A talk I gave at the Cal Poly Entrepreneurship Club

1. Life of a Cal Poly
Entrepreneur Post-
Graduation
Chris McCann
@mccannatron

2. Big news, my company
StartupDigest was just acquired
today.
I’ll get back to this.

3. Overall Lesson

4. 2005-2009

5. Lesson: Get involved in stuff, it’s
hard to know where it will take
you.

6. 2009

7. First newsletter

8. First site

9. Lesson:
Your first product will look like
crap, get over it.

10. Subscriber Growth
3 months

11. Subscriber Growth
8 months

12. Subscriber Growth
90000"
80000"
70000"
60000"
50000"
40000"
30000"
20000"
10000"
0"
16,Nov" 16,Dec" 16,Jan" 16,Feb" 16,Mar" 16,Apr" 16,May" 16,Jun" 16,Jul" 16,Aug" Today"
11 months

13. 16
0"
20000"
40000"
60000"
80000"
100000"
120000"
140000"
160000"
180000"
200000"
(N
ov
"
16
(D
ec
"
16
(Ja
n"
16
(F
eb
"
16
(M
ar
"
16
(A
pr
"
16
(M
ay
"
16
(Ju
n"
16
(Ju
l"
16
(A
ug
"
16
(S
ep
"
16
(O
ct
"
16
(N
ov
"
16 months
16
(D
ec
"
16
(Ja
n"
16
(F
eb
"
To
da
y"
Subscriber Growth

14. Bank Account

15. Lesson:
Growth & attention success

16. Shit..

17. Lesson:
Determination is the #1 thing.

18. Raised ~400K
Tested 8+ new business models
Direct response, advertorials, education classes, events, lead-
gen, job board, paid subscription, classifieds

19. How we test products
Concept
Commitment
Design mockup
$
MVP Product

20. VIP

21. Shit..

22. Split publications and software

23. Real example of how we tested
the GroupTie product

24. How we test products
Concept
Commitment
Design mockup
$
MVP Product

25. Concept
» Test interest demand

26. Commitment
» Call for commitment

27. Design
» Iterate quickly

28. MVP Product
» Build initial core features

29. That’s my story so far

30. Overall Lesson

31. Final Counterintuitive Lesson:
Start somewhere don’t think too
much about the future.