Greg Isenberg is a multi-exit Silicon Valley entrepreneur and owner of Late Checkout product studio. He has:
- Headed Product Strategy at WeWork
- Been an advisor to Reddit
- Founded a startup, Islands, which was sold to WeWork
- Founded 5by, which was sold to StumbleUpon
Guest Author: Greg Isenberg
Real estate is cool and all, but you know what’s cooler?
1/ Spot a niche problem (use Reddit, Discord) ex: “golfers struggle with swing consistency.”
2/ Cruise through GitHub issues of popular repos unsolved problems = startup opportunities.
3/ Validate with data (Google Trends, Glimpse) look for steady 5-year growth, not spikes.
4/ Focus on “forgotten” demographics ie: often overlooked/underserved in tech (eg: military spouses, immigrant grandparents etc).
5/ Run $50 Facebook ad tests cheap way to validate before building (I call this marketing R&D).
6/ Build a dead simple microsaas one feature > bloated app (spend $5000 or less to build MVP, ok if its ugly to start).
7/ Create a “velvet rope” launch FOMO + exclusivity = organic growth (95% of MVPs in 2024 could be a social account/group chat + waitlist).
8/ Get 100 conversations (with Mixmax AI for cold email) “what’s your biggest pain around X?”
9/ Bake virality into your product give users incentive to share (extra features, credits) make sharing as frictionless as possible.
10/ Iterate based on actual usage Hotjar + FullStory = gold for user insights.
11/ Leverage “exit intent” popups for real feedback “why are you leaving?” tells you what’s missing.
12/ Word of mouth > ads make 10 users love you, they’ll bring 100 more.
13/ Partner with 100 micro-creators or be a full-on creator yourself (or both).
14/ Show the behind the scenes, build in public but you don’t need to share everything.
15/ Don’t raise VC unless you really need to or want to (can always raise later as you’re scaling).
