I got my “Quora Weekly Digest” in my inbox tonight and saw this question: “What are the key differences between “Normals” (normal mainstream users) and tech early adopters?” There are some interesting answers (very consumer Internet focused) but I can’t help editorializing: As an entrepreneur, you shouldn’t care about “tech early adopters”. You need to focus on *your* early adopters. …
What if I’m not solving a problem?
A lot of customer development language revolves around ensuring that you are solving a real problem, and the right problem. But what if you aren’t solving a problem? Lean startup principles still apply to games and entertainment apps. You have the same things to validate: user experience and an understanding of your value, who your customers are (and when certain …
Fred Wilson interviewed on Lean Startup
In September, Fred Wilson was generous with his time and joined our NYC Lean Startup Meetup to discuss lean startup ideas and other related topics. The event was video-taped and you can browse through all the clips at the below link. The video editor broke up the interview into smaller chunks, which hopefully you find easier to browse. In most …
Lameness of Lean
I’ve got too many half-finished blog posts but I found myself on the train back from New York tonight thinking about some more recent criticisms of lean. 1. I was coming from a dinner hosted by a really interesting VC who had been a programmer and product lead for a long time. He said that his biggest criticism of lean …
Reflections from Lean Startup Machine 10/2011
I spent Saturday mentoring the latest Lean Startup Machine in NYC, and as always it was a great experience. I love how the weekend isn’t about hacking up a cool idea, but the much harder task of figuring out whether something is worth doing. The participants push themselves and their ideas, and there’s a strong vibe around learning and improving. …
It’s Not A Passion Deficit
I had to respond to a post NY angel investor Mark Birch recently wrote called Entrepreneurship and the Passion Deficit. He claims that “the number one reason startups fail is because there is no passion!” Mark’s a smart guy, but in this case, I totally disagree. For 17 years, I’ve been buried in the startup scene, working in Austin, the …
Breaking out your core assumptions
On Saturday, I’ll be mentoring teams at Lean Startup Machine, so this morning I took advantage of the train ride into town to consider what I would love to see from each group. The below “fill in the blank” sentences (an embedded slideshare) are intended to force someone to concisely break out their core assumptions. It might even be an …
The hardest thing about user testing and 5 tips to help
There are two established New York tech companies who do a great job of getting close and staying close to their customers: Meetup and The Ladders. Andres Glusman (VP of Strategy, Meetup) and Jeff Gothelf (Dir of UX, The Ladders) established regular, lightweight usability sessions at their respective companies (that’s them above giving Lean Ignite talks — see bottom for …
10 Tips on Startup Mentoring
This post originally appeared on the Lean Startup Machine blog, with a few small changes. I wrote it with LSM’s bootcamp in mind, where in the course of a weekend multiple teams try to validate/invalidate as much as they possibly can around their startup idea (it is really something to watch). However, I like to think that these mentoring tips …
My Subjot Obsession
I’m a talker online. In the old days, it was via manually-updated websites and forums. These days, I’ve got multiple long-form blogs, and dabble with all the short-form tools. I like to talk about many different topics, but that’s where I get frustrated. With Twitter, I end up restricting my content because most of my followers are there to hear …