Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
Today's interview is with Trevor Owens.
Trevor is an author and entrepreneur.
He's the co founder and CEO of Javelin.com, the makers of Quick MVP and Lean Startup Machine.
Quick MVP is a service that lets you quickly and easily test business ideas.
And the Lean Startup machine is a workshop that teaches you how to build something customers want and run the right experiments to steer your business in the right direction.
Trevor is also the author of the book the Lean Enterprise, which details how corporations can apply more innovation and lean startup to launching new products.
Trevor, welcome to the show.
Trevor Owens (01:05.950)
Thanks, Omer.
Thanks for having me.
Omer (01:08.350)
Now, I gave the audience a brief overview of your product and business, but tell us a little bit more about you personally.
Who is Trevor when he's not working?
Trevor Owens (01:18.350)
Yeah.
So there's not a lot of time spent not working.
For me, I'm one of those type of guys who my life is my work, and I love to work.
It kind of runs in my DNA.
My father was a workaholic, and growing up, whenever we had spare time, we would spend time together by painting the house or something like that.
So I love working outside of work.
I spend a lot of time mentoring entrepreneurs and advising entrepreneurs.
I haven't been the best at keeping in shape, but I recently relocated to the San Francisco area, so I'm looking forward to doing some of the nice outdoor activities that they have here.
Omer (02:05.360)
Sweet.
Now, we like to kick things off with a success quote to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
What is one of your favorite quotes?
Trevor Owens (02:15.040)
Yeah, so one of my recent favorite quotes is a quote by Warren Buffett where he said, I don't look to jump over seven foot bars.
I look around for one foot bars that I can step over.
And, you know, as I've grown as an entrepreneur and I've met other successful entrepreneurs, I find that, you know, we're usually, usually entrepreneurs.
We have this, like, grand vision for accomplishing something really big in the world.
But the best entrepreneurs are the people that can have a big vision and then put together the extremely pragmatic steps to accomplishing it.
So you have to kind of have almost these contrasting skill sets of being able to think big and think extremely small.
And for someone like Warren Buffett, who is, you know, the richest person alive, he's, you know, A very kind of disciplined person that I think all of us can learn a lot of habits from.
For him it was very important to look for opportunities that he knew were going to be a guaranteed win as opposed to taking on a bigger opportunity that maybe had bigger risk.
And when I look at a lot of entrepreneurs that I admire who have been successful, and the tough thing about looking at other entrepreneurs is that there's a lot of people that look successful that maybe aren't really successful.
The people that I've met that truly are successful have this really pragmatic approach to they have a formula and they execute on that formula.
And it's a one foot bar that they're going to step over.
It's not a seven foot bar they have to jump over.
Omer (03:56.100)
I really like that quote.
I haven't heard that one before.
And I think you're right.
I think it's great to have a big vision, but unless you have these pragmatic steps, as you said, to move you along, you often end up in danger of biting off a lot more than you can chew.
Right.
Which leads to a whole bunch of other issues.
Now let's give the listeners a better understanding of Javelin and the products Quick MVP and Lean Startup Machine.
Who are your target customers and what are the top pain points that you're trying to solve for them?
Trevor Owens (04:35.200)
Yeah, so the Lean Startup Machine started out of my own pain in terms of developing as an entrepreneur.
I had at the time, this was 2010, this is five years ago, the New York tech scene, which is where I moved from, was just picking up and I had done a lot of entrepreneurial things in business school and participated in business plan competitions.
And I just felt that the education that was out there was kind of outdated and that you had to learn more by doing so.
I originally organized a couple of hackathons in the New York City area and I actually organized one of the biggest ones at the time.
And I found that at the end of the hackathon, like I expect, like my goal was to help people form teams, to find real like co founder relationships, to build products that could become businesses.
And definitely the networking happened at the hackathons, but the products that people came up with, they would never be businesses because they were all these kind of half baked ideas.
And I thought, well, you know, at the time I had, I had been reading a lot about customer development and lean startup and design thinking and all the different schools of thought about starting a business and how the biggest risk is really just if your customers want it or not decided to organize the first Lean Startup machine, which is a three day workshop on the weekend where instead of forming teams and spending the whole time inside coding, you actually go out of the building and talk to customers and figure out if they want what you have.
If you figure out if they want what you're going to build.
If they don't, then pivot and test something new.
And I thought it would be a much better way to do it, but it ended up being an order of magnitude better way to do it.
Because my experience had been that in business school all of my colleagues would spend a year developing this one idea.
Never really talking to customers, but getting all this research data that said it was such a great idea because they wanted to sell it to the judges of the competition so their idea wouldn't change for a whole year.
But in the LSM process, people's idea, everybody's idea changed.
And some people change their idea several times and the ideas they ended with were much better than the ideas they started with.
And they all had customers signed up, they all had people that wanted their products.
So just seeing that happen in three days versus a year long business competition where in three days you could be several times ahead, just really blew my mind.
And that was kind of the start of lsm.
From there my goal was not necessarily to start a consulting or training company.
I actually didn't see LSM as a business initially.
It was just kind of a hobby for me.
And then it ended up getting so much traction I decided to do it full time.
My goal was really to build a software company.
So we started building different products based off of the methodologies that we've created in the workshop and some of the tools that we had helped people with.
And we, we initially created a project management tool and sold it to enterprise and that didn't go so well.
We actually brought pivoted away from that.
And then I always thought there were kind of two directions that we could go in terms of the value that Lean Startup provided.
One was kind of the execution level, which is what you see in Quick mvp.
And the other was the project management side.
So we pivoted away from the project management side and started focusing on more execution oriented tools.
And what Quick MVP is, is basically the easiest way to do Lean Startup technique for your business.
So it combines a landing page builder with a Google Ad creator.
And for anyone that's heard about Lean Startup, usually the first like aha moment you have with Lean is that is this idea of putting up a landing page before you Have a product and seeing if anybody clicks the buy button.
And if nobody clicks the buy button, then it's probably because nobody needs or wants the product.
What we're really trying to do is make it as simple as possible, as easy as possible for people to do one of the techniques of Lean and save time by figuring out really fast whether or not somebody wants their product or not before they invest their time and money in it.
Omer (09:23.420)
Okay, so let's go back to the early days of before you started the first Lean Startup Machine event.
You know, I'm kind of curious about how you put this together and what you were actually, you know, how did you come up with the content for this three day training?
Were you basically pulling the, the content from Eric Ries's book or, you know, just what was the process you went through?
Trevor Owens (09:57.070)
Yeah, so this was a year and a half before his book came out.
And the very first one, there almost was no content actually.
And it's, it's evolved over time.
You know, like, the very first event looks nothing like what it looks like today.
The first event, it was just the idea of what if we got 50 people in a room to form teams.
And the winner was not how cool the demo was and how awesome the market opportunity sounded, but the winner was who got the most customers to sign up.
Over the last few days, we just put everybody in a room with that idea and told them the goals.
And I got some local entrepreneurs who were into the Lean movement.
You know, I had gone on a trip the summer before called Geeks on a plane with Dave McClure.
And for anyone listening who doesn't know Dave, he's like a super connector, awesome angel investor, VC, founder of 500 Startups.
He's also now an investor in Javelin.
And you know, I saw like what Eric was writing about and I thought like, it was really like a great explanation of it.
And so Dave connected, Eric and I.
And you know, through Eric, I met, he introduced me some other people who ended up coming just to talk.
So it started off being very informal.
Like we just got some of the Lean thinkers in the room and had them give talks and people ask questions and had this goal of in the next three days, get as many customers to sign up as you can.
Omer (11:36.990)
Got it, Got it.
Trevor Owens (11:37.910)
Okay.
Omer (11:38.430)
So you had Eric actually turn up
Trevor Owens (11:40.030)
to that first event he skyped in, so.
Interesting.
Yeah, so the first one was in New York and we did the second one in Chicago and the third one in sf.
And that was the first time I actually met Eric in Person was in San Francisco.
Omer (11:54.590)
Okay, so you did the first event, and it was kind of pretty loosely sort of formed, you know, as you sort of explain
Trevor Owens (12:06.190)
what.
Omer (12:07.790)
What sort of drove you to keep building this and turning this into kind of a.
More of a formal training program for entrepreneurs.
Trevor Owens (12:16.430)
Yeah, for me, it was just like, I really enjoyed it.
I was learning a lot myself.
And so I hosted an event we started in 2010.
I hosted one more in 2010, and then we hosted maybe five in 2011.
And I just kept just tweaking it and just trying to make it a little bit better and had different people pitch in and volunteer and help.
And I really think that we kind of hit product market fit about in April of 2011.
Like, it could really.
You could really.
You could feel like every event getting better, actually.
Like, I could feel people were more excited, you know, learned different things at every event.
And then at the end of 2011, you know, I was traveling with it too, so it was fun.
You know, I just decided, you know, like, hey, like, I gotta kind of figure out what I want to do.
I gotta pick one thing.
And, you know, I measured.
I actually measured product market fit for Lean Start Machine.
So I sent out the survey question.
How disappointed would you be if you could not have attended lsm?
And we had a really high score.
You know, usually, you know, Sean Ellis is the guy who created this metric or this methodology, and he said, you need to have 40% of people saying they'd be very disappointed if they could not use your product or did not have the experience.
And we had 70% of people from that Fall London workshop.
Wow.
And so I was just like.
I thought it would be like, 42, maybe 38 around there.
And I saw 70%.
I was like, wow, I'm really sleeping on a good opportunity here.
So at that point, I decided to really go full time.
Beginning of 2012.
It was definitely a powerful moment because I had to email my entire network with this goal of 50 workshops that year.
And I knew I could do it.
But I just remember, like, you know, feeling afraid.
Like, not very consciously afraid, but I remember the exact moment because I was.
I think it was like I was in bed at, like, midnight, like, writing this email to everybody, being like, I need help, volunteers, employees, et cetera.
I'm hiring.
My goal is to do 50 workshops for LSM around the world.
And I could just remember about to hit send, and I was like, you know, should I really hit send?
You know, like, what's gonna happen if I hit send?
So.
And in that moment, this happened to me several times actually, where you recognize this unconscious fear that you have.
And for me whenever I do that, it just like, you know, it's you, you know, it's a, you know that you have this moment because there's no logic behind the fear.
Like, there is no like real good reason why anything bad was going to happen if I hit send on that email, but yet I still had some fear behind it.
So you know in that moment that when you take the next step, you're really pushing yourself to the next level in terms of who you are.
And I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, your company is a reflection of yourself, it's a reflection of your abilities and it's a reflection of your maturity as an entrepreneur.
So really developing yourself and getting over your fears are key to making your business a success.
Omer (15:35.690)
And so how many LSM events are you currently doing at the moment?
Trevor Owens (15:42.650)
Yeah, so we're, we've been doing about 100 a year.
This year we're actually trying to do less because the number of workshops you do is a vanity metric really by itself.
And we're trying to do a little bit less this year and do higher quality events and really build a stronger community.
And we have some kind of big announcements coming up in the next few months about how we're going to take our offerings to the next level in terms of providing more value to entrepreneurs and to our customers.
Omer (16:17.180)
Okay, so let's talk about quick mvp.
Was the idea of that really driven from what you were seeing at the LSM events and being able to provide these entrepreneurs with a better set of tools to go out and validate these ideas?
Is that how the idea sort of came about for you?
Trevor Owens (16:36.300)
Yeah, it did.
And for me we raised vc, we went through techstars Accelerator New York and the opportunity kind of in the tools space is most people believe is like purely in the enterprise market.
Because startups are, there's a lot of them, but they don't really have a high purchasing power and enterprises really need to catch up in terms of being more innovative and being more agile.
So that's how I came up.
You know, I was always thinking kind of like with that end in mind about like what tool could we provide to the enterprise?
And the two, the two things that we do at the workshop is that we have a framework called the Javelin board, which is basically the scientific method applied to startups.
And this we developed ourselves after basically just seeing what the most successful LSM teams did and kind of reverse engineering their thinking.
And their process.
And so that was kind of like the original project management tool that we tried.
You know, we made a lot of mistakes in terms of how we brought that to market and the execution of it.
That as a, you know, really, this is kind of like my.
My first rodeo here.
You know, I didn't.
I wasn't able to foresee.
So wind up pivoting to Quick mvp, and every team at the LSM event launches a landing page.
It's kind of like.
It's not like you have to do it.
I mean, there's other ways to get signups and get people to get the validation for your solution, but it's one of the most concrete, easy ways to do it.
So just seeing that at our workshops, everybody launches a landing page gave me the idea to just start to test this.
So for Quick mvp, we ran a lot of tests and tested a lot of assumptions before getting to the point where we are today.
Omer (18:38.190)
Okay, so why did you decide to go and get funding to launch Quick mvp?
Trevor Owens (18:44.910)
Yeah, I got funding because I feel like at the time that we wanted to be really positioned to take advantage of the market opportunity.
So for us, and also, running a.
Running a workshop business is very intense.
It's very operationally intense, and so it can be very draining on the management.
And so by raising funding, it positioned us to get a little bit more breathing room to step back and really focus more on software.
And also gave us kind of, you know, a ticket into the race, I guess, of really capitalizing on the growing need for better tools for innovation and new businesses.
Omer (19:39.900)
Now, you know, a lot of times when I talk to entrepreneurs and we sort of get onto the subject of, you know, you launch a product and then how do you go about, you know, getting that product in front of your customers?
I guess it was very different for you, right, because you already had this platform of these potential customers who were attending all these workshops around the country that you could reach very easily.
So how sort of did that go down, and what was the initial reaction when you launched the product?
Trevor Owens (20:14.560)
Yeah, so when we launched our first product, I mean, we got some really big companies to sign up, some big enterprises like GE and American Express.
And I thought that the hardest part of getting enterprises was the sales part, but it turned out that the hardest part was after you sell them, actually getting them onboarded and using the tools.
I think for us, when you have a product that doesn't have product market fit yet, it's a real risk to go direct to enterprise because they're not Always the early adopters in the ecosystem, they maybe have an individual who's an early adopter, but then who could be your champion, but then the other employees who use the tool and sometimes the person who buys your product enterprise isn't the person who's going to use it.
Right.
So the other people are less likely to be early adopters.
Where the direct to consumer model that we're doing with Quick mvp, even though our goal is to eventually be an enterprise, allows us to get really great feedback and to iterate and to get to improve the product and get it ready for more of an enterprise rollout.
So we've definitely always had, I guess we do have a huge advantage in terms of already having that customer base.
But when we started lsm, I think the key in getting LSM to grow was twofold.
One was that we were sort of riding on the back of a movement like Lean Startup and participating in that movement.
And the other thing was just having a great product because the word of mouth that we would get for LSM was really huge.
And we would have things where people who would attend an event in New York were the people were people from all around the world.
They weren't just for people from New York.
And we'd have some say from Chicago who would come and they'd be like, I really want to bring this event to Chicago.
So kind of word of mouth was really what helped LSM grow and being a part of a bigger movement and then with our other products, the challenge has never been getting the customers.
It's always been taking the right steps in the right order and running the right tests to make sure that we're going to be successful with our plan.
Omer (22:29.350)
So looking back at the early days, what do you think was one of the biggest mistakes that you made?
Trevor Owens (22:34.610)
Yeah, I think that, you know, when I look at, like, some of my peers who have had, you know, some like, really runaway success in terms of their new businesses, I feel like keeping your momentum going as an entrepreneur is really key.
And, you know, I think that, you know, the steps that we've eventually taken have been great.
And if I could go back and redo it, I would just do things in a little bit of a different order because I feel like we've as lsm, as Javelin, we've kind of taken this zigzag approach.
If you've ever seen that, there's this infographic that says what people think success looks like and then what success really looks like.
And people think it's like a straight line and what it really looks like is going in circles, and then you kind of get out of it.
The latter has definitely, in some sense, described us at times.
And, you know, it's hard to say that you could.
That you could do anything differently.
But the biggest mistake I think I've.
The biggest mistake I think I've made is, like, kind of like losing momentum, you know, several times in the process and almost feeling like you had to take.
Like you took two steps back just to take one step forward, actually.
Omer (23:50.600)
Can you give me an example of that?
I mean, you sort of.
When you're looking back, is there something that you specifically.
That you look back and you say, that's.
That's one example of something I wish we had done differently?
Trevor Owens (24:04.880)
Yeah.
So very early in the growing of.
In the growing of lsm, we.
So there's a.
There's a couple of things I'll share, and I think.
I think most of it comes down to really, like, managing your Runway, I think, because, you know, there's been times where we've had to, like, hired too fast or something like that, and to peel back a little bit, like, very early in lsm.
One of the great things about an events business is that you have positive working capital.
So what this means is that when you launch an event, you start getting in revenue immediately, and you don't deliver the service until the date of the event.
So one of the things that we did to grow really fast was that we scaled ahead of our events so we would get revenue in, and then with that revenue, would hire the person to organize the next event, for example.
So quickly you can multiply the number of events you're doing.
And I think very early on, I just went all out doing that and went probably way too fast.
And we got to a point where we started to get.
We had to cancel some events because we didn't really factor that in as much as we should have.
And then I ended up in a situation where I was, like, late paying a lot of the people that were running the events, and it was just like, these are people that mean a lot to me.
And when you run a company, all your employees mean so much to you, right?
And, like, these are the people that are really almost like your children in some sense, right?
Like employees of your company, you feel like they're a part of your family.
As an entrepreneur, you take your business really, really personally.
And, you know, I feel like I really let a lot of people down at that moment, you know, and that was a.
That was a really defining Moment for me in that sense of scaling too quickly.
And even after, you know, we, we raised money, we started working with a couple different development shops to do some software stuff for us.
And I feel like that was maybe jumping the gun a bit and going a little bit ahead of our, ahead of our boundaries.
So, you know, I'm a big believer in moving quickly.
But you know, if you can, if you go, end up going too fast, you can really lose a lot of your momentum, you know, and it can, it can set you back.
Omer (26:35.270)
Now when I was doing, you know, research for this interview, one of the things there was this theme that sort of kept sort of coming up about you and the fact that, that you know, a lot of people saw you as this, you know, this incredible hustler.
And you know, you're, you're incredibly connected.
And you mentioned, you know, Dave McClure and, and you know, Eric Rees and you know, earlier we talked about the story that I'd heard about you getting Seth Godin to turn up for an event that you were doing.
What advice would you give to somebody about what are some of the lessons that you have learned about, you know, just the way that you get things done and the way that you connect with people.
Trevor Owens (27:26.729)
Yeah, so I've, I've definitely, I think I've done a lot, A lot of people did, you know, kind of know me in New York just because I.
Part of it is just organizing events really, you know, like.
And it's, it's ironic because everything really started for me when I started organizing events and I really.
Only purely organized events because I was doing my business school because.
And this was, you know, how I got Seth Godin was that I was looking for a technical co founder.
And I thought, you know, it was really hard to find Technical co founder.
It's probably still really hard today, you know, if you're just starting.
I was like, I have to differentiate myself from my peers a little bit.
And so I was reading Seth Godin and reading following other people in the tech scene and I would just shoot him a cold email.
I would just say, hey, I'm a big fan of yours and I would love to have you come speak at NYU's business school.
I was able to leverage the reputation of NYU and by organizing events I met a lot of great people.
And as I mentioned to you kind of before the audio, you know, I'm really an introverted person.
So which every, when everyone hears that, they're always like so shocked.
They're like, no way.
How could you Be.
How could you be an introvert?
Like, you're so, you know, you have, like, social skills, you know, and I'm like, you know, that's not what being an introvert is.
But so for me, the thing about organizing event is that you are providing value to a lot of people.
And I think when it comes down to establishing yourself and networking, for me, it comes down to two things.
The first one is adding value, and the second one is standing out.
So the more that you can stand out and be different from other people, that the people you're trying to be interact with, you're gonna create a lasting memory.
And this is kind of like branding 101.
Like, everybody anybody knows anything about branding is that you have to figure out, like, what is your.
Who are you as a product really, if you're doing your personal branding right?
Lean Startup, for example, is a very good branding behind an idea.
And so for me, events was a repeatable way to add value to influential people.
And almost everyone who's highly networked, I see that they have kind of these repeatable ways to add value to people because you're really trying to scale your relationships.
And I'm also a big believer in karma.
And I think that my personal philosophy is really to give, really, just to give as much as possible and, like, just let it come back to you whatever way it's going to.
So.
And a lot of people like that I've also seen on your show.
Like, I saw, like, Hiten Shah.
Yeah, yeah.
So Heaton as well, is like, you know, he's one of the most connected people in the Valley, and he's also.
He's an advice.
He's an advisor of Javelin.
Just one of my favorite people because he's just so selfless.
Like, among all the people that I know, he's someone that just, like, you know, will.
If you're a new entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and you just drop him an email and he's never heard of you before, and you say, hey, I'm new, and I really want to meet some people.
And, you know, I saw you on Twitter, and I really like your company.
He would meet with you and get coffee and, like, you know, you know, try to help you out and offer you whatever advice.
He's just that.
That type of person.
And his.
His motto is even a quote by Zig Zigliter, which is the way to get or something like, by helping everyone else get what they want in life, the route to getting what you want.
So I'm a big believer in just giving as selflessly as possible.
And for me, events was an easy way to do that.
And I never wanted to be to start an event company, but it ended up leading me to lsm.
Omer (31:36.140)
Yeah, I was a little surprised as well when you said that you were an introvert.
Although, having said that, so am I.
And I think I came across something a while back which said, you know, you can tell if you're an introvert if you know, it doesn't mean you don't have social skills.
It just means, I think, that a lot of the times you find you need to be by yourself to kind of recharge and get that energy back.
Right.
Whereas extroverts need to be around people to sort of get that charge of energy.
Yeah.
I don't know if I explained that well, but that's the way I think about it.
