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Geoffrey Woo, Co-founder and Partner of Anti Fund, believes a great business doesn’t need perfect economic conditions to launch: “it all starts with a core problem that you solve for your ideal customer.”
In this episode of Recession-Proof, Geoffrey shares his fundamental startup principles that every entrepreneur should learn and how business owners can create an appealing narrative that will grab attention in their niche.
In this episode, Geoffrey and Kimia discuss:
- Startup fundamentals
- How your business should prepare for a recession
- Why your business needs an appealing narrative
- How Geoffrey de-risks new business ventures
We've condensed some of the major themes from the conversation and summarized them below.
Geoff's take on startup fundamentals
As an early-stage business operator it’s hard not to get caught up in the day to day economic shifts, but in Geoff’s opinion that’s not where founders should focus their energy. According to Geoff, it’s impossible to track all market changes and come up with precise scenarios for each outcome, so it's better to focus on building a product people want and getting your first customers.
“I think, frankly, no one really has an idea. I think as an early-stage operator founder, it really doesn't impact you… just focus on making something that people want and just focus on the fundamentals.”
Creating your narrative
Your product might be a game-changer. But if you don’t choose the right market and tell a story that will appeal to the emotions of your ideal customer, you won’t grow (or growth will be too expensive). Find the core narrative that you want to share with the world then use tools to help you amplify and disseminate that message in the most efficient way possible.
“The core thing of what marketing is is just a scaled positive word of mouth. That is the OG version of marketing.”
Competing for attention
All companies need two basic resources to grow: capital and attention. You could theoretically raise an endless amount of capital, but attention is scarce, which makes anything that can command attention inherently valuable.
“We all have 24 hours in a day times 8 billion people. That is the max limit of attention that exists in this world. You can print money, do weird financial engineering with money, but literally, the max attention cap of humanity is some 8 billion times 24 hours a day. Anything that can wield attention, I think is going to be increasingly powerful over time.”
Check out the full transcript here. For more episodes from Recession-Proof, check us out on YouTube.
