1 Idea Stage

If You Knew How Hard a Startup Would Be

A new startup is often driven by a desire for autonomy, self-expression, and lifelong learning. Or it’s a creative solution to a lack of alternatives. Albert Hirschman observed that “creativity always comes as a surprise to us” which led him to suggest “the only we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging …

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Founder Story: Ari Halberstadt of Catalee on Founder’s Dilemmas and Residential Energy Market

Theresa Shafer met Ari Halberstadt at a Bootstrapper Breakfast in SF earlier this year and was very impressed with his approach to his new startup, Catalee. Ari volunteered to talk with me about Noam Wasserman‘s “The Founder’s Dilemmas” as well as Catalee. Here is a 12 minute podcast and transcript of our phone call. Or download …

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Market Discovery and Exploration Requires Models from Physics, Biology, and Psychology

Q: Appreciate your thoughts on qualitative vs. quantitative approaches to  market exploration. Customer development is like qualitative research; it is good for exploring hypotheses (and associated issues) but cannot validate them (by its very nature it is small sample size). To validate startup hypotheses one needs to do quantitative research, e.g. surveys, measurements (A/B tests), and have …

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How To Bootstrap Your Start-Up at ASL Mar-27-2013

Update Mar-27-2013: Slides and audio for this event are now available at “Slides and Audio from How To Bootstrap at ASLCPA Mar 27” I have been asked by the Emerging Business Group at Abbott, Stringham and Lynch to give a talk on “How to Bootstrap Your Start-Up.” If you are a technology entrepreneurs who doesn’t fit …

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Challenges in Analysing Market Structure and Competitive Landscape

Before you introduce a new product into an existing market you need to analyze the market structure and competitive landscape. This is a laundry list–not a prioritized list—of the set of challenges we currently wrestle with in helping clients monitor their external environment and craft strategies for new market creation and new product introduction into …

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A Conversation With A Bootstrapping EdTech Startup On Customer Interviews

What follows is a sequence of E-mails with an entrepreneur bootstrapping an EdTech startup around the challenges of doing customer interviews that have been recast as a conversation, with the original content edited for length and clarity. Entrepreneur (E): I am working with a couple of friends–we all have day jobs–on an idea for helping …

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Startup Founders Announced for Working For Equity Panel at SVCC 2012

For the third year in a row I will moderate a panel of startup founders sharing lesson learned bootstrapping a technology startup at Silicon Valley Code Camp. This “Working for Equity” session will be on Sunday Oct 7 at 9:15am. Here is the announcement Many of us in Silicon Valley seek to found or be …

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Three Great Books on Generating Innovative Business Ideas

Three Great Books on Generating Innovative Business Ideas These three books contain a wealth of useful suggestions for generating innovative business ideas from observing, questioning, and networking with customers and others: Innovator’s DNA “The Innovator’s DNA” by Christensen, Dyer, and Gregerson outlines a set of five skills that innovator’s use to develop entrepreneurial ideas: Associating: …

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