June 2009
1 post
What are the assumptions behind your vision (and...
This tweet has helped to guide my thinking about what to include in the first version of our product. It builds upon some of the thinking of the minimum viable product and asks: What do you need to build to test the assumptions behind your product’s vision?
Answering this question won’t always require building something. Sometimes a competitor’s product or user feedback can be...
May 2009
5 posts
"It's never going to be over, so stop waiting for...
It’s funny how we sometimes wait for permission for things that we don’t need approval on. This quote (via Jake Lodwick) really hit home:
“It’s never going to be over, so stop waiting for the good stuff. As of now, spend a minimum of one hour a day doing whatever you are waiting to do until your finances are more secure, or until you have finished your obligations and you...
The Art of War meets the Art of Start?
A new to me (but seven years old to more diligent readers) post from Joel on Software made a great comparison between military and startup strategy…basically - survival’s all about Fire and Motion.
In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon…The motion allows you to conquer territory and get...
When making something, what questions do you...
Related to the previous post and inspired by this one, I wanted to start a collection of questions I’m always asking myself during product development.
Here’s my list so far:
1. What is the smallest possible problem that we could solve that would potentially be useful?
1a. What job does your customer want to hire your product for?
2. If we don’t put this feature in, what will our...
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could...
The above advice comes from Twitter’s Ev Williams and it’s one of the things I’m always trying to keep in the back of my mind while working on a product. Focusing the product allows for differentiation and a better fit with your potential market.
Another quote that goes well with the first one is: “if we don’t put this feature in, what will our customers do...
April 2009
8 posts
Get your users to help put up your tent
Reading Nivi’s interview with Eric Reis on Minimum Viable Products was a revelation*. In it, Eric outlined a way to accelerate the already rapid pace of development for startups. Rather than waiting until you have an actual product ready, Eric outlined some paths to skip directly to getting user feedback.
The idea of the minimum viable product is useful because you can basically say, look,...
What are we doing with the Cognitive Surplus?
Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution fame) has got a new book coming out called “Create Your Own Economy”. Here’s a quick note on what the book is about:
The way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a very long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a man-made creation — in this case, the World Wide Web — so greatly influenced the way our minds...
Stay away from the low hanging fruit
When just starting out, it’s a little overwhelming being surrounded by all the decisions that have to be made, especially when some simple decisions seem so ripe for the plucking…
But realize that from time to time it’s OK to hang in there and resist the urge to pick the low hanging fruit. Just because you have one good idea doesn’t mean you have to act immediately...
“RT: “Having one feature that works is better than having ten that don’t.” ...”
– some guy named Paul (sounds evil to me)
What's the essence of your product?
There’s a great interview in Inc Magazine with Jim Collins (from Built to Last and Good to Great fame) and in it he talks about the stages of entrepreneurship. But before talking about the stages, he gives a great quote from Steve Jobs before he returned to Apple:
“I invited Steve to my entrepreneurship class at Stanford in 1988 or ‘89. He was doing NeXT at the time. He...
Before you need a Utensil what are you going to...
There was a post a while back in 37signals asking “What’s Your Cookbook”:
These chefs give away their recipes, their secrets. They say “This is how I do it and you can do it too. Don’t worry, it’s not hard, just follow along.”
And I guess all I wanted to say is that while we’ve already listed one receipe we hope to use this space to build out our entire book. Which...
1 tag
Non Ex-Googlers to Build Startup
Have you heard? Not everyone who creates a startup has worked for Google. No, seriously, it’s true. They haven’t been Valleywagged, Techcrunched, or Y-Combinated and yet the product still grows…how is this possible?
Adam and Gorman have seen a lot on the web. They’ve worked for both big consumer companies like Yahoo! and LiveJournal and they’ve built and sold smaller startups. But this is the...
Startup Founders Recipe
Take one part idea guy, mix with one part product maker.
Marinate them in industry hope, hype, and harm.
Add heat from frustration of having to deal with people who “weren’t doing it right”.
Set aside seasoned veterans ready for independence.
Watch them unleash something Essential.
Enjoy!
March 2009
1 post
1 tag
And you are?
How do these people do it….following 100, 500, 1,000+ people? Twitterholic lists at least a thousand people who follow more than six thousand “friends”. Of course a lot of this uber-following might just be people getting used to (and/or abusing) these new ways of communicating, but that doesn’t change the fact that the number of interesting people talking about interesting...