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.

If you missed  The Nitty Gritty of Setting Up Customer Discovery Meetings by David Telleen-Lawton at The Lean Startup Conference 2015, he shared the down and dirty details of setting up meetings for Customer Discovery. Having set hundreds of B2B and B2C discovery meetings over the years, Telleen-Lawton tells how to reach out and set these meetings.

With the 2016  school year getting ready to start in the next six to eight weeks at most colleges and universities I have had several conversations with student entrepreneur organizations about how I might be able to help them.

I have developed content and given talks and webinars over the last five years that may provide student entrepreneurs help to get oriented to many of the basics of customer development, innovation, and new market exploration. 

There are broadly three categories of challenges a new product must address: it has to be feasible, it has to be desirable and it has to be profitable. Below is a simple checklist to help you evaluate product ideas.

We help founders find leads and close deals; our focus is on early customers and early revenue for technology and expertise-enabled products and services. We specialize in complex and orchestrated sales to businesses.

A collection of humorous tools that generate buzzword compliant business models.

Web Economy Bullshit Generators

First there was Dack Ragus‘ (@dack) “Web Economy Bullshit Generator.” He started with sketches (“Kinda like Da Vinci’s sketchbook, except for bullshit”): “I made this massive list of potential bullshit terms while sitting on Miami Beach in January, 2000. Add a little JavaScript and it turned into the Bullshit Generator.” The archives of dack.com are also worth a peek.

At about the same time 37Signals launched with a manifesto and the e-NORMICOM parody site of the dotcom branding process for naming, logos, and taglines.

Then Stavros the WonderChicken (@wonderchicken)–no I cannot find his real name–did the “Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator™” noting that “Profits for your Web 2.0 company are not guaranteed.” It’s funny how that has not changed with firms like Box and Dropbox competing in some oddly configured on-line potlatch designed to provided services at a loss in exchange for new investment at ever increasing valuations.

Andrew Wooldridge launched Web Two Point Oh! to help with naming as well.

Parodies of Web 2.0 Business Models

Stavros later lamented in “Lomans not Shamans” at what the Web had become: “My god, it’s full of ads!” Here I think his anxiety was misplaced: most new media is advertising supported; the original newspapers were simply classified ads that gradually added news items to differentiate themselves.  Stavros references “What Puts the ‘2’ in Web 2.0” by Brandon Schauer who was inspired by “Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software(2005)” by Tim O’Reilly and John Batelle. They followed up in 2009 at the Web 2.0 Summit with  “Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On” (see also the white paper: “Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On” [PDF]).

Cloud Models

Next in 2010 the Lunatech Ventures team launches  PlanCruncher as an attempt to compress a business plan into a single page using a couple icons. From their About Page:

“Plan Cruncher creates a standard one-page summary of a business plan for a start-up company that is looking for external investment. You do this by choosing icons that represent some of the standard answers that a business plan must provide.

Why investors want entrepreneurs to use Plan Cruncher:  Plan Cruncher saves investors’ time. To investors, business plans all look more or less the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and they are always too long, which is. Before an investor decides to wade into your ten or twenty-page document, he wants straight answers to a few basic questions about your plan.

Plan Cruncher generates a standard one-page summary that investors can use to screen business plans and compare them to each other.”

I don’t believe Plan Cruncher is a parody site, I listed in in my roundup of Business Model Canvas tools.

And in 2012 Norman Clarke (@compay) has launched Bullshit 3.0: Bleeding Edge Bullshit Generation in the Cloud which embeds the ability to launch a Google search for your tagline to see if it’s already real.

Strategy Statement MadLibs

Alexander Fiore offers what may be either high value strategic consulting or unintentional parody in his HBR blog post “How To Execute a 15 Word Strategy” [Registration Required]

Once upon a time there was (insert a name who exemplifies your target customer/consumer) …. . Every day he/she (insert here his/her frustration or job to be done) …. . One day we developed (insert here the product/solution and what are actually the 2-3 things we offer or not) … . Until finally (insert here the end result for the customer/consumer compared to competition) … .

The most recent example is Simon Wardley’s “A Quick Route to Building a Strategy” which is purely a parody.

Our strategy is [..]. We will lead a [..] effort of the market through our use of [..] and [..]  to build a [..]. By being both [..] and [..], our [..] approach will drive [..] throughout the organisation. Synergies between our [..] and [..] will enable us to capture the upside by becoming [..] in a [..] world. These transformations combined with [..] due to our [..] will create a [..] through [..] and [..].

Wardley’s template has been implemented by Bill West as a web tool at http://strategy-madlibs.herokuapp.com/ Reload the page to get a new strategy. West  might be able to charge for a version of Fiore’s.

Clue Train is Not Bullshit

I still find the 1999 Clue Train Manifesto a useful guide to marketing: it’s argument for real conversation between individuals is as compelling now as it was 15 years ago. Business models have changed with the advent of new technologies and many of these sites are parodying two real needs that every entrepreneur must satisfy: a succinct and comprehensible explanation of their product benefits to customers and a compelling description of their business model to investors.

I came across this presentation from LLKD13 (#LLKD13  / storify) by Patrick Steyaert (@PatrickSteyaert) of Okaloa on Discovery Kanban after following some links off a Kanban discussion group last year.

We have been using wikis in our practice since 2004 and recently have starting using realtime shared document edit tools. Would like to compare notes on usage if you are interested.

There are a number of forms packages now available for entrepreneurs that provide templates for incorporation, investment term sheets, hiring employees and contractors, etc.. And there are several business model canvas tools that are designed to facilitate useful discussions among founders and advisors (and potential investors) about a new startup. But Nathan Beckord‘s Foundersuite is the first to offer not only forms but facilitate workflows and communication among founders, advisors, prospects, investors, and other interested parties.

I used the idea validation module for the BeamWise planning and launch and found it helpful. Nathan is a friend but I am not an investor or otherwise affiliated with Foundersuite. I think it can make you think and save you time if you are in the early market exploration stages of your new startup.

“In the spring of 2009 I started on ‘Startup: An Owner’s Manual’ a how-to instructional guide for building new companies.”
Nathan Beckord (@startupventures) “Foundersuite Origin Story Part Deux“

Dear LinkedIn: I am not looking for a job or other full time employment. I have a business account that I pay for every month so you don’t need to try and make money by showing me ads that I don’t want to see. By the way, I don’t want to see any ads, but find the following particularly annoying because they take up screen space on things I have no interest in at all.

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.” Processes mining tools and techniques will play an important role here.

I have been exploring the use of several analysis applications that could access my LinkedIn account, my twitter account,  and my GMAIL account. They want to help me leverage private information that requires my account password.

So far so good, except that LinkedIn, Twitter, and Gmail don’t appear to have any provision for just granting read only access.

MyPermissions: Checks for third party application access to your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr accounts.

SocialMention: Allows you to do keyword and phrase search across more than one hundred social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc…

HackerFollow: follow comments and posts by your favorite Hacker News contributors

I was rummaging around in Mr. Google’s basement–you can get lost done there in a maze of bright and shiny objects if you are not careful–and I came across this quote by Justin Rosenstein in “How is Asana’s Beta Going” (I am not using nor contemplating using Asana but it’s the next part you should pay attention to):

While getting there sometimes requires a learning curve, once users fully adopt Asana, they really love it, use it every day, devote a stable browser tab to it alongside their email and calendars, and are very disgruntled if it goes down even briefly.  We’ve taken this as strong validation for the product’s vision and early direction.

I think that’s a great test for a category of product: does it become so important that you launch it when you start your browser and leave it logged in all day.  Here are my stable browser tabs:

• GMAIL
• Central Desktop
• Webex Office
• LinkedIn
• News.Ycombinator

What are yours?

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:

To ensure that conversations and requests for help were productive, Anthony Scampavia kept a question at the top of his whiteboard in his various offices at Cisco for more than a dozen years:

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Here are three problems we have identified and capabilities we plan to develop this year to manage them:

Problem: Rich audio, video, and other multi-media are clearly emerging as a requirement for effective business communication. We will need to learn and deploy new systems to specify, create, edit, and manage a richer set of content than our current text oriented systems can support. It also means we need to develop a much deeper understanding of how to leverage media for effective business communication.

Solution: We need to develop a complex set of new capabilities, but will attack different aspects with different methods:

1. Partner for technical creation and editing capabilities. Already active–and delighted–with DreamSimplicity and LectureMaker, we will likely add one or two more partners that have audio and animation capabilities.
2. Systems for managing both finished audio and video pieces but also building blocks that are reusable assets.
3. Develop internal expertise in specifying content requirements.

Problem: As a consulting organization we are delivering our value primarily as a direct service, whether it’s scripted or improvisation. This puts a lower bound on what we can charge to help our clients and makes it difficult to impact the many bootstrapping startups who might benefit from our tools and methods.

Solution: Develop knowledge products such as e-books, simulation models, interactive planning tools, and other simple applications to assist startups in customer development and scaling their business. Near term objective is half a dozen e-books that collect content from blog and workshops with checklists and other material to make them useful stand-alone. We continue to evaluate other customer development applications and would be happy to leverage those that are appropriate for B2B markets. Please contact us if you have something you feel we could incorporate into our practice.

Problem: the Bootstrapper Breakfasts® work very well as platform for early stage entrepreneurs to compare notes–to “eat problems for breakfast®” to coin a phrase–on their technology businesses as they wrestle with the challenges of organic growth. The breakfasts’ unconference format allows for anyone to drop in as they need and has fostered a number of business partnerships and co-founder relationships. But they don’t work well to support focused execution and provide ongoing support from a small group of trusted peers.

Solution: offer one or more Mastermind Groups aimed at early stage technology businesses. There are a number of models that work well for CEO’s of larger firms, typically involving one four hour meeting a month with a dozen other members, where each members is the focus once per year. But smaller firms are operating with less structure and in comparatively more dynamic situations. So shorter, more frequent, interactions that leverage a mix of face to face and on-line environments are probably more appropriate for their needs. We will continue to support and expand the Bootstrapper Breakfast program as it’s meeting the needs of very early stage entrepreneurs, but will explore adding Mastermind Groups to complement it.

Please contact us if you have any suggestions or questions on any of this. Details as they unfold.

Just a quick reminder that I will be presenting on “Feed Readers De-Mystified: Tips for Keeping Informed” this Thursday, September 23, 12:00-12:45 PM PDT. If you are not using feeds and alerts to track your competition, stay on top of  developments at major customers, and keep abreast of significant developments in your industry, then you are missing out on low cost–and often free–methods for keeping informed.

Register here:  People On the Go’s Free Lunchtime Webinar “Tips For Keeping Informed“

I will be giving a short presentation on  “Feed Readers De-Mystified–Tips For Keeping Informed” at the September 23 Lunch & Learn Webinar hosted by People on the Go.

• Cost: No Charge
• When: Thursday, September 23, 2010 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM PDT
• Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/151449787

I will outline some important ways to monitor information about your business and industry on the web. The web has become the primary medium of business communication and information gathering: it is imperative that you learn to monitor new developments and relevant events for your job or business. We will explore a range of tools and time saving tips to keep abreast within your industry of clients, competitors, and relevant developments. This session will explore:

• Popular Feed Readers
• How they can help you stay current
• Limitations and Shortcomings
• Demo of the tools including
  • Google Alerts
  • Google Reader
  • Netvibes
  • Infominder
  • Eqentia

Some related blog posts:

• Theresa Shafer’s “Survey of Personalized News Aggregators“
• SKMurphy’s EDA Knowledge Portal Announcement
• Dorai Thodla on “Information and Intelligence“

This is a great overview by Dorai, I like his his five phase model for intelligence gathering and will address the first two–discovery and tracking–in my presentation:

There are about five stages in this process. This is a spiral model where you continuously enhance/refine every step based on what you learn from other steps.

1. Discovery – Discovering Relevant sources of Information
2. Tracking – Continuously monitoring these sources and discovering more in the process.
3. Filtering – Filtering the noise and gaining the information most relevant to your business
4. Extracting – Transforming information from free form into some kind of useful structure to distribute internally.
5. Sharing – Sharing information at different levels of granularity, refining it and deriving actionable intelligence.

Jenna Wortham’s “Fraternity of the Wired Works in the Wee Hours” in the New York Times on July 25 highlighted an interesting new trend in co-working: the 10pm to 4am shift. Profiling the “New York Nightowls” (tagline “New York Nightowls is a late night co-working club for professionals”) she opens with: (hyperlinks added)

After college, most people do their best to avoid having to pull any more all-nighters. But for some, even after graduation, the wee hours of the morning are the most productive.

That is what led Amber Lambke and Allan Grinshtein to start a group called the New York Nightowls, a sort of study hall for entrepreneurs, freelancers and software developers who gather at 10 every Tuesday night and stay as late as 4 a.m.

“The goal is to come, get inspired, meet new people and get work done,” said Ms. Lambke, a creative consultant. “It’s six hours of uninterrupted, productive time where you’re surrounded by other creative people doing awesome things.”

It’s an interesting concept and complementary to Bootstrapper Breakfasts that start at 7:30am (although it’s hard to imagine much in the way of a common attendees). One of Cecily Drucker’s Startup Secrets was to “embrace the fertile void of sleepless nights. Lots of creativity can occur then.” I blogged about it in “Productive Larks and Creative Owls” inspired by Tim Berry’s observation: “As a morning person, I’m generally more productive. As a night person, I’m generally more creative.”

Also folks that are part of global teams may be up at this hour if it’s part of the workday for the bulk of their team. The New York Nightowls have met weekly for at least the last 17 weeks according to their Meetup site http://www.meetup.com/NY-Nightowls/ and groups have sprung up in a number of other cities:

• Boston Nightowls
• Los Angeles Nightowls
• Melbourne Nightowls
• San Francisco Nightowls
• Stockholm Nightowls
• Tel Aviv Nightowls

I think there are interesting implications for co-working facilities, running a second and third shift in some locations might appeal to not only to natural nightowls but also members of global teams who are working time shifted.

Gone are the days when you could read a couple of journals and get a good idea of what is going on in an industry. Today, the number of great sources has exploded.

The challenge is to manage all of these sources, fortunately almost all of them now provide a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. Tools called feed aggregators merge the information from a set of RSS feeds into a single page that is, in effect, a “personalized newspaper.” This newspaper is always up to date from the latest blog posts and articles,  reducing the time and effort needed to check for new information from websites, blogs, and news sites.

Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. One of the problems with news aggregators is that the volume of articles can be overwhelming. As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more keywords which can be used to sort and filter the available articles into easily navigable categories.

I want to share my experience with using these familiar innovative news aggregators tools which allows me to build a collection of “industry-specific personalized newspapers”.

Survey of tools: Google reader, Netvibes, InfoMinder, and Eqentia

There are a number of simple tools like Google reader, Netvibes, FeedDemon, or Bloglines.  These feed aggregators are good at monitoring known RSS feeds. These tools offer very little assistance in finding new sources of information.  Also, they quickly fall apart when sorting through news items like press releases where duplicate copies show up on many different sources.  Sorting through duplicates is a waste of time and it makes it more likely for you to miss unique pieces of news.

These simple readers can be configured to display headlines, summaries, or the entire article. And, they may be configured as to how many articles to display. They don’t act like actual newspapers in that they will display the news for a given blog regardless whether the reader has seen it before.  For example one of my Google reader pages, still shows news from 2006, because that was the last time that blog was updated.  I have seen the article a hundred of times but Google reader does not remove it. Between the duplicate article issue and the lack of real-time updates of latest information, I have moved away from using Google reader type functionality.

Aggregators which offer enhanced functionality

Tools like iMorph’s InfoMinder offer more functionality to assist with duplicate article issue and focuses on real-time updates. Imorph’s InfoMinder is a hosted subscription service that allows you to track changes of web pages, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis.

I use InfoMinder because it combines Google Reader functionality with Google Alerts functionality to follow hundreds of vertical industry sources. Each day it sends me an email digest of all changes for the sites I am tracking. I can click through to a version of any of those pages to see all the changes since my last visit if needed.

Another tool that I use is Eqentia.  Like Google reader, Eqentia allows me to consolidate RSS feeds.  And like InfoMinder, Eqentia sends me a single email digest. Eqentia does a good job eliminating duplicate articles. Additionally, it has a knowledge portal that extracts key elements like company, people, subject, issues and regions. Filter and drilling down allows you to quickly find the latest news on a particular person, company or subject you are in search of.

Imorph’s InfoMinder consolidates multiple website and blog search tracking into a single email digest and continues to notify me of the latest updates of each site.  Equentia forwards a single email digest, eliminates the same (duplicate) articles produced by multiple streams, and provides additional knowledge settings which I set up to get specific information needed.

By using these specialized news aggregators, I now have gathered a large collection of “industry-specific personalized newspapers” and can quickly manage thousands of informative sites. This collection of personalized newspapers allows me to search for specific knowledge tracking, competitive intelligence, media monitoring and enhancing SEO quickly. I use the tools to track industries and maintain thought leadership.

Resources:

• Great Video by CommonCraft that explains RSS very well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU