We love starting companies from scratch in the Atlanta Ventures Studio.

We partner with amazing founders to explore big markets, do extensive customer discovery, find authentic demand, and launch a billion dollar business (hopefully 😉).

The Perlant and Undaunted are two examples from this year. Salesloft, Terminus, Rigor, Greenzie, Zinnia, and Intown Golf Club are some others you may know!

We’re always learning but we’ve also seen a lot of at-bats in the 0-to-1 phase of company building.

Here are 4 (counter-intuitive??) things we’ve learned that may be helpful to other founders early in their journey!

1. Spend A LOT More Time In Ideation

Founders are action-oriented and highly motivated. It’s natural to get excited and go all in on an idea.

• But is it a great idea?

• How long did you spend exploring other ideas?

• Is this idea worthy of the next 10 years of your life???

Extra time in the idea phase pays dividends long term!

Most founders are in a hurry to get started so they jump at the first decent idea.

But discovering a great idea takes time.

Even if recognizing the greatness of an idea happens quickly (“I know this is The One.”), cultivating the discernment to spot a great idea comes from experiencing good or okay ideas.

IN THE STUDIO:
Studio Entrepreneurs usually spend 3-4 months up to a year deep diving on different ideas and markets. This includes market research, customer discovery, experiments, consulting, and any number of other idea-phase activities. Action helps refine ideas!

2. Do Different Customer Discovery

I used to think customer discovery was explaining your idea and getting feedback.

THIS IS WRONG!

(It’s not just you. I did this for a decade 🙃)

Something that I learned through the Atlanta Ventures Studio is the importance (and art!) of the right kind of customer discovery.

Have you heard us talk about The Mom Test???

(Only every single Office Hours multiple times…)

Mom Test Takeaways:

• Don’t pitch your idea at all

• Ask people/businesses about their problems

• Find the problems that people can’t stop talking about

• Understand how much time and money is being spent to solve the problem

• If no time or money is being spent, it’s not a big enough problem!

• Notice what people actually do, not what they say they would do in the future

• Don’t believe positive feedback, only believe actions and credit card info 😉

If someone will pay you, make intros, or spend time with you to help solve this problem, that’s a good sign!

IN THE STUDIO:
The Mom Test is hands down the #1 recommended book by the Atlanta Ventures team and the first book any Studio Entrepreneur reads!

3. Run Experiments

Believe what people do!

We love micro experiments. They are a great way to test demand.

Have a hypothesis going into the experiment. Give it a timeframe and metrics. What does “good” look like? The best experiments get you to a quick yes or no. Maybes are annoying.

If the experiment goes well, it can even be supporting data for a fundraise!

Never ever build anything without running low costs tests beforehand. If you can’t think of how to test, come to Office Hours and we can brainstorm with you!

IN THE STUDIO:
Here’s 7 low-cost, low-effort ways we’ve tested ideas in the Studio and how we’ve tested tech ideas before building tech.

4. The Right Idea Feels “Easy”

The goal of all that customer discovery and experimentation? To find a vein of gold.

We call it authentic demand.

It’s when the market pulls you.

You’ll notice things like:

• People take your calls.

• Fundraising goes quickly.

• Customers sign up even when your product is janky.

• People refer their friends.

• You have competition and customers get mad at you 😉

Startups are never “easy” but when you find the right idea, the boulder starts rolling downhill.

IN THE STUDIO:
We love to work with repeat founders. They’ve done it before and are crazy awesome enough to do it again! Something we often hear is, “This company is so much easier than <Previous Company>.” Not every idea is good, not every company works, but when you hit it right, it’s magic!

Any other tips for zero-to-one? What helped you find a great idea? Do you want more lessons learned from the Studio? Or get back to general startup topics??