[Fireside Chat] Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups

Title	Fireside Chat- Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups
Place	D Camp
Time	October 16, 2013 7PM~9PM
Speaker	Niket Desai (@niket), Josh Wilson (@makaniaki), Yaron Binur (@ybinur)
Organizer	AppCenter (http://onoffmix.com/event/19682)
Focus	What to do in startups

I.       Key Takeaway: 

1.       Move fast, stay hungry and focused

2.     Stay with customers from day zero      

II.      Lesson from Y Combinator

1.       What you’re building should be meaningful to users

2.     Your product or service needs to make users would be willing to pay for it, download it, or come back periodically

3.     Talk to your customers and speed up (bringing your prototype and getting feedback are so much faster than coding)

4.     No need to waste time and money on managerial stuff e.g. payroll, tax, etc. (use accelerator program such as Y Combinator)

5.     Know why you need an accelerator before asking one  

III.     Other lessons

1.       Get more feedbacks early

2.     Utilize usability, user testing, surveys from day zero

3.     Always sell yourself (i.e. elevator speech to other people)  

IV.    Ways to be acquired

1.       Visibility: Get yourself known (e.g. Top 50 Tech Crunch)

2.     Be focused (e.g. home related thing for Redbeacon)

3.     Make hard decision in valuing and selling your business

V.      How do you see failure?

1.       Fail fast and early and often (c.f. Paul Graham)

1)     Fail consistently every time (B/c with failure you learn something)    

VI.    Go to Silicon Valley to build or stay in Korea?

1.       go global and support multiple languages (e.g. Skype started as global service from day one)

2.       know what you’re doing (e.g. non-consumer facing products such as security, technology, infra doesn’t need to be physically in the States)

VII.   Where to locate HW and SW offices?

1.       be where your customers are

2.     learn from Waze- R&D center in Israel but operation offices in the US

[Personal UX/UI review] front yard design trend?

Some similarities found for front yard design among shops. A trend?

Observation: wooden look front yard design 

Issue: hard to see what's this restaurant is selling; the front yard design seems to be closed

Solution: get rid of plants and make it open like the cases above perhaps?

[Personal UX/UI review] empty space utilization of Yangjae Station

I was just passing by Yangjae Station and realized there have been too much empty spaces which could have been utilized for passers-by and the New Bundang-line company. 

Positive: good usage of empty space

Lesson: space= opportunity

[Personal UX/UI review] Google Plus,Google Drive API,G+ comment UI,G+ mobile menu,Ads made in Korea

Positive: great UI. Under one line restriction, the designer managed to show multiple comments by showing overlapped images

Lesson: to provide a great UX, no need to have a large space

Positive: same UI as desktop to reduce learning time 

Positive: efficient API allowing easy slide switch

Issue: terrible cases of Korean company ads. They almost always have to use pretty models for getting their message crossed to viewers. How sad!!!

Solution: make products to become viewers' attention by displaying common looking people without distractions; learn from ads made during Steve's reign! 

[Personal UX/UI review] Korean design, rice pack seal, McDonald's doorand trash can

Positive: using Korean alphabets to create beautiful consumer products

Issue: no intuitive way to know how to open rice pack

Solution: follow people's mental models by imitating other common tearing solutions with popular FMCG products 

Lesson: we often hear differentiate, differentiate and differentiate your products from others; however, copying the best practices may not necessarily a bad thing

Issue: people accidentally bumped into this glass without knowing that the glass is not a door at least once in every hour of my sitting

Solution: put some ads or visual stuff to cover so that from afar people can perceive the glass not as a door or path 

Issue: I don't know where to put my trash separately

Solution: display a visual key by adding a territory sign e.g. plastic cup, mug cup, water dispensing area

Lesson: make customers' last journey or touch point of their store visit a pleasant memory by intuitively guiding them with stress-free design

[Personal UX/UI review] designing signs on architecture

I was passing by below buildings the other day and what designers did to their buildings caught my eyes. 

Positive: displayed a communication channel to passers-by

Positive: targeted on one thing instead of many: positioned its place for studying people 

Issue: displayed no recognizable signs (though its services may be provided during day time, the color is not noticeable); repeated same logos all around without sending a particular message

Solution: color SONY sign to be catchy; put some catch phrase around the building to both improve Sony's image and increase the center's physical presence 

Lesson: convert architecture signs to a communication tool to passers-by

[Personal UX/UI review] Android KitKat promotion

Received below KitKat from a YouTube event and now I finally participated in the new Android's promotional campaign. 

Issue: wrong URL, QR code not working, wrong location for both URL and QR code

Solution: use kitkat.co.kr instead; place URL and QR code below "STEP 2"

Issue: too much scroll to get to the bottom of the page

Issue: hard to find country section

Issue: color not too much recognizable

Issue: entry style looks dramatically different from others

Solution: make it look similar to others

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[overall] Lesson: make it easy for customers to participate promotional campaigns

[overall] Evaluation: 2/10 (this promotion could have been easier to participate)