Doing business with friends presents a number of challenges for entrepreneurs, as does setting limits on asking for “free advice” to know when to pay.
Q: Free Advice and Doing Business With Friends Read More »
Entrepreneurs are often quick to characterize prospects who don’t see the benefits of their new shiny technology as laggards. Sometimes that’s the case, but often the product presentation does not present benefits that are either relevant or compelling. Laggards get a lot of bad press in the startup community, but their reasons not to change
Q: Help! I Can Only Find Laggards in My Target Customer Segment Read More »
Finding the right customers is not just a matter of kissing frogs until one turns into a prince, but a methodical search guided by an experimentation perspective where your selection criteria are continually refined and re-evaluated.
It’s useful to explore several paths in parallel and have a default list of pivots ready of your first few efforts don’t bear fruit.
Q: How Do I Plan for Pivots or Even Shutting Down My Startup? Read More »
Three keys to making the transition from a one project startup to scaling up with many projects: keep a list of all projects, finished, active, unstarted and contemplated; maintain a status page that is the single source of truth for where the project it; conduct, document, and act on post-project assessment findings.
Q: We Have Grown From One Project To Many Projects, How To Manage? Read More »
It’s not uncommon for an entrepreneur to feel stuck in low gear, falling behind both the competition and their own plans for progress. Here are some suggestions for how to keep calm and carry on.
Q: Help I Feel Stuck in Low Gear Read More »
Applications that improve knowledge worker productivity have to satisfy “prepared users” not “casual users” and are especially challenge to do customer discovery and development for. With his permission, I have included William Pietri (LinkedIn williampietri) answer to a real question from an early stage entrepreneur because I found it incredibly insightful. I have known William
Q: How to Explore an MVP For Knowledge Worker Productivity Read More »
When someone on your team says, “Google Thinks Our Name Is a Typo” you are at a disadvantage. Even worse if it suggests a competitor as the correct spelling it makes it look like you are typosquatting. Unless you have a strong reason for doing so it’s probably not a good idea.
Q: Google Thinks Our Name Is a Typo and Suggests a Competitor Read More »
A focus on inefficiencies is a good method to find a underserved market where you can bootstrap you way to viability. Here is a list of several others.
Q: Is a Focus on Inefficiencies a Good Way to Find an Underserved Market? Read More »
How do you answer someone who asks “Should I be an entrepreneur?” We ask, “Are you committed to self-improvement and to providing value?”
Q: Should I Be an Entrepreneur? Read More »
Customer development–discovery driven sales–requires that you first understand the customer’s problem then present a vision of a solution. If that is acceptable you can proceed to a demonstration that provides technical proof of value.
Q: I am in the process of forming a scientific advisory board for my startup in the healthcare / facility management space and I would welcome any insights or suggestions.
Q: Forming a Scientific Advisory Board Read More »
There are a lot of misconceptions about finding early adopters of a new product or technology. It’s a question that comes up often in early market exploration: this post is a summary of my experience and current best thinking.
Q: Best Practices For Finding Early Adopters Read More »
Some quick answers to common questions about intellectual property (IP), IP protection, and when to incorporate.
Q: When to Incorporate and Options for IP protection Read More »
It’s important to understand who your customer is and what their critical business needs are. Helping customers is only possible once you have identified who you are truly serving (who will pay you) and which of their needs or problems you can help them address.
Q: Helping Customers On Hold Read More »
A painful cofounder experience is unfortunately more common than a happy one. It can be especially painful when the parties don’t know each well to begin with and the business startup fails. Here is a real email exchange that explores some ways to minimize the risks.
Q: What Lessons Should I Draw From A Painful Cofounder Experience? Read More »
To make effective use of your advisory board you have to provide them written material in advance that offers context on your situation and the questions you want to explore with them.
Q: Making Effective Use Of Your Advisory Board Read More »
A common mistake technical entrepreneurs can make is to focus on what’s easy to build, and enter a market with dozens of competitors without thought to differentiation. Or to hope that by making it “free” they can make money by selling ads.
Q: A Google Search Finds Dozens of Competitors, What Now? Read More »
You can only capture a share of the value that you create if you want to create a sustainable business. While you need to assess the likely return on investment from your efforts and your probability of success, you also need to look at any deal from the other side of the table. It’s as
Q: How Can I Maximize ROI and Minimize Risk? Read More »
Each interaction with a business prospect or a customer has to promise an exchange of value: their time or money for at least the strong possibility of benefit. Many of the startup fantasy camp customer development training models neglect this and teach beginning entrepreneurs to rely on the kindness of strangers. This may work in
Q: How Do We Get A Business Prospect To Talk To Us? Read More »
