echo that you see yourself using at FLO?
• How has having that experience helped you in future?

Relevant Links

New Course: How To Raise Seed, Angel and VC Funding In Nashville With Mark Montgomery of FLO {thinkery}

About Mark

Mark Montgomery is a pioneer in the e-commerce and business to consumer marketing space. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with hundreds of entertainment and corporate clients, including names like Sony, Kanye West, Keith Urban, RIM/Blackberry, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, Best Buy, Gnarls Barkley, Rascal Flatts, and General Motors to name a few.

Connect With Mark

http://findyourflo.com/
http://hellomarko.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/hellomarko
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hellomarko/

In this episode, we will tackle these questions and more with today’s guest, Alexander Osterwalder.

Alexander is the successful author of “Business Model Generation”, speaker and advisor with a focus on, you guessed it, business model innovation.

On this episode, Alexander is going to share with us the effect that crafting and testing your business model can have on your organization and outline the steps you need to get started.

Questions Asked

• What a business model is?
• Why should we create a business model?
• Why should my viewers listen to you?
• What types of organizations are creating business models??
• How does business model generation play into what Eric Ries is building with the lean startup movement and Steve Blank’s customer development process?
• How do we start building a business model?

Relevant Links

Alexander’s book Business Model Generation

About Alexander

Dr. Alexander Osterwalder works as an independent author, speaker and advisor with a particular focus on business model innovation, strategic management and management innovation. He regularly performs keynote speeches and workshops on the topic of business model innovation in companies, in business schools and at conferences around the world.

Connect With Alexander

http://www.alexosterwalder.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/AlexOsterwalder

Today I am talking with Steve Blank. Steve is a super-successful author, angel investor, professor, and serial entrepreneur having founded eight companies.

On this episode, Steve is going to answer viewer submitted questions and share with you the crucial lessons he’s learned, in an effort to equip you with the knowledge you need to be successful.

Questions Asked

1. Let’s go back to the basics… Jason from Kansas said, there are tons of entrepreneurial resources out now (books, websites, podcasts), and he wants to launch his own startup (already has the idea), but he wonders what to do next. Can you simplify the process for him?

2. Kyle in DC asked, “Is there one mistake you see entrepreneurs continue to repeat? If so, what is it and what would you recommend they do differently?”

3. Jared from Florida said, that people keep telling him to read “4 Steps to the Epiphany”, “Lean Startup” and “Business Model Generation”. He has all three books, but doesn’t know where to begin. Can how him how they are all connected and how he should go about reading them?

4. Andrew from Nashville wants to know if you have any tips for startups that are brand new and are pursuing a b2b market, specifically how do they get the attention of larger customers and partners?

5. “I want to be an entrepreneur, should I pursue an MBA? If yes, how do I get into Stanford’s or Berkley’s graduate school of business?

Relevant Links

Steve’s Book “Four Steps to the Ephiphany”
Steve’s Book “The Startup Owner’s Manual”
Steve’s Books For Startups
Steve’s Tools For Startups
Steve’s Presentations On Slideshare
Om Malik Interviewing Steve Blank

About Steve

Steve Blank has had a 33-year career as a successful businessman, conservationist and teacher. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Steve was part of/or founded eight venture-backed companies. Four of his eight startup companies went public. After he retired, he started new careers in conservation, public service, and teaching.

After retiring, Steve moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. Steve wrote a book (actually his class text) about building early stage companies: Four Steps to the Epiphany. The Customer Development model that he developed in his book is one of the core themes for these classes.

Connect With Steve

http://www.steveblank.com
https://twitter.com/#!/sgblank

Today’s I am talking with Parker Gates. Parker is a Stanford trained design thinking facilitator.

On this episode, I am going to talk with Parker about design thinking and how you can use it inside your organization to solve complex problems and crush the competition!

About Parker

Parker Gates is a design thinking facilitator/coach in Nashville, TN, where his primary role involves building teams and facilitating projects for creative problem solving. He believes heavily in user-centered design as a means of solving big challenges, while creating an organizational culture that celebrates and encourages collaboration.


Parker started working with the Stanford d.school in 2010 and is a graduate of the Customer Focused Innovation program. In May of 2011, Parker became a Certified d.Leader at Stanford’s Advanced Facilitation Bootcamp. He continues to work closely with Stanford on an ongoing basis, coaching their design thinking d.bootcamps and Customer Focused Innovation programs.

Connect With Parker

http://www.linkedin.com/in/parkergates
https://twitter.com/#!/crookedcop/

Today’s guest is Joshua Baer. Joshua is the founder of OtherInbox and the co-founder of Capital Factory, an early stage accelerator for tech startups in Austin, Texas.

I am going to ask Joshua a list of the most frequently asked questions from first time entrepreneurs in an effort to get you the answers you need to get started!

About Joshua

Joshua Baer has been working to empower consumers on the Internet and improve email marketing best practices for more than a decade. In 1996 Baer founded SKYLIST, one of the first email marketing companies, in his college dorm room. In 1998 he co-authored RFC 2369, a technical standard for unsubscribe that has been adopted by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Baer first conceived of OtherInbox as a solution to his own email management problems. He soon realized that it was also an opportunity to address many of the pains of email marketing while still protecting the consumer’s privacy.

Baer holds Computer Science and Information Decision Systems degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Austin, TX with his wife and three children.

Connect With Joshua

https://twitter.com/#!/joshuabaer
http://www.joshuabaer.info/
http://otherinbox.com/n
http://www.capitalfactory.com/

Today’s guest is Neville Medhora. Neville is an entrepreneur who is best known for HouseofRave.com, his blog and the Sumo Business Blueprint.

I am going to talk with Neville about the simple, yet powerful process he helped create for finding, testing and launching business ideas with no money.

About Neville

Neville Medhora is the creator of Kopywriting Kourse, Behind the Scenes of House of Rave and the App Sumo Business Blueprint.

Connect With Neville

https://twitter.com/#!/nevmed
http://www.nevblog.com/

Today’s guest is John Pisciotta. John is an experienced entertainment entrepreneur and the founder of MusicSynk, a company that provides a suite of organization, discovery and licensing tools for copyright owners and content users.

I am going to talk with John about how he was able to get MusicSynk off the ground without any programming skills.

About John

John is an entertainment entrepreneur passionate about creating innovative business models for the entertainment industry in the digital age. He also advises private investment firms and businesses on emerging media entertainment industry trends.

John believes that we were made to do great things, and I am hyper-focused towards moving people, teams and companies to that end.

Connect With John

https://twitter.com/#!/JohnPisciotta
https://twitter.com/#!/MusicSynk
https://twitter.com/#!/InnovationNash
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpisciotta
http://www.musicsynk.com
http://www.johnpisciotta.com

Today’s guest is Brad Feld. Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur for the past twenty years. Prior to co-founding his current venture, Foundry Group, Brad co-founded TechStars, one of the top startup incubators in the world.

Today I am going to talk with Brad about the advice he gives early stage companies as well as what he looks for in a TechStars applicant.

About Brad

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies. Brad is also a co-founder of TechStars.

Brad currently serves on the board of directors of BigDoor, Cheezburger Networks, Fitbit, Gnip, MakerBot, Oblong, Orbotix, and Standing Cloud for Foundry Group. Previously, Brad served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies. AmeriData acquired Feld Technologies, a firm he founded in 1987 that specialized in custom software applications. Brad had grown Feld Technologies into one of Boston’s leading software consulting firms prior to the acquisition. He also directed the diversification into software consulting at AmeriData, a $1.5 billion publicly-traded company which was acquired by GE Capital in 1995.

Connect With Brad

https://twitter.com/#!/bfeld

http://www.feld.com/

http://foundrygroup.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bfeld

Today’s guest is John Linkner. Josh is the New York Times Bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity and the Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners.

Today I am going to talk with Josh specifically about strategies you can use to be more creative and generate better ideas inside your business.

About Josh

Josh Linkner is the New York Times Bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, named one of the top 10 business books of 2011. Josh is the CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners. Together with business partners Earvin “Magic” Johnson and NBA team owner Dan Gilbert, Josh is actively rebuilding urban areas through technology and entrepreneurship. Josh is also Adjunct Professor of Applied Creativity at the University of Michigan.

Josh is the Founder, Chairman and former CEO of ePrize, the largest interactive promotion agency in the world providing digital marketing services for 74 of the top 100 brands.

Prior to ePrize, Josh was the founder and CEO of three other successful technology companies. He has been honored as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the Detroit News Michiganian of the Year, and is a President Barack Obama Champion of Change award recipient. Josh is a regular columnist for Fast Company and Inc. Magazine, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and The New York Times. Josh is also a Berklee-trained professional jazz guitarist performing regularly in jazz clubs throughout the United States.

Most importantly, Josh is on a mission to make the world more creative.

Connect With Josh

Josh’s new book Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity (Amazon Affiliate)
https://twitter.com/#!/joshlinkner
http://www.joshlinkner.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlinkner

I am going to talk with Dave about some of the things he has started through the years including events and networking groups, digging in on how he did it and the impact it has had on his personal and professional life.

Thank Dave For Coming On The Show Via Twitter!

About Dave

Dave is a blogger, community enthusiast, social media strategist, marketing & promotions fella. He is the founder of Geek Breakfast & Nashcocktail. He is also the co-founder of BarCamp Nashville and PodCamp Nashville.

He is responsible for digital marketing with an emphasis on social media and online promotions for Griffin Technology in Nashville, TN.

Before Griffin, he worked as New Media Manager with Emma email marketing. In Toronto, he worked with Mirvish Productions, Toronto Star and Global Television, all positions were in marketing management and promotions.

Connect With Dave

DaveMadeThat.com

Today’s guest is Stephen Hau. Stephen is the CEO and co-founder of Shareable Ink, an enterprise cloud computing company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes transition to a more electronic healthcare environment.

I am going to talk with Stephen about what he did to get Shareable Ink off the ground including how he found his early customers and hired his early employees.

About Stephen

As Chief Executive Officer, Steve Hau is responsible for all of the operations at Shareable Ink and has full P&L responsibility.

Steve is an entrepreneur who brings over 15 years of experience in healthcare information technology, software development, and new venture creation.

Prior to co-founding Shareable Ink with Dr. Huang, Steve founded PatientKeeper and held several executive positions and a Board role over a 12-year period. With humble beginnings, PatientKeeper quickly grew to become the leading developer of physician information systems with over 15% of US acute care hospitals. Steve was also a co-founder of ThinkFish Productions, a 3D software company that was later acquired by Viewpoint Datalabs.

Steve earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he specialized in electronic engineering and computer science. Steve was also a Ph.D. student at Harvard University and a recipient of the Harvard University GSAS Fellowship before leaving to start PatientKeeper.

Connect With Stephen

ShareableInk.com
Twitter
Stephen’s Linkedin