Startup Lessons Learned with Adam Verhasselt
We recently interviewed Adam Verhasselt, founder and creative director at Vlux Visual. He creates music visuals and augmented reality experiences to build brands from the ground up.
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Joe Rogan: Be the Hero of Your Own Movie
Some thoughts on heroes using Joe Rogan’s admonition to “Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now, what would the hero do right now?” as a point of departure.
40 Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews
This post on B2B customer development interviews builds on one of my most popular. If you would like help preparing for customer development interviews or reviewing results from recent interviews, contact us. Here are my lessons learned from taking part in interviews where the startup planned to offer a product or service to a business. …
Increase Your Luck Surface Area To Get More Customers
Jason Roberts 2010 “Luck Surface Area” model explains the need for entrepreneurs to combine time spent doing and developing expertise with time spent communicating with others. It’s a very useful and actionable insight. Unfortunately, the diagram he chose to illustrate the model assumes that entrepreneurs have an unlimited amount of time to do both. I …
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Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades
Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it and was struck by how things …
Most Popular SKMurphy Blog Posts Oct-2006 Through Sep-2017
Here is a list of the most popular SKMurphy blog posts Oct-2006 through Sep-2017 based on page view counts from Google analytics data. I have broken out the Lean Startup Conference roundups for clarity.
Veterans Day 2016
A thank you on Veterans Day 2016 to all of the men and women in our armed forces who made the United States possible, in particular this Silicon Valley oasis of invention and innovation I get to call home. Some quotes to meditate on follow.
Jerry Weinberg interview
An interview with Jerry Weinberg where we explore the applicability of his Fieldstone Method for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, the implications of Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn” for Weinberg’s dry stone fence metaphor for creation, and managing a crisis as marker for an end of an illusion.
Team Building: Rapid Ramp
Recently, we worked with a startup on team building as they wrangled with the rapid growth of their business. They needed bring on new team members and wanted them to be productive and effective as quickly as possible. Working with the leadership team we reviewed Bruce Tuckman’s four stages of team development.
3D Printing Tradeoffs and Optimization
There are four areas where tradeoffs are commonly made in 3D printing: conventional and additive manufacturing processes additive manufacturing processes 3D printer selection different parameter settings in a 3D printer’s build process The most common design goals considered for 3D printing tradeoffs are strength, speed of printing, minimum feature resolution, and cost. The same 3D model …
3D Printing Evolution Functional Block Diagram
This 3D Printing Evolution Functional Block Diagram shows the process flow of 3D printing in the X direction and the evolution of the functional blocks in the Y direction.
Serious Problems With Business Model Canvas For Startups
Q: I’m just about to get out of the building to validate hypotheses and start learning, but I have a problem with the business model canvas. I have been advised to develop detailed hypotheses before starting customer discovery. This is my startup and I have no idea how to fill in the business model canvas …
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Difference Between a Hypothesis and an Assumption
The difference between a hypothesis and an assumption is that the first is normally explicit and the second implicit. A hypothesis is what is being tested explicitly by an experiment. An assumption is tested implicitly. By making your assumptions as well as your hypotheses explicit you increase the clarity of your approach and the chance …
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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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A Beta Customer Is Not A Tester Or A User But An Early Customer
Beta customer conflates three categories of people who are using your product in a way that’s not healthy for your long term business prospects if you are selling to business users, in particular early adopter or pragmatic enterprise users.
Pretotyping – Techniques for Building the Right Product
Alberto Savoia defines pretotyping as determining that you are “building the right product before you invest in building your product right.” His book “Pretotype It” (Second Edition available as a Free PDF or on Kindle for $0.99) lists a set of seven techniques for pretotyping on pages 39-40. This post analyzes and elaborates on the techniques …
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Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews
This post on customer development interviews is one of my most popular. If you would like help preparing for customer development interviews or reviewing results from recent interviews please sign up for a no cost no obligation office hours session and I will be happy to help you rehearse or de-brief. Here are my lessons learned from taking …
If Money Doesn’t Change Hands, You Can’t Call a User a Customer
Here is another excerpt from my September interview with Gabriel Weinberg. This one focuses on why payment and testimonials are so important to differentiate users from actual customers.
3 Equations & 3 Unkowns: Target Customer is Key Initial Value
I mentioned in “3 Equations 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, and Message” that we spend a lot of time on the early customer stage. It requires very different sales style than you’ll see later on. It’s a conversational sales style. It’s much more about understanding the problem. You’re trying to solve three equations, three unknowns: Are …
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Gabriel Weinberg Interviews Me For His Traction Book
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), a Hacker Angel, insightful blogger, and frequent contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction and interviewing folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was delighted when he …
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