Learning the Right Lessons From Failure
John Finneran’s postmortem: “Fat startup: Learn the lessons of my failed Lean Startup” shows he did not learn the right lessons from failure.
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Customer Development
Hiring A Startup’s First Sales Person
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was
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Vision Is Critical But Avoid The “Field of Dreams”
The Field of Dreams model–build it and they will come–is a variation on “build a better mousetrap,” a self-limiting belief that dooms many startups.
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16 Quotes on Customer Development From Asif Mandozai
Asif Mandozai (@asifmandozai) uses twitter to share customer development insights. Here is a set of 16 quotes I found to be practical and actionable.
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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 Start a Warm Conversation About a Customer Problem
The most effective ways to start a warm conversation with prospect are introductions, responding to questions in a forum, and face to face at an event.
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Three Sales Pitches That Never Really Work
Here are three sales pitches that never really work with some suggestions for how to improve them.
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Challenges in Analyzing 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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Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most?
Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most? The Lean Startup 2012 conference clarified where Lean Startup principles are especially applicable: Emerging markets, Industries that are being disrupted, Companies that have fallen behind the innovation curve. All of these situations are characterized by the need for exploration and discovery instead of continued execution of the current
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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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Lean Startup Conference 2012 Roundup
This post curates content and commentary related to the 2012 Lean Startup Conference: videos, blog posts, slides, articles, etc.. Lean Startup Conference Main Program Mon-Dec-3-2012 Opening Remarks by Eric Ries Presenter: Eric Ries / blog / @ericries / W: Eric Ries / The Lean Startup Book: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Video: pending Articles/Blogs/Commentary Lean Startup Not Just
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Good Surveys Spark Conversations, Poor Ones Exhaust Prospects’ Patience
While good surveys spark conversations with prospects and customers, poor surveys waste their time and exhaust their patience.
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Entrepreneurial Passion and the Science of Startups
Successful entrepreneurs have a passion to see their inventions adopted as innovations not admired as works of art. This is the science of startups.
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Q: Is Building The Wrong Product A Waste Of Time?
Building the wrong product is not a waste of time you learn about the market and technical feasibility. Right and wrong are both gray, not black or white. Customer development and technical development typically require a sequence of prototypes that are “less wrong” over time under they become good enough.
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Conversations With Prospects: Practice, Review, Share Notes, Ask for Feedback
Conversations with prospects unfold in real time: you must listen for what’s said and not said, manage your emotions, and understand the implications.
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Standing Out From The Crowd
Postcards offer a practical and cost-effective way to reach business prospects. Here are some examples of how they can assist you in standing out from the crowd.
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Small Wins Enable Larger Wins
Early focus on a niche market (a small market) enables a startup to achieve “small wins” faster (and experience “small losses” instead of large ones). Over time these accumulate into larger wins.
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Don’t Practice Veterinary Marketing: Talk to Prospects
My father used to complain that a friend of his would make his doctor practice veterinary medicine. The doctor would ask him what was wrong and his friend would reply in a non-committal way. Some entrepreneurs, especially in the early market, seem to prefer veterinary marketing: running tests and making changes in their application without
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Customer Development Is Not Just For Startups
Customer development is not just for startups. We have Fortune 500 clients launching new products who rely on customer development methods.
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Pictures Are to Words as Conversations are to Surveys
You waste time and reputation using these methods for B2B customer discovery: surveys, landing pages, and asking for endorsement before product experience.
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