The Heart That Holds On
Entrepreneurship is sustained by what’s in your heart and a childlike curiosity toward how the world works and new undiscovered possibilities.
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Rules of Thumb
How to Tell When Your Team Has a Workable Plan of Action
One key technique for determining whether you have a workable plan of action is to conduct a premortem, a review of possible sources of failure in advance with a goal to avoid them, or at least reduce their impact and likelihood of occurring.
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Are You Using Cognitive Task Analysis for New Market Exploration?
Review of key elements of Cognitive Task Analysis–Knowledge Elicitation, Analysis, and Knowledge Representation–with applications to market exploration. Are You Using Cognitive Task Analysis for New Market Exploration? I am interested in talking with anyone who is using Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) or Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) methods and paradigms to inform their customer interviews. I
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Your Prospects and Your Customers are Real People
Your Prospects and Your Customers are Real People I’m hardly the first person to complain about the word “user” to describe people who do stuff with software…People don’t think of themselves as “users” and in all other contexts the word “user” is not generally positive and certainly not evocative of the kind of intimate, day-to-day
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David Foster Wallace: The Only Choice We Get is What to Worship
What follows are excerpts from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. I thought they were an appropriate antidote to a model for entrepreneurial motivation that aspires to make enough money to do whatever you want. Wallace outlines some of the risks in failing to align
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Seth Godin “Trust Is Even More Scarce Than Attention”
“Trust is even more scarce than attention.” Trust doesn’t scale, it’s built up by repeated interactions over time. That’s what makes it so important.
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Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts on TED.com
An interesting TED talk by Susan Cain on the power of introverts: how introverts impact innovation and creativity. Here are some key points she makes (see full transcript) When it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. A third to a half of the population are introverts. You
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Four Excerpts from the Valve Employee Handbook That Belong In Yours
A link to the Valve Employee Handbook made it to front page of Hacker News recently and I can see why, it makes for very interesting reading.
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A Picture Is Worth a Thousand CPU Hours
Last week was a thought provoking one for me with Big Data Camp on Mon February 27, a “Great Demo” workshop on February 29, and a tour of the Strata 2012 exhibit hall on March 1. I encountered either examples or stories of visualizations that required hundreds to thousands of CPU hours to create at
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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 $2.99) lists a set of seven techniques for pretotyping on pages 39-40. This post analyzes and elaborates on the techniques
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Doing Business On a Handshake
Doing business on a handshake requires us to listen carefully and offer our diagnosis your needs before moving on to how you can help yourself and where we can add value.
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Even Great Art is Lost Without a Buyer
Lenny Greenberg observed, “Creating art for yourself that no one else wants is fine and dandy. But, when other people will pay, that means that it has value and meaning to others. Even great art is lost without a buyer.” Even Great Art is Lost Without a Buyer Every few days I tweet a “quote
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Record to Remember, Pause to Reflect
Record to remember, pause to reflect. Combine these two actions to speed learning, improve your ability to plan, and make mid-course corrections in your plan of action.
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Thanksgiving 2011
Reflections at Thanksgiving 2011: in the second half of my life, it’s time to appreciate all that I have and be more forthcoming in my gratitude to others.
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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A Professional Always Specializes
A Professional Always Specializes, great advice for entrepreneurs from the Bill Miner character in “the Grey Fox.”
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Expiration Dates: Deadlines and Commitments
Bootstrappers need to make commitments and meet deadlines to achieve their cash flow objectives. Deadlines and commitments are inextricably linked. Be explicit up front about how long offer is good or how long a customer needs to wait for delivery. Get them to be explicit on payment terms.
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Purpose, Patience, Politeness, and Prudent Risk Taking
A bootstrapper needs four attributes to succeed: purpose, patience, politeness, and prudent risk taking. These are markers for strength not weakness.
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Ford Harding on Rules of Thumb for Networking
Networking is good questions, listening, and helping others. Some rules of thumb for networking from Ford Harding’s Rainmaking (pages 44-59).
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Working Smart
Kevin Kelly has a great blog post up on “working smart” called “What You Don’t Have To Do.” He defines a capability maturity model for working smart: