The best way to build a startup is to have everyone in a single physical location, but that isn’t always possible. I’ve had to deal with virtual teams on multiple occasions, and my last employer, The Electric Sheep Company, took it to an extreme, with 75 people mostly scattered around the country. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned over …
Lean Failure and the Risk of No-Man’s Land
“Isn’t Lean startup” supposed to prevent failure?” That was the question posed by Andrew Warner to Sean Ellis in a recent Mixergy interview. There is only one answer, “of course not.” Sean responds that not everyone is built to be an entrepreneur: even the best tools in the wrong hands go awry. True, and there are many other reasons startups …
Think goals, not functions
I just piggybacked on a twitter conversation between Sean Ellis and April Dunford talking about product management versus product marketing (see April’s post). Sean tweeted this comment which I just wanted to highlight: “Functions” is part of the problem in early stage. IMO goals better: PM fit, then conv eff, then growth… [Ed note: PM fit = product-market fit; conv …
Confidence, Transparency and Authenticity
Bob Sutton wrote an interesting post the other day called “The Wise Boss: More Evidence For Expressing Confidence, But Harboring Private Doubts“. He touches upon a topic that a lot of business leaders grapple with: what is the right balance between confidence and transparency. The interplay between the two is particularly heightened in a young startup, where you are inevitably …
5 Tips for the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs
I just got back from speaking to 100 NYC high school kids about startups. The good folks at Global Kids asked me to say a few words at the NY Public Library Emoti-con festival, and I was more than happy to oblige and talk about one of my favorite subjects. I decided to give the kids some advice should they …
Our Customer Development Journey, Part 4 (8 thoughts from our MVP beta)
Aprizi has been in open beta for six weeks now. These last six weeks have been an intense blur, a fire hose of information, and going open beta was the best possible thing we could have done. We are making some fairly big near-term changes because of this process. Here are 8 thoughts on the latest phase of our customer …
The Cold Reality of First-Time Funding
Earlier today, I watched Fred Wilson and Ben Horowitz debate lean vs fat fundraising approaches (very different from “lean startup” concepts even if often confused). The reality is very very simple: unless you are a celebrity/proven founder, “lean” is your only option. I don’t buy for a second that Horowitz would write a “fat” check to an unproven entrepreneur no …
Lean Startup “Marketing Bullshit”
Venture Hacks‘ daily email delivered an enjoyable post by Sean Fioritto called “Steve Blank is my hero“, exhorting the Hacker News readership to pay attention to Blank’s philosophies. Sean’s explanation of resistance jumped off the screen at me: “if you can’t see through the halo of marketing bullshit to the nuggets of genius underneath…” “I sometimes worry that the Hacker …
Git it done (the joy of wearing many hats)
The good folks at Venture Hacks tweeted a piece from the WePay blog about things a non-engineer founder should know. His points tie in nicely with the struggle many business people have in taking their grand idea and shrinking it down to an actionable, minimal first version. I wanted to touch on tasks for a non-coder in the super-early stages …
Coming up with a startup name (i.e. the 6th circle of hell)
Few things are more painful than coming up with a good yet inexpensive name for a business on the Web. Somehow you need to find something that is “cocktail party friendly” (i.e. someone can hear it, spell it, remember it), search engine friendly (i.e. type it in and have a shot at appearing high on list), and yet available / …