In mid-February I and the family flew down to Sydney to see my in-laws, and I was happy to overlap with Eric Ries at the Sydney Lean Startup Circle. Eric delivered a great talk, but I gave him a hard time afterward because he spent a chunk of time on continuous deployment. I consider that to be low priority compared …
Not Cheap, Not Disposable
I side with Mark Suster on the need to retire the phrase “fail fast”.* I understand both sides, and the differences are hardly surprising since VCs live at the macro level (company fails) and entrepreneurs are immersed at the micro level (assumption fails). But it’s still a dumb phrase because it gets misinterpreted too easily. Take this quote from Umair …
Forget how many angels fit on a pin
I’ve been enjoying my lurk on the lean startup circle google group, but I’ve noticed a recurring attempt to definitively define what “lean startup” is and isn’t. I understand the desire to insert some sense of certainty in our uncertain world, but argue against it. It is a waste of time to argue over which tactics qualify as lean startup …
Targeting Matters!
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …