The other day, Cindy Alvarez (product manager at KISSmetrics and author of a great blog), wrote a post called “Anybody, As Long As It’s Not You” , saying: “Who should give you feedback on your early-stage product mockups/demo? Anybody, as long as it’s not you. OK, sure, there’s probably an “ideal” audience to show your product to. But it probably …
Can business schools teach entrepreneurship?
I can’t help but weigh in on the “MBA – startup” meme going around. First, context on my background: I chose not get an MBA. Before my current startup, I worked for 4 VC-backed companies (founded by others) in various sales/marketing/bizdev roles, and bootstrapped and sold 1 company of my own. I did feel a need to learn finance, but …
Thoughts on Product-Market Fit
Here are a few thoughts on product-market fit that came up when I was chatting this evening with Brant Cooper of Market by Numbers. Revenue & Testing To me, “lean startup” and “product-market fit” boil down to rigorously and continuously testing your assumptions as early as possible, and holding off heavy investments in scalability and growth until you feel confident …
When it comes to startups, products and services don’t mix
[Note: 8 years later, I’ve written an update to this post] This post is about dancing with the devil (i.e. consulting) as you pursue your dreams and try to pay the bills. I believe that it is near impossible to build a successful software product while maintaining a services business. (UPDATE: I should clarify that I am talking about the period …
Customer Development Update (and why I’m sticking with 1-on-1 talks)
Conversations with prospective customers is an unending process. Here is a quick update (first post) on some of those efforts with Aprizi: First, conversations have gotten a lot more concrete as we’ve honed our thoughts. We started out talking about people’s challenges and a wide array of features. The first wave of discussions helped us narrow down and prioritize what …
Great startup lawyers
My reaction to the recent Venture Hacks post on lawyers was that we need to help entrepreneurs find good attorneys! They are out there — I am certainly happy with my current attorney, Brian Hutchings at Gunderson, and when I was selling the first company I founded, my attorney at Fenwick was indispensable. So today I reached out to a …
The Beautiful Sound of No
Hiten Shah tonight sent out an interesting tweet, “The more you know, the more you no.” Interestingly enough, Matt Henrick riffed back, “the less you know, the more you will try.” My brain went in a different direction: how experience teaches you what not to do. I thought it would be fun to talk about some great no’s in a …
Don’t let another startup throw you off your game
In the spirit of transparency, I thought I’d share an anecdote about competition and those little gravitational forces you have to resist as an entrepreneur. About a month after we started Aprizi, a “sorta / kinda” competitive company announced on TechCrunch and has since received a lot of attention among the techie set. It was hard not to be distracted. …
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, …
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 …