Frequently Asked Questions

• What if I don’t have a brilliant idea for my startup yet?

  You might be thinking in order to have a profitable startup, you need to come up with a killer idea first - something no one else has ever thought of.

  That is a very common misconception, but that’s not how it plays out in the real world.

  In Art of the Startup, instead of focusing on “startup ideas,” Justin will teach you how to hunt for problems to solve.

  You’ll learn what makes great startup ideas using a proven “painkiller vs. vitamin” framework, and that will enable you to find your big idea.

  A great place to start is to look around you and pay attention to the annoyances and hassles you encounter everyday.

  In fact, the most successful startup founders came up with ideas that solve problems and hassles they had in their own lives.

  This exact method has helped some of the most exciting startups in the world—like Spotify, Weebly, Twitter and Twitch—come up with “billion dollar breakthroughs” millions of users love and tell all their friends about.

  If it worked for them, it will work for you.

• I’m not a programmer. And I have zero coding skills. Can I still learn from this?

  Great question.

  This is actually a key lesson in the course. We teach you what to do if you are (or are not) a “technical founder” meaning you have programming skills.

  And we even cover the correct way to approach getting a technical co-founder to join you. (You’d be surprised, there are a lot of wrong ways to approach this.)

  So don’t worry if you don’t know the first thing about coding.

  Also remember, there are many, many more successful ideas out there for you to build a business around than just tech startups.

• I don’t live anywhere near Silicon Valley. Can I still make this work?

  Great question, but the truth is it doesn’t matter where you live.

  Users don’t really care where you’re from. All they care about is whether you can solve their problems.

  Don’t believe me? You might be surprised where many of the world’s biggest startups call home:

  Canada (Shopify), Sweden (Spotify), Australia (99 Designs), Spain (Typeform)... there are too many to count.

  Now, if you have a driverless car technology app and want to work side-by-side with Apple or Google, I’d say living in Palo Alto could make a difference.

  Otherwise, great solutions know no borders—your best users may live in another country—and you can launch your startup from anywhere in the world.

• Is it too late to launch a startup? It just seems like all the good ideas are taken.

  Listen. Almost no one realizes this... but we’re in the “golden age” of startups.

  There has never been a time in history where almost anyone (with almost any background) has the ability to launch their own startup.

  Can everyone become the next Facebook? No. Of course not.

  But as long as there are people with burning problems, there will always be a need for startups to solve them.

• What if I don’t have tons of money to invest into my business?

  It can be extremely demotivating to hear about all the startups getting millions of venture capital thrown at them.

  But the truth is, there are many, many more startups that don’t look like that.

  Lots of people think that the key to startup success is attracting deep pocketed investors who will give them tons of money to "burn" on things like marketing, renting a big office, and hiring a team.

  This is absolutely not the case.

  The first and ONLY thing you need to do to gain momentum is find a great problem to solve. And that involves talking to users and asking them some very specific questions.

  In the course, you’ll also get a crash course on how to approach funding, and whether you should aim for VC funding...or just bootstrap it the entire way.

  When you learn the right way to approach a startup, and build things people want, everything starts to "fall into place."

  Then, down the road, when your business is successful, you can worry about attracting investors who can help your startup grow at a faster pace. If that’s what you’re looking for.

• Is your website and payment processing secure? Is my information safe?

  Yes. We’ve made it a main priority to guarantee your privacy and your information’s safety. Our website is secure and your payment information never even touches our server. (It goes through Braintree, a trusted 3rd party payment gateway owned by PayPal.)

• What happens after I sign up?

  After you sign up, you’ll get instant access to the entire Art of the Startup program, including all of the bonus content.