How to Build Your Second Billion Dollar Startup (with Lesley Eccles)

#News(Startup) [ via IoTGroup ]

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How to Build Your Second Billion Dollar Startup (with Lesley Eccles)
Always Be Testing
Traits of a Good Founder
Key Tips for Starting a Company

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Lesley is the founder of the daily fantasy sports provider, FanDuel – which is the biggest sports betting company in the US.
Now she’s building a new company called Relish, the #1 relationship training app.
My first question to Lesley was, “How do you build a billion-dollar company?” As surprising as it might sound, she told me she never set out to build a billion-dollar company.
FanDuel began in 2009 before fantasy sports were highly popular.
Although she was based in the UK, Lesley and her team looked to the US as an untapped market.
She explained that when she and her team were starting FanDuel, “they were not their target market.” They didn’t play fantasy sports.
“We were five brits in the UK,” she explained, “and none of us knew anything about fantasy sports or even American sports.
But we realized the size of that marketplace, and we realized the passion of the players in the fantasy sports space.”
“We invented an entirely new industry,” Lesley told me.
Lesley explained how she and her team try things out with her market.
“It’s not about the big romantic gestures,” Lesley told me.
“It’s about the little things you do day in and day out… So we started with these little daily text messages as an MVP.” The text messages were a big hit with her small test audience, so she built that feature into the app.
While the text messaging functionality was immediately popular with her test audience, Lesley wasn’t always so lucky.
I asked Lesley about her thoughts on the traits of a good founder.
The founder, as well as everyone else on the team, should be driven and “all in.” The second trait she mentioned is the ability to build a team that’s passionate about your vision for growing the company.
Lesley recommends celebrating every small win and relishing the little moments before they’re gone.
If you’re thinking about starting a company, Lesley’s first bit of advice is to hire well

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