A Nicely Furnished Room In A House That’s Burning Down
Silicon Valley is a nicely furnished room in a house that’s burning down, the state of California.
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Startup Stages
How Long is a Piece of String
When I started out at Cisco in 1990 it was a part of the culture that a request for help or question that was too vague or poorly specified would be answered with “How long is a piece of string?”
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When Do I Need a Model? I am Bootstrapping
When Do I Need a Model? I am Bootstrapping I have condensed this from a recent series of conversation with bootstrapping entrepreneur. I thought it captured many of the key questions that you need to be consider once you are “open for business.” Bootstrapping Entrepreneur: I am just getting started on a new project. I
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How Not To Manage Early Adopters
Here is a real example of how not to manage early adopters. I have anonymized the sender and a few details but the message is real, as is the attitude.
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Buying a Map vs. Learning to Explore
Learning to explore is a key skill for entrepreneurs. Ask questions you don’t know the answer to–where the answer would have an impact on your ability to assess the risk in your venture or would help you to define a key aspect of your business.
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Start Where You Are
People ask me where to get started. Lately I have been telling them: start where you are and sell what you have. Meet people, help them connect, and explore possibilities. Knit your network now before you need it.
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Why Your Startup Matters Has Little to Do With Funding
Successful entrepreneurs answer “Why your startup matters?” by pointing to problems solved for customers and jobs created. Profit is a means to creating future value and funding is a means to creating profit.
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B.V. Jagadeesh on “Startup Leadership Lessons Learned”
Summary of a very insightful talk on leadership lessons learned by Mr. B.V. Jagadeesh entitled “Lessons Learned Starting, Leading, and Succeeding at Multiple Startups.”
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How To Determine Your Competition During Customer Discovery
Want a simple way to determine your competition during customer discovery: consider what your prospects would have to give up to buy and use your product or service. The time and money you want prospects to spend on your offering have to come from somewhere: prospects will normally choose to take it from what they
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George Grellas on Leadership
George Grellas left a great short essay on leadership in a comment on Hacker News. Writing in response to “Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will” This is reposted with his permission (re-formatted from a single block of text).
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Price, Value, and Your Prospect’s Perception of Risk
Here are a couple of rules of thumb you may find helpful in thinking about price, value, and your prospect’s perception of risk.
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Early Markets Offer Fluid Opportunities
Startups see fluid opportunities in dynamic environments, but no certainties before opportunities pass or the “situation changes.”
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Tristan Kromer on Businesses Models
Tristan Kromer suggests that there are many viable models for a business, all have advantages and drawbacks. Services are easy to start but hard to scale. Despite surface appearance, a software business still inventory of people, key assets in the form of ideas, and a manufacturing process in the form of software release.
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Users, Businesses, and Hobbies
Users are important but are not necessarily customers, business serve customers at a profit, businesses that don’t make a profit are hobbies.
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We Use a Wiki to Organize Customer Interviews
Tips for using a wiki to organize customer interviews for customer discovery and to assess perspectives on their offering after purchase.
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Tom Van Vleck’s “3 Questions” Complement Root Cause Analysis
Tom Van Vleck has a great collection of software engineering stories on his site. One particularly good article is “Three Questions For Each Bug That You Find” which offers the following key observation: The key idea behind these questions is that every bug is a symptom of an underlying process. You have to treat the
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Time To Update Your Business Card
From time to time I run into a business card that makes me think. Here’s one that I will model as I update my own cards. Also check out some cool business cards from last year. Back:
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Stoking the Star Maker Machinery Behind The Popular App
To many of the current incubators seem focused on “on hit wonder” startups designed to be acquired quickly. Apps are the new pop songs and the incubators are the music labels, stoking the star maker machinery.
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Larry Lang on Managing Incentives
[Note this post was written in 2011]. The recent troubles at Cisco have prompted a lot of commentary on the Cisco alumni e-mail list. One of the more thoughtful analyses was posted by Larry Lang (@llang629), who spent more than a decade at Cisco in a variety of positions. His last was as VP and
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Failure to Thrive
Failure To Thrive: “We need another two weeks to add this one last feature.” This mindset of hesitation kills more products than any competitor.