Matt Blumberg posted some great managerial advice today on the problem of “what gets said isn’t necessarily what gets heard.” I totally agree with his recommendations of “playback” and email follow-up. This advice also applies to upward or sideways management. This is for the “what gets said isn’t necessarily what gets remembered” problem. It can be a boss, a peer, …
Born or Betterment: can you learn entrepreneurial attributes?
Can you learn the traits of a great entrepreneur, or does it have to be built into your blood and guts? That is an abstract question I pondered while reading and enjoying Mark Suster’s “Entrepreneur DNA” series. Doing a startup can be amazing, but it’s also a bit crazy. Can you learn crazy?* If you want to be an entrepreneur, …
NYC startup scene: give hope to the dream
Matt Blumberg of Return Path and Michael Karnjanaprakorn of All Day Buffet just added their thoughts to blogosphere commentary on the revival of the NYC startup scene. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: it’s all about the young dreamers. People talk about the cost of living in New York, but that is a red herring. Artists, journalists, stage actors, and …
Validating your startup idea and initial customer development
A reader named Eric asked a question about customer validation / development on my “Bull doesn’t build” post, and I thought I would answer with a post. Eric’s question was: “You talk about your ‘focus right now is on building a solid foundation of product-market fit.’ At what point do you spend more time focusing on product-market fit then on …
Quarterly “Stop, Start, and Continue” Reviews
Last night, Matt Blumberg of Return Path discussed some of the pivots his business has taken on its journey at a Lean Startup Meetup in NYC. Matt has a first post up about it here, with the great quote: the larger your business is, and the more investors have a stake in it, the harder it is to make BIG …
Don’t confuse crossing the chasm with product-market fit
Andrew Chen tweeted a link this morning to a post called “Twitter used to be a crappy idea – 3 lessons learned“. I agree with many of Henrik’s core messages, such as staying lean and building products you love, but I got stuck on two sentences. They both tie back to the title of this post: don’t confuse crossing the …
Bull doesn’t build (and that annoying cocktail party guy)
My wife dragged me to a cocktail party last night tied to my daughter’s school and I met “that guy.” That guy (or gal) is someone who hears you have a new startup and wants to play venture capitalist. Not an interested, supportive pretend-VC, but a judgmental, “I’m smarter than you and let me show you how” pretend-VC. Over the …
Learning is about the translation, not the source
I was reading Fred Destin’s post on why entrepreneurs hate VCs, when a quote caught my eye: “Learning from mistakes is far less useful than emulating success.” It’s a message that 37Signals likes to harp on as well. I’d argue that you have an equal shot at learning from mistakes or successes, as long as you take the time to …
App(le) Clue(less)
The NY Times article today on Apple’s App Store shows that our favorite Cupertino company still hasn’t got a clue. “I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and distribution,” says Philip Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing at Apple. The future of software development? It is more like a throwback to the era of box shipping. …
What is your customer acquisition strategy? (startup marketing tactics)
“What is your growth strategy?” It is a classic question from VCs to early-stage consumer Internet companies, and one often difficult to answer at such an early point in a company’s life cycle because you have not yet seen which specific tactics work best. There is usually no silver bullet answer, just a lot of hard work ahead. This post, …