A very simple model to understand a startup:
- Get a good number of balls pitched at you. Each ball is a customer giving you the time of the day, willing to give your offering a try. Good balls means balls that you have a reasonable chance of hitting.
- Hit a good proportion of those balls. Every time you hit the ball, you achieve a fit between the needs of the customer and what you offer to them.
- Have the team run fast enough to catch up with all the balls being hit. If the people in the bases run the wrong way, get on each other’s way, or run too slow, the momentum will be lost.
- is about knowing where to find customers, what are their pains, and getting in front of them.
- is about being able to build something good enough to solve their problem and let your customers use it.
- is about being able to scale. Unlike real baseball, things can scale up very fast in a startup.
In short, to do well: get good balls pitched at you, hit as many as you can, and try to keep up when you start hitting them.