Startup Stages

Challenges in Analyzing Market Structure and Competitive Landscape

1 Idea Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, Customer Development, skmurphy / By /

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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Engineering Your Sales Process Workshop Feb-8 Early Bird Closes This Weekend

2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, 5 Scaling Up Stage, Events, Sales, skmurphy / By /

Just a heads up that the early bird rates for our next “Engineering Your Sales Process®” Workshop close Sun-Jan-28. This is the same workshop that Scott Sambucci and Sean Murphy offered at the Lean Startup Conference in December 2012 but we are limiting the attendance to 12 entrepreneurs to allow it to be even more

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A Conversation With A Bootstrapping EdTech Startup On Customer Interviews

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Customer Development, Design of Experiments, Lean Startup, skmurphy / By /

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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Dr. Atul Gawande

Dr. Atul Gawande on Managing Complexity and Uncertainty

4 Finding your Niche, skmurphy / By /

Managing complexity and uncertainty was the focus of Dr Atul Gawande’s commencement address at Williams College on Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 (Reprinted in New Yorker as “Failure and Rescue“). The entire talk is worth reading and offers a medical case history as a compelling context for his points. “…the critical skills of the best surgeons

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Changing Management’s View of an Innovation From “Probably Not a Good Idea” to “We’re Late”

3 Early Customer Stage, Community of Practice, Demos / By /

The key to changing management’s view of an innovation from “probably not a good idea” is to assess the impact of metrics that they care about. At which point you are often told “We’re late.”

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Startup Founders Announced for Working For Equity Panel at SVCC 2012

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, Events, Founder Story, skmurphy / By /

For the third year in a row I will moderate a panel of startup founders sharing lesson learned bootstrapping a technology startup at Silicon Valley Code Camp. This “Working for Equity” session will be on Sunday Oct 7 at 9:15am. Here is the announcement Many of us in Silicon Valley seek to found or be

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Three Great Books on Generating Innovative Business Ideas

1 Idea Stage, Books, Favorites / By /

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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