Pawan Kumar

Adora Cheung, co-founder of Homejoy, shared powerful lessons from her startup experience. Her insights are especially valuable for budding entrepreneurs navigating the challenging path of launching and growing a business. Below, I’ve distilled her wisdom into practical takeaways, presented in a straightforward and approachable way. The lecture is available here.

Adapting to Your Unique Journey

Adora Cheung, founder of Homejoy, emphasizes that while general advice can be valuable, each startup journey is unique. Successful entrepreneurs adapt common lessons to their specific circumstances and challenges. Rigidly following a one-size-fits-all blueprint often leads to setbacks. It’s crucial to remain flexible and tailor strategies to fit your situation, ensuring your approach is both personal and practical.

The Importance of Focus and Early User Feedback

A major mistake many first-time entrepreneurs make is attempting to build their product in secrecy, waiting for a grand launch to showcase it to the world. This approach rarely yields success. Instead, Cheung stresses the importance of focus: dedicate solid, uninterrupted blocks of time to your startup rather than scattered efforts. From the start, gather early feedback by releasing an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to a small group of users. This helps refine your product, ensuring you’re not building something nobody wants.

Defining and Passion for the Problem

A foundational step is clearly defining your problem statement in one concise sentence. Ask yourself whether you are genuinely passionate about solving this problem and whether it’s a real issue for others as well. Avoid creating solutions for problems you don’t experience firsthand. Cheung argues that understanding and personal passion are essential drivers of motivation. If possible, immerse yourself in the industry, even by working temporarily within it, to gain an insider’s perspective and spot inefficiencies that can be disrupted.

Becoming an Industry Expert

Knowledge is power, and Cheung advises founders to become experts in their field. This means going beyond theoretical knowledge by deeply engaging with competitors, studying their financials, public interactions, and offerings. For service-based startups, hands-on experience—like delivering the service yourself—can be invaluable. This builds a comprehensive understanding of the customer base and reveals opportunities for improvement and innovation.

Narrow Down Your Initial Target Market

While aiming for a broad audience is beneficial in the long run, Cheung recommends starting by targeting specific customer segments. This helps fine-tune your approach, develop tailored solutions, and gather detailed feedback. Storyboarding the entire user experience—from discovery and purchasing to usage and feedback—is a valuable tool for ensuring the process is seamless and user-centric.

MVP and User Acquisition Strategies

Launching with an MVP that addresses the core problem is crucial. The MVP should include the simplest feature set needed to test your hypothesis. Always collect user feedback to guide the product’s evolution. For initial users, leverage your personal network: friends, family, and colleagues can be great early adopters. Be creative and relentless when seeking new users, even using unconventional methods like Cheung’s tactic of handing out free water on hot days to generate interest.

Feedback Collection and Retention Metrics

Feedback is only valuable when it’s genuine. Cheung advises entrepreneurs to take note of the “honesty curve”: friends and family may offer overly positive feedback, whereas strangers are typically more critical and truthful. Multiple channels for feedback (emails, phone lines) and casual user interviews can foster honesty and reveal what truly matters to users. Monitoring retention rates and early indicators of engagement (like reviews and NPS) provides insight into your product’s health. A retention curve that stabilizes or grows slowly over time signifies a healthy user base, while a sharp drop signals potential problems.

Iterative Development and Automation

Cheung stresses the importance of iterative development. Launch early and iterate often to gather user insights and improve the product over time. Focus on solving key usability problems before adding new features. Before automating any process, understand it thoroughly by doing it manually. This provides the data and understanding needed for efficient automation later.

User Acquisition and Growth Strategies

Early-stage startups should focus on mastering one user acquisition channel at a time. Test different channels, analyze their performance, and refine your approach. When a channel doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to pivot, but revisit old channels as your market position evolves. Creative, unique growth hacking strategies often lead to the best results. For referral programs, design them thoughtfully with strategic prompts and seamless sharing options to maximize engagement.

Key Metrics and Financial Considerations

Understanding financial metrics is essential for sustainable growth. Cheung discusses metrics like CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), emphasizing that CLTV should ideally be greater than CAC. Aiming for a payback period of three months or less is considered a safer strategy. Cohort analysis and retention curve tracking help evaluate long-term product health and user loyalty.

When to Pivot and Managing Growth

Cheung offers guidance on knowing when to pivot: stalled growth, poor user retention, or unsustainable business model economics are all strong indicators. If growth stagnates for three to four consecutive weeks despite significant efforts, it might be time for a change. However, don’t mistake temporary dips for long-term failure—allow recovery strategies a few weeks to show results before making drastic moves.

Overcoming Switching Costs

Getting users to switch from an existing solution is challenging due to the friction involved in changing habits. Cheung advises focusing on a clear and compelling value proposition that highlights significant advantages over current solutions. Simplicity is key—communicate the value of switching by emphasizing one or two main benefits rather than a laundry list of small improvements.

These takeaways from Adora Cheung’s lecture provide a roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs, underscoring the importance of focus, passion, practical industry knowledge, user-centric development, and adaptability in the journey of building a successful startup.