Last Thursday, June 14, a Coffee Break took place in the Vivero de Empresas of Carabanchel. On this occasion, the guest was Lucas Cervera, co-founder of Validable and Initiator.
Lucas is a serial entrepreneur; He started his business journey with metoCube, a web application to document business procedures. He is well known for being one of the co-founders of Initiator, the largest community of entrepreneurs in Spain, and of Emprelab. He currently leads Validable, an incubator to discover, validate and launch businesses on the Internet. Lucas is one of the most active entrepreneurs in the Madrid entrepreneurial ecosystem and it is common to find him at events and talks talking about Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or entrepreneurship in general.
initial errors
Lucas says that one of his mistakes when starting out was to refine the product too much before going to market: "While we incorporated five improvements, we came up with four more, in the end we came out late." On this, he reflects that one of the most common mistakes when starting out is "the requirements trap, gradually incorporating improvements and never ending".
Another mistake: “focusing too much on the product. It's very important, but all the business layers around it are even more so."
Lucas adds that "my current personal quest is to prevent others from making the mistake I made: believing that everything you think about your project is valid."
Prices
Another mistake was setting the price too low: "With metoCube we started selling, but we realized that the price was ridiculous." We went from charging €250 to €12,500 and it was better for us.
Lucas explains that they realized that the most practical thing is to have three closed prices: one low, one medium (the one you really want to sell to) and one exorbitant, since many people tend to never pay the highest price.
Model validation
Lucas says that before carrying out a mailing campaign, they calculated that, in the worst case, the sales obtained with the campaign would give them a living. But “we did the mailing and we sold zero. Since then I have been very interested in the validation of business models”.
«You must validate if your business model can work before launching. You have to be very clear and set milestones. It's easy to fool yourself with a project that doesn't work. Have empathy, put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask yourself 'what would happen to me tomorrow if I don't buy this product?' Getting market insights from your initial idea can vary your starting point quite a bit.”
Close in time to be able to try again
Lucas says that “I don't want to be a killjoy, but statistically many of you will have to close the company. Realizing in time that a business is not working is essential. To redirect it, or to close and open something else.
About Launcher
Lucas says that "Initiator is the typical project that pulls you in." And he explains that it began by calling itself "Beers & Entrepreneurs", but "people complained that after a couple of beers it was unpronounceable". He also explains that "with Rodolfo Carpintier I learned how important it is to have good advisors."
After talking with the attendees, Lucas left a sentence written on a window of the Carabanchel Nursery: "Better to regret trying something, than not having tried."
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