Lean Startup

Entrepreneurs Cannot Rely on a Cookbook or a Manual

Entrepreneurs starting their first business often hunt for a cookbook of recipes to make sense of a journey that is alternating between bewilderment and frustration. But startups fight for existence in a competitive and evolving environment, where changes in the technical or social substrates can invalidate their strategy or enable competitors without warning.

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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.

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David Telleen-Lawton Presents at Lean Startup Conference 2015

If you missed  The Nitty Gritty of Setting Up Customer Discovery Meetings by David Telleen-Lawton at The Lean Startup Conference 2015, he shared the down and dirty details of setting up meetings for Customer Discovery. Having set hundreds of B2B and B2C discovery meetings over the years, Telleen-Lawton tells how to reach out and set these

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Planning and Reflection

Ash Maurya rebooted his blog as “The Space Between“–experimental format where he is exploring the space between ideas–and has offered a number of short reflective posts. Here are excerpts from three where he explores the value of planning and reflection, and the need to prioritize learning over the illusion of progress.

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Good and Bad Reasons to Pivot

Much has been written about a startup making a pivot in direction after Eric Ries first coined the term in a 2009 blog post “Pivot don’t Jump to a New Vision.” The word pivot has attracted almost as much wordplay as the word lean.  What follows is a short list of good and bad reasons to

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Customer Interviews: Spend an Hour to Save a Minute

For customer interviews we have a rule of thumb that if an hour or research saves a minute early in the conversation it’s a good investment.  When you look at the list of questions you have prepared to learn about the prospect’s business and their needs, it’s easy to say to yourself, “I am really

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Tristan Kromer: You Can Tell a Good Advisor by Their Questions

Three interesting answers from Tristan Kromer’s interview with the folks at Startup Commons Startup Commons: What’s the best way to get started? Tristan Kromer:  Find someone you really want to help. Someone in pain. That’s your vision. Helping someone and solving a real problem. Find team members with complementary skill sets who are able to challenge

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