Startup Stages

The Early Bird Already Has The Worm

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, skmurphy / By /

The last question in”The First Seven Questions Any Product Plan Should Answer” is What Are You Replacing? Every Product Has Competition But after careful experimentation we learned that most entrepreneurs would instinctively cast themselves in the role of the early bird who gets the worm and say “Nothing. We are brand new!” So we re-phrased

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The Fact That Your App Was a Weekend Project Is Not a Feature

1 Idea Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Demos, skmurphy / By /

The fact that your new application was a weekend project is not a feature! I see announcements like We just coded this up last weekend take  a look… I wrote this on a Saturday afternoon check it out… We built the tool (over the last few weekends)… I don’t know if it’s Startup Weekend’s original

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Q: Is Building The Wrong Product A Waste Of Time?

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, Customer Development, skmurphy, Startup Advice Column / By /

Building the wrong product is not a waste of time you learn about the market and technical feasibility. Right and wrong are both gray, not black or white. Customer development and technical development typically require a sequence of prototypes that are “less wrong” over time under they become good enough.

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Entrepreneurs Need a Community of Practice Not a Movement

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, Community of Practice, skmurphy / By /

Entrepreneurs need a community of practice to improve their skills, not a movement they can join as a fad. I don’t consider myself a disciple or part of a movement. I consider myself a practitioner. I am a huge fan of Saras Sarasvathy, Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, Gary Klein, and Gerald Weinberg.

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Marcelo Rinesi: The Expertise Light Speed Barrier

1 Idea Stage, Rules of Thumb / By /

Marcelo Rinesi writes on the implications of the “expertise light speed barrier” of ten years of focused practice to become an expert. He observes that if “we manage to defeat the ‘expertise light speed barrier’ and find ways to teach and learn much more effective than anything before, it would have an astounding impact on

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Enterprise Change Agents Need to Add Process Mining to Their Bag of Tricks

1 Idea Stage, Change Initiatives, Rules of Thumb, skmurphy, Tools for Startups / By /

Today many change initiatives (and new software sales almost always involve the key elements of a change initiative) rely on interviews and replicating the results from an existing “manual system.” Process mining tools and techniques will play an important role here.

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Are You Using Cognitive Task Analysis for New Market Exploration?

3 Early Customer Stage, Books, Rules of Thumb / By /

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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Jim Manzi: Focus on Delivering Value to Customers at a Foreseeable Profit.

3 Early Customer Stage, 4 Finding your Niche / By /

Jim Manzi, founder of Lotus and Applied Predictive Technologies, advises entrepreneurs to “Focus on delivering value to customers at a foreseeable profit” in “How to Succeed in Business by Really, Really Trying.” How to Succeed in Business by Really, Really Trying. It’s a great article and also on the limits of advice to entrepreneurs, in particular autobiographies

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Three Tips from Sid Faulkner For Preparing To Sell Your Startup

5 Scaling Up Stage, skmurphy / By /

Sid Faulkner, CFO of Ciranova gave a talk today on “Navigating the Treacherous Path of Mergers and Acquisitions” at an event at Abbot Stringham and Lynch. Mr. Faulkner was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oak Technology, Inc. where he led the 1995 initial and secondary public stock offerings, established an active program of

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