#551 How to Validate Anything: Kingsley Maunder’s SALT Test for Startup Builders

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to representative of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me, Kingsley Maunder. Kingsley, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell me a little bit more about you, your journey, what you're currently up to. Today we're [00:01:00] gonna talk about, you know, startups.

We're gonna talk about idea and how to take it to the next level. But again, I like to keep it to my guests to tell us more first about their journey. So, Kingsley, the floor is huge. 

Kingsley: Amazing. Well, firstly, thank you for having me here. I greatly appreciate Mehmet. Uh, yeah. At, at the age of 10, I was, uh, calling myself an inventor, uh, thinking of ideas to solve problems.

Uh, when I got to university, I, I was trying to work out a, a, a, the best way to, to do that and, and felt technology was the best approach. So I started to study computer science. Uh, I finished that and when I finished that, I was very fortunate. To come into the.com era and, uh, through that entered into the startup ecosystem and I was in that space for.

Almost 20 years. Uh, built products used by many of the world's, uh, biggest brands. Products are built from scratch and, um, you know, [00:02:00] Disney, EA sports, uh, snap are just some of the examples. Over that time, two of those startups went onto. The third one raised over $180 million. Um, but yes, of course with all those successes, you, you do get a lot of failures.

And those were the where, where the biggest lessons were learned. And I have taken those lessons and. Put them into a book, uh, called the SALT Test, how to take an innovative product from idea to scale. And, and it gives very practical advice. If you have an idea. How do you take that idea? How do you build it out and make it into a, a, a profitable and scalable business?

Uh, it's my opportunity to, to give back to the startup world, uh, which I have a lot of passion about. Great. 

Mehmet: So we share the same passion, Kingsley, by the way. And, uh, thank you again for being here with me today. Let's start with, with the salt test. Like, [00:03:00] uh, it's a framework, right? So, and feel free, like to take your time explaining to us, right?

So maybe first kind of an elevator pitch about it. And then if you want like, uh, to tell me like, you know, what's the core thing that, uh, you know, you focus on? So like fellow founders, they, they can learn from, from your Kingsley. 

Kingsley: Absolutely. So the, the really comes down to, why did I call it the salt test, the name behind it.

And, and it comes back to a, a, a story, uh, that Thomas Edison had a very grueling interview process if you wanted to join him. And, and the final test is he'll take you down to his cafeteria and you'll sit and you'd, you'd eat and, and he would see if you added salt. To your food before you tasted it.

Because if you added salt to your food first, you made an assumption, you made an assumption that the food was not salty enough. And assumptions are killers for innovation. [00:04:00] And that's why I called it the salt test because it, the strong theme, uh, throughout the book is do not make assumptions. So, you know, unvalidated assumptions.

So it, it's, it's a very risky balance because if you have an idea, it's necessary to make assumptions. You need to, you know, envisage who your target market will be. You need to have that goal on, on who's going to use it, what problem does it solve, what does the solution look like right at the beginning from day one.

Those are all assumptions and they're necessary. I think the risk then comes down to when we start to treat, treat those assumptions as facts. And that's what the book is, is very much about, and it's a step by step process where it says, okay, there are assumptions you have to make. State [00:05:00] those assumptions and in a particular order.

And we, I'm happy to talk through the Sure. That order at a later date, uh, or whenever you ask. Uh. You know, state them upfront, but do not treat them as fact. 'cause then the next phase is to take those assumptions and to prove them, and to then prove them in a very specific order, which we can go through. I.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. We're gonna go through, now you talk, uh, Kiley about, uh, stress testing ideas before, you know, investing time and money. Um, what are like the top two SI would say like, that, you know, can tell us if, uh, an idea is or is not ready to scale in your opinion. 

Kingsley: It, it, it comes down to one of the assumptions you, you need to make is, well, right in the beginning is, is set your objectives.

So what are your objectives early on? [00:06:00] And, and, and, and I would say it depends where you are in the process. Maybe to be more specific, uh, 'cause you might be sitting there going, okay, uh, an assumption is that here's my target market and have this problem. And, and therefore the success of that is you would say right here is I'm going to speak to 30 people and outta those 30 people, I will set a benchmark that X number will have this problem, will show that they have this problem.

Um, but go into a little bit of detail around that. I think there are, I, I like to have two numbers. The one is a success metric. If you go above that number, it's successful. But I also think it's really important to have a, a, a number below that whereby if you go below that number, you need to stop.

Because often we don't hit that number and we find excuses to keep going and [00:07:00] to keep trying, but so they have that middle ground, which is important because you can always iterate and innovate on your ideas to improve on that number in a certain way. So you might say, okay, well. You know, if I, if I've come up with a solution and I'm presenting it, um, people might not agree with it, or, or the number, the, the expected number proportion I thought or don't agree with it.

But if you adjust it a bit and you test it a bit, that number may go up. Um, however, I think there should be a fail number as well. If you go below that number, you should, you should agree beforehand. That, that's the fail number. Guess just cut and move on to and and move on to something else or to. 

Mehmet: Yeah, absolutely.

So what, what do you think, um, you know, like here, it, it could be especially maybe for first time founders, Kingsley, you know, there might be something which we call it noise traction versus real traction when, when they are into this [00:08:00] validation, um, phase. So what's your take on like what is real and what is noise?

I, one of the. 

Kingsley: One of the key things, um, if we, if we're talking at, uh, quantitative data. Which we can go into, but, but broadly speaking, quantitative data, as long as you're key on your metrics that you want to measure, they don't really lie. Uh, the quantitative data, the numbers don't really lie as long as upfront, you have a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve.

Now, when it comes to qualitative data, when you are talking. Two, um, potential customers and users. That is very difficult. That is probably one of the biggest trip ups that we, that, that, that we have as, as startup founders. And the key there is, is, is we will often, we're so excited about an idea, we will often [00:09:00] go to people who we think have this problem, and we'll pitch it and we'll tell them the idea.

And people are generally very polite and they'll come back to you and say, oh, I love the idea. Yes, I would use it. And, you know, tell you exactly what you you want to hear. And you'll go away and you'll build it. And then when you come to present it to them or give them the actual product, they turn around and say, well, actually they don't have the budget.

Or, yeah, I, I want a little bit of this. And then that just drag on a bit longer. So the way to get around that. Is, is to not talk in hypothetical terms. Now it comes back down to what I, I, I believe is the starting point for all of this. And, and this came on a, on a was, was mentioned in one of your recent interviews with Liam when he, when he spoke about a product led approach.

Uh, a problem led approach. Apologies is a problem led approach, and that is where I feel that, you know, an innovative product should start. And what problem are you solving [00:10:00] for who? And when you use that approach, you start to engage with people and you start to ask them not about the future or how they would use it, it's about when did they last have that problem or have they ever had that problem?

When did they have that problem? How did they solve that problem? So you're starting to make it very practical in that you are referring to how people have had this experience in the past, not about how they might have it. 'cause that is the trap moving forward. I. 

Mehmet: Kingley. That's good. You know, like I, I, I get it.

And I think a lot of founders, they, they, they fall into, let's call it a trap, which is again, you know, I like to call it, it's not my term, you know, like I, every single entrepreneurship startup book, I, I was able to put my hands on. We, we start with the hypothesis, right? Like that there is a problem for specific people and so on.

Uh, [00:11:00] so. Why, because you mentioned talking to customers and customers can do this. It, you know, can, can tell you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are excited. We're gonna buy, you know, and then when the time, so can I. Expect this beforehand. So instead of me waiting you, you just mentioned few, but I mean if I want to, you know, like founders are always in rush.

We know this. Is there like kind of signs, you know, maybe from the first meeting that we can spot, um, like maybe 'cause you are going, by the way, and this is why I'm asking you this back to the noise thing because maybe I'm going, I have a real problem, but maybe I'm choosing the wrong. Like, you know, not persona, even like maybe the wrong companies.

Maybe I should go to other companies. So before I give up and I pivot, like what kind of, of things like I can still do to make sure that okay, I, I'm, I'm, I'm a hundred percent sure. Like, no, this is, you know, I don't want, I don't want to waste my time [00:12:00] anymore. I, you know, these guys is very obvious. They are serious, but very obvious.

Like, they will not buy this. So in your experience, of course. 

Kingsley: Yes. And, and that's why I, I, a lot of the books to say, say, solve a problem. Absolutely. And, and, and I like to qualify and I said, maybe, I said a little bit earlier the problem for the right target market, and sometimes you will be solving a problem, but sometimes you're hitting the wrong target market.

And that's why you, you, you, you experiment with that. And so, yes, this problem may exist. Um. But it may not exist for this particular target market, or they're not willing to spend any money on it, or they're not willing to invest in it. And, and often we, we, one thing you, you should look at is, is how, if they have a problem, how do that currently solve that problem?

And sometimes, [00:13:00] um. Sometimes there isn't a need for a, a solution. Yes, the problem exists and they have a workaround, and an example I have from, from my experience is. We, we, we, we built a tool, this was many years ago, which allowed brands to just search the internet. And if a photograph of a celebrity or anybody was seen wearing their brand, we would alert them and tell them, and we thought this was a great product, but in reality, they turn around and says, well, I, I just have an intern that uses that.

And so that was a very. Cheap solution for a technical problem. And they're like, well, I don't really, you know, that. So the, the alternative was, was much easier. And, and a lot of startups have this problem when you find yourself competing with. Excel, for example. You know that it's a very powerful tool and, but we all, it's, it's very, it's been around for ages and we always think we can build something [00:14:00] better.

But ultimately, a lot of these companies and users just say, well, I'll just stick it in Excel and, and use Excel or, or, or, or, or, or WhatsApp, you know, we create these amazing, uh, ways to communicate and, and they turn around. I just use WhatsApp and, and so understanding what you're competing against is really important.

And then you've gotta work out whether they are actually willing to shift. So that comes down to the, another key point is in order for people to change their behaviors, and remember you might be selling to businesses, but ultimately you say you're selling to people, order, change their behaviors. You've gotta have something that's significantly better because, uh, we are lazy.

You know, as humans we are generally lazy. Uh, and, and we don't like risk. Therefore we need something that's significantly better in order to, to change people's behaviors. 

Mehmet: Uh, [00:15:00] you know, like, uh, it's, it's like stuck, uh, with, with a lot of people you know about when it comes to, to, to behaviors and, uh, the way they deal with it.

I think one, one thing I noticed personally, Kingsley is also. It's, it's not rated, you know, to, um, to tech or anything. It's also the, for the founders, um, to understand that also. The personality of the people that they are talking to. Right. Um, especially if they are coming with something very innovative.

If they are coming as we call it. Like, it's a kind of cliche, you know, like, uh, disrupting the status quo. Right. Um, so people would show also sometimes, um, they, they play defense, we call it, or they, they push back. Uh, and you know, I think there is a. A skill here where the founders, they have to understand that sometimes, like this is also a, a [00:16:00] factor there.

Like people would not, would not accept something like if, if especially, uh, something really innovative. And this is why I, I want to ask you about innovation here. So, you know, sometime innovation looks or sounds exciting, but you know, execution is everything. Where do you see, you know, usually founders fall short.

When moving from prototype to actual adoption. So 

Kingsley: if, if I, if I go back to that, what you've mentioned has reminded me, and, and so through my, through my career, I moved from an engineer to multiple spaces, especially when as an entrepreneur and, and I went to that. I was fortunate enough to be sent on a course called Solution Selling and Solution Selling is is really almost foundational around what we're talking about, understanding the problem.

So you, if you went in to a client, you're not selling your product, you're understanding [00:17:00] what problems they have, and what you ultimately do is you have that discussion with 'em and they share their issues and they share their problems. You know what the solution is 'cause hopefully you've got the solution for it.

But then ultimately there comes the realization on what that solution is and, and, and you have that solution. And so that is, for me, that was like, this was many years ago that, that's was foundational for me in, in, in many ways going on that. So it, it is if they have a problem and if you have a solution and ideally.

Talk through that problem. You talk through the solution, you have the solution, or maybe you can adjust what you have for that. Um, you don't wanna build a one-off for, for, for, for specific companies, but if it helps you build the right product, um, that, that, that is, that is key. Um, I think that's, sorry, I kind of forgot your second point.

[00:18:00] Is there anything else you wanted to add to that? 

Mehmet: No, uh, you, you just answered it like about, you know, like, uh, you, it's good. You mentioned the solution selling Kingsley because, uh, uh, now I've seen founders who are talented, like they didn't, they didn't work in a sales organization before, but they are so talented that they understand this, especially if they come, you know, from the same.

Position, I would say where, uh, the customer is, is, is coming from. So, uh, you know, it, it, it, it makes sense, you know, and this is, you know, comes coming back, you know, to this difference between, you know, a customer and, and, and the user also. Right. So, uh, this distinction, right, um, because, uh. I think, you know, one, one of the underrated, uh, uh, skills that founders, usually they think, you know, like, I will build it, they will follow me.

Uh, you know, like, I will, I will, [00:19:00] uh, you know, I will just make a noise in the market and everyone will come. Um, so. If you want to point to, you know, one, I would say, uh, kind of hearing that you, you, you, you, you, you, you see founders repeating and you wish that they really unlearned, they, they should stop repeating this.

What would be, what would that be? I think the. 

Kingsley: If we go beyond what I've already discussed and I wanna go beyond sort of solving the problem. And I, and I think the next one is when it comes to the, the solution is founders either go one of two ways, usually. Um, and the one, the one is that just end up building a me too product in that mm-hmm.

Is very similar to what's in the market or just slightly better. I think that's, that's it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's [00:20:00] slightly better, but in reality, as I said, we, we are lazy as individuals. It has to be significantly better, you know, for people to change their behaviors. So you need to come in with something that is significantly better.

You can't just come in with something that is slightly better and that's so important. Uh, the o the other one, that's all. The other extreme is innovators love to come in with something that is so much better, but it doesn't actually also do the foundational work. So there's two things here whereby if you give a product to someone, it has to have the benchmark of what needs to achieve.

If, if somebody uses it, it'll do the basic stuff very well. It still has to do the basic stuff very well. And on top of that, it has to be significantly better. So it can't be very similar and [00:21:00] it can't be so innovative that it doesn't do the basic stuff 

Mehmet: right. Now, let me ask you something, Kingsley, we, we, we are living in the AI era, right?

So in, in your opinion, this journey where, you know, we apply, you know, the salt test, right? And the salt framework, anything where us as founders, we can. Leverage AI to maybe, again, because we are lazy, we are, we want to be as fast as possible and we know like. Honestly, AI can help in, in, in, in some, uh, of the tasks, uh, that we, we do.

So anything that AI can be leveraged in, in the salt test itself, you know, and feel free to, to, to revise or to, to tell us again about the key ones that, you know, we should not skip as founders. And also where AI can, can, can fit into it. 

Kingsley: Absolutely. Um, the, [00:22:00] in actual fact from almost from when the book was first written to today, it's almost become outdated in its timelines because.

I would say the discovery work would take X number of weeks and, and, and, but now it's, it, it can be hours and and days. Thanks, thanks to ai. And on that note, so the, the model underneath, you know, that, that a writer about it in the soil test is, is called the growth map. And there's an online version, growth map.org.

And, and so, you know, I, in, in the book originally it was, you know, take out a piece of paper, go through the first phase, which is the op opportunity, what problem for who, how do they currently solve it? That's the first phase and the next phase is the solution. And eventually I thought, well actually, you know, digital worlds I major a digital version of, of the growth map and.

Following that [00:23:00] with the advent of of, of ai it, you can now go in and say, who's my target market? Here's the problem I'm trying to solve. Who's the target market? And come back to you within minutes and it then says, what problem have they gotten come back to you within minutes. So, you know, within that space you can go from, you know, coming up with assumptions.

And, and, and have a, a certain level of, of validation. 'cause we've gotta trust AI to a certain level. Not completely. You can go through that growth map and, and, and, and build it almost entirely with, with AI now within, within, in less than, in less than 30 minutes. Um, and I, I think that is the way forward.

So for me, this is anybody who has an idea. It's incredibly exciting, uh, uh, because you can just experiment and prove [00:24:00] those ideas within days. Now, you know, I, maybe not right now, well probably right now, but in very soon, you can probably do that within, within 24 hours, I wouldn't say in the next couple of years.

So if you have an idea, you don't have to spend. Time or thousands, you can, with the advent of, of good AI tools, you can, you can validate your ideas in no time. 

Mehmet: Kingsley would be any difference between I'm not a B2C expert would be any difference between B2B and B2C um, products. 

Kingsley: I think it, it's, it's what you, you mentioned earlier what's the difference between a, a customer and a user?

Mm-hmm. If you are, are, if you are B2C, your users are generally, or so your, your, your customers. Uh, but let me go with, with B2B first, because [00:25:00] in many instances, the person who has the purse strings is the customer. But they are not often the ones who are actually the users as well. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I think Slack is a really good example.

When they first came out, they really targeted the users and they gave it away for free. But then the customers were the operations teams. Anybody who, who wants to make this more efficient. So they had to sell it to the customer. But that in their instance, they did it through the users, they did it sort of ground swelling through the users.

So you need to. Build your product that's really good for the users, but build it in a way and, and have your pitch that works for the customer as well. So let's go. That's the B2B side. If you go back to B2C, that is often the same person, the person who uses it or also the decision maker with the exception if you're, if you're dealing with, with parents and children.

Mehmet: Yeah, [00:26:00] absolutely, absolutely. Make, makes a lot of sense. And this is this example I always, uh, use like about like who's, who's the, you know, like, especially in kids' products, like it's, it's the child that decides what they want, but the budget come from us as talents, right. So it's, it's a nice, uh, analogy I would say.

Now, um, one more thing, you know, regarding. Uh, I would say understanding, uh, what, what the user want. And you, you just gave an example of Slack, right? And we know about, you know, uh, iteration, so which sometime we call it, we call it pivot, and we talked about it at the beginning also as well. Now this pivot, uh, in your opinion, Kingsley like.

Like sh is it okay to be something very [00:27:00] radical? Like in the case of Slack, a company that started it as a game company and then they figured out, oh, like we, we've built like an amazing internal communication tool that we think companies use versus, you know, and people, you know, like, again, people, they say like, it's, it's luck.

It worked for them. Uh, while we've seen like some other startup that, you know, they didn't, they pivoted, but it's not like that big shift, right? So it's not like from making a game to a, uh, uh, company communication, uh, tool or, or or app. Um, from your experience, what is too much pivoting? What is acceptable or the answer?

It depends. Answer is 

Kingsley: depends,

but I, I, I, I truly believe that success leaves clues. And I, and, and therefore you can [00:28:00] follow that. And, and, and, and in the case of Slack and, and, and Instagram is another one, the success was they could see the success. They could see. That something was happening, which I hadn't anticipated or expected. And, and the, the clues were there and they were wise enough to follow those clues.

Um, and, and, and the, the but then the other one is, is it you, you, you, you want to have a hard pivot. It depends on a hard pivot or a light pivot. And, and, and that comes back down to. The problem you're trying to solve and for who, and the advantage of that is you don't want to pivot when you've gone too far down the road.

You really often, the mistake is we, we is innovator's bias, and I'll come back to this a bit, but as innovator's bias, we come up with a solution. Mm-hmm. And we then try to find a problem and a target market to squeeze it [00:29:00] into. So I think often the hard pivot is when, when a founder has made that, that, that, that mistake.

They've built a product, they believe it has a problem. They believe in the target market. They go out there and they then they're trying to find that gap. But then they may find in that process that something in there actually works. Once again, there's something in there that triggers something and therefore they hit a, they can use that bit of technology to solve that problem for that target market, and therefore that's a good opportunity.

To pivot. So I think if you've pivoted hard, I feel you've probably made a mistake, I'm sorry to say, to start off with by not following that path. But if you go through the process, you can pivot and you're, you're much more likely to succeed. 

Mehmet: Yeah, I think this is what you call it, Kingsley, in, in your book the, uh, assumption trap, right?

[00:30:00] So, uh, yeah, as you, you and I, I always tell people like, you know, sometime I'm not sure if, if, if, um, you know, uh. We mis, we mis put this, so we say, I, I tell people like, yeah, do assumptions, but don't, don't be, you know, uh, so attached to your assumptions. Uh, and, and so stubborn, uh, I can understand again, it, I think maybe ego, Kingsley, I don't know.

Like maybe it's like, yeah, I've done it before. We've done things. Uh, and maybe I'm asking something. Quite, I, I start to question myself about, you know, how we can put in the founders what we call, you know, because when we talk about startups, we talk about innovation. And even if we are not inventing necessarily something new, we are enhancing something which exists already and.

I've learned this on the show, by the way. It's, it's not like [00:31:00] me because I knew it. 'cause I, I thought like I knew it all, but end up, I don't know any, any anything yet. So a lot of my guests kept repeating, thinking, using first principles, right? And founders often I see they don't go by this, although, like themselves, they are maybe disrupting something they keep, you know.

Saying, no, this should be done this way. And I know the reason why, because some founders actually, they were so stubborn that they succeed at the end. So here, I think there is kind of a, I don't know what to call it, if you can help me, Kingsley, in, in, in, in the whole thing between, you know. The signals we are getting from, from the market between maybe what our team is telling us as founders may, maybe the team is telling us like, Hey guys like this.

This is not working. Right. So, because at the end of the day, it's like [00:32:00] a puzzle. And I think here where also part of the signals we, we should, we should be looking at is, you know. What you also call it a, a, a and you just mentioned it like the, the, the product growth map, right? So how I can put the whole thing together as a founder, like how I can really start to take, you know, the results of my assumptions and the decision I took based on these assumptions, what the market is telling me, what my team is telling me.

And then based on that, you know. Put the roadmap of, of what's coming next. 

Kingsley: Yeah. And quite a lot to unpack there. I, I think ego, absolutely. I just wanna go back to that ego. The other one is fear. I think as well, you know, I, I maybe I talk from experience and that I'm afraid that my solution won't work. I'm afraid to look into it.

[00:33:00] And find that it isn't a good solution. If I come up with a solution, I'm slightly afraid to, to dig into it and, and find that it doesn't give me the results I want. But my, my, my advice to, to any founder who is, is struggling, uh, who's, who's hit a roadblock, um, because I talk a lot about taking it from step by step, but if you were in a situation at the moment where you are sitting there and you feel like you're blocked.

Go through those steps one by one and see if you can identify any assumptions that you may have made on that journey. And start off with the problem and your target market and the solution, and do you have anything different? So go through those one by one and make sure you have properly validated all of those.

And you may find at some point. For instance, that actually, yes, it does exist. There is a problem. I have a solution. But for example, you may [00:34:00] find that your solution is just not different enough. For people to change their behaviors or it, it does exist, but the target market is slightly different. Um, and once again, all those clues could be there, uh, you know, it could come from your, your team.

Um, so to just try pick up on, on, on those clues on where it could be. 

Mehmet: Right now, I was looking on, on, on, uh. On your website, you know, and it was mentioned about the book over there. So you talk about lessons from Netflix, Snapchat, and Swift over there. Um, personal opinion, you know, like what, what's the story?

Um, that really. Always, you know, get, get, uh, stuck with you all the time. Especially when, when, when helping like fellow founders, like, you know, of course. Like, it doesn't [00:35:00] have to be one of these also, like, like who do you think nailed it really when it comes to, to this phase from idea to be ready to scale?

Kingsley: Yeah. I, you know, I think it, it, it may not be. A popular choice because they are so successful. But Amazon, if you think about it, they really, they want, they, you know, they're now, and I believe the vision was to be in everything store. And, and, um, if I can go, almost go back to what you said earlier on about farmers having a vision and, and, uh, Jeff Bezos will say, you know, they have a five year vision or a seven year vision, and they will.

Stick with that vision. They'll be firm in their vision, but they'll be flexible on the details on how to get there. And I think that's, that, that's so true. I think that is, is, you know, that's the vision I wanna go for as a founder. If you have that vision, [00:36:00] you can, but you need to be flexible on how you're gonna get there.

And I think they've done that very well. But going back to, to, to the origin origins of Amazon in the.com days, you know. If you're gonna buy something online, people weren't so sure about what they're gonna buy. But if you buy a book, you buy a book, you know what you're going to get. Pretty much not like buying clothing where you've got a different size or you know, those variables are often taken outta the way book or a DVD.

And once they got that traction, then they then grew and, and, and you could see how they've grown to AWS because. They had that vision. While we are, you know, we're using the cloud, why didn't we then just expose this to everybody else? Or another one is, um, with a Kindle. Mm-hmm. You can imagine Jeff Beso saying, well, ultimately books are no longer going to exist.

It hasn't [00:37:00] happened thankfully. But what is the future of books? And there's gonna be this little device. And so why don't we then, um. One, we replace, look to replace books before anybody else and come out with a Kindle. And it was very first device that they ever launched, and you could see how they were, um, uh, cannibalizing their own business as they went along and they constantly innovated.

So that's, I think, a really good example of that. 

Mehmet: I, I agree with you. You know, like, and also. Uh, I help, uh, you know, um, part of giving back. Also, sometimes I sit with people who have ambition to become entrepreneurs, and when we talk about, you know, uh, so there's a, a, a, um, you know, a part about ideation and there's another part about validation.

And they see me repeating Amazon because I, I, I tell them like Amazon, when it comes to ideation, [00:38:00] you know, Jeff Bezos like. Spotted the opportunity reading a report that came in front of him when he was a, you know, working in a financial institute and then seeing the internet gonna grow. And he spotted the opportunity and then he start to think, okay, what can I do?

What, what can I sell? And he put the vision, I want to sell everything. And then how he narrowed down to your point about, okay, what's the easier thing that doesn't have a lot of books. Everyone read books, everyone can buy them. And then the way they scaled it and they. I would call, like they went into adjacent market from e-commerce perspective, and then they built the whole, you know, AWS thing.

So it's a masterclass, but I tell people like, don't think it was an easy journey. Like it took them years and years, you know, to, to reach what they are here today. And they have to. Of course, um, there were a lot of, uh, obstacles in, in front of them also, like from logistics and, and everything. So, so yeah, I [00:39:00] agree with you on, on the example of Amazon Kingsley.

Now, if I want to ask you, you know, I. For builders, like in, in who, who are like now just on the verge to, to start. Right. What's exciting you, Kingsley, like other of course other than ai. AI is exciting everyone, but where do you see really there's a big opportunity for innovative product builders? You know, I would not ask you in 10 years, five years, like in the, in, in the foreseen future, I would say.

Kingsley: Yeah. I think, um. The, the for for, for builders. I think their exciting opportunities is, um, having, uh, nowadays, I mean, it's hard to say without, you said, don't make, you know, without mentioning ai, it's hard not to. Um, I, I would say for, for, for builders with the [00:40:00] use of AI is to it to be help you become more product focused.

And, you know, being you, you can now merge those three core skills, you know, the engineering, the product, and the design. If you can be in that space, uh, then that's, that's incredibly exciting. And I think with all the tools now there, even without ai, with all the tools that are out in the market at the moment, the opportunities to be in the middle of those three.

It is the most exciting because a successful product needs to appeal to an audience and needs that design element. It needs the more traditional product element. Are you solving a problem for who? You know, what makes it different, what makes it unique? And then you have the engineering side. And so if, if you're a builder and if you can merge, you know in, if you can move into that space as [00:41:00] well.

Which is easier and easier with the tools that we have nowadays. I think it's incredibly exciting. 

Mehmet: Great. As we are coming to, to an end, uh, Kingsley, and again, thank you for your insights where people can get in touch and maybe if you have any final thing to, to, to mention 

Kingsley: Yeah. You can you, uh, reach out to me on, on LinkedIn.

I like to hear from people, so Kingsley Mon at at at LinkedIn. Um, and, uh, yeah, ultimately at, at the end of the day, if you have assumptions, don't fall for the assumption trap. Think of the salt test every time you add salt to your food, but without tasting it, you know, just think that that's an assumption that, that you've made.

Um, and, and please, if you're a startup founder that has any challenges, feel free to reach out. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm doing this for the community. I, I, you know, I, I want to, I want to give back. So the community, so please feel free to reach out. 

Mehmet: Lovely. Great. Of course, you know, [00:42:00] I will make sure that, uh, link to your website and to your LinkedIn profile.

So on the website of Kingsley, you can find, you know, also there's a link to the book. So go grab your copy from there and, uh, if you want to get in touch, I will put also the link in. Profile Kings, again, thank you very much for, you know, your insights for sharing, you know, um, your, your expertise and knowledge with us today.

I really appreciate that. Um, and this is how I end my episodes. This is usually for the audience. If you just discovered our podcast, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed If you did, so, give me a favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. Same asking. See, I'm trying to give back.

Bringing, you know. Thought, leaderships, experts, founders, builders, investors, operators to the show to share their experience. So all of us, we can learn. And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you very much for, you know, following the show, sending me your messages. And thank you for keeping the CTO show this year.

Pretty much, we are on November now, so [00:43:00] since Feb, uh, we never. Skipped a week without being in the top 200 charts in one of the countries of the apple, uh, two, 200, uh, charts in the entrepreneurship, sometimes in the business, sometimes overall, which is great. But I'm still waiting for my friends in the us.

Maybe you can give me a push and we do it there. We did a lot of country, including the UK by the way. Uh, we did it on Australia this year. We did it in Germany, Spain, Portugal, uh, majority of European countries. So I'm waiting from my US France to give me the push and reach the top 200 charts there. As I say, always stay tuned for the episode.

Thank you. Bye-bye.