This question came up again recently. Good software engineering is rigorous about tests because they reduce bugs both in the code’s present state and with code changes, ultimately improving quality and speed. When you are at the early stages of an idea, just trying to test out whether it holds water, should you bother with tests at all? Speed of …
When do you hit the gas pedal?
“Unfortunately, the pendulum rarely swings halfway” — Eric Paley Eric Paley has a great post about founders hesitating to invest in growth, even when he thinks they should. Now, I’ve been in startups where either the CEO or the VCs tried to force growth too early, and had it backfire in a big way. Thus I’ve been very responsive to …
Good founders can get capital anywhere?
“Good founders can get capital anywhere.” I like both Pando and Erin Griffith, but I have to call out that sentence from an article the other day. It is one of those easy phrases that people trot out, but experienced founders know better. *Famous* founders can get capital from many places. Not even anywhere. Good founders struggle. Fund raising is …
Take control of your startup’s destiny, or someone else will
Mark Suster recently wrote one of his most important posts for entrepreneurs (and he has written many good ones): Why You Need to Ring the Freaking Cash Register. All startups are vulnerable, but if you are over-reliant on external capital, you are especially fragile when the winds change. I thought I would illustrate it with a personal story. In 2004/5 …
The Truth Curve
(updated version from Testing with Humans) I wanted to share one of the slides from my talk at QCon last week. I call it the truth curve. On the X-axis is your product sophistication. On the Y-axis is how much you can believe your learnings versus having to strongly filter your results through your judgement and vision. Different types of …
11 Customer Development Anti-Patterns
Update: check out my book on customer development Talking to Humans Steve Blank always liked to say, “In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” The lean startup movement encourages that you get out of the building with a mixture of experiments and qualitative research. Doing qualitative work gives you several benefits. It helps you learn …
Aging into Obsolescence
The structure of modern business forces people to become stale as they age. The economic incentives of most creative industries, including tech, all point in this direction. When you are young, you *make* stuff. You code, you design, you write, you execute. You constantly get to practice and improve your making skills. The normal definition of success implies moving up …
Don’t blow all your money on an MVP
I fear a general misconception out there that you can validate a startup in just a few weeks. I have been particularly pained by both non-coder startup founders and managers at big companies who think that all they need to do is pour money into a single MVP and they’ll have a binary answer as to whether something is awesome …
Book review: Lean UX
The Lean UX book arrived on my iPad last night, and I’ve just finished reading it cover to cover. I thought it was great. That judgement is not actually because I work with the authors Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. I find most business books to be pretty banal, and I promise you that I would just stay silent if I …
Hire Carefully Doesn’t Have the Same Ring
“Why ‘Hire Slow, Fire Fast’ Is A Bunch Of BS,” or so says Danny Boice in a recent Fast Company article that was sent my way. Well, it is a catch phrase, and as such, has to be catchy and over-simplified. “Hire as quickly and carefully as you can without screwing your business objectives, and also fire as quickly as …