Laura Klein has a thoughtful post up about validating problems and needs and behavior before product. I agree with her. It still doesn’t mean that you’ll get things right but you can prevent a lot of wasted effort. It again made me think about the liberating power of deciding to focus on learning goals, rather than production goals. In startup …
Fear of the False Negative
I used to worry about false negatives, or killing a good idea too early. “Startups are not instant hits,” I would tell myself. That’s a true statement. All startups are a hard fight. Almost all startups take far longer than the “overnight-success” articles imply. But after years of creating new products and companies, I would rather kill a good idea …
We test to uncover clues, not facts
I’ve been hearing an excuse lately for avoiding experiments and “getting out of the building”: It boils down to this: “if the results don’t have clarity and repeatability then why test in the first place?” Or put another way, “if you can’t perfectly design the experiment and isolate a single variable, and if you can’t have absolute confidence in your …
We need a startup-friendly lobbying organization
Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, like to talk about how over-regulation strangles growth businesses in this country, which makes it particularly ironic that the SOPA/PIPA bills got this far. If you want to let entrepreneurship flourish, get government out of the way. Don’t legislate protections for old industries that would prefer to manipulate government rather than adjust their business models …
My Next Step: Proof
2012 is going to be an awesome year. Here’s my news: I’m joining forces with two of my favorite people in the lean/agileUX scene, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, to create a consulting company called Proof. In short, Proof is an product innovation and design studio that (not surprisingly given our team) delivers a lean/agile, cross-functional, results-oriented approach. Our goal …