Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was […]
Hiring A Startup’s First Sales Person Read More »
The Field of Dreams model–build it and they will come–is a variation on “build a better mousetrap,” a self-limiting belief that dooms many startups.
Vision Is Critical But Avoid The “Field of Dreams” Read More »
Asif Mandozai (@asifmandozai) uses twitter to share customer development insights. Here is a set of 16 quotes I found to be practical and actionable.
16 Quotes on Customer Development From Asif Mandozai Read More »
Q: Appreciate your thoughts on qualitative vs. quantitative approaches to market exploration. Customer development is like qualitative research; it is good for exploring hypotheses (and associated issues) but cannot validate them (by its very nature it is small sample size). To validate startup hypotheses one needs to do quantitative research, e.g. surveys, measurements (A/B tests), and have
Market Discovery and Exploration Requires Models from Physics, Biology, and Psychology Read More »
The most effective ways to start a warm conversation with prospect are introductions, responding to questions in a forum, and face to face at an event.
How To Start a Warm Conversation About a Customer Problem Read More »
Here are three sales pitches that never really work with some suggestions for how to improve them.
Three Sales Pitches That Never Really Work Read More »
Before you introduce a new product into an existing market you need to analyze the market structure and competitive landscape. This is a laundry list–not a prioritized list—of the set of challenges we currently wrestle with in helping clients monitor their external environment and craft strategies for new market creation and new product introduction into
Challenges in Analyzing Market Structure and Competitive Landscape Read More »
Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most? The Lean Startup 2012 conference clarified where Lean Startup principles are especially applicable: Emerging markets, Industries that are being disrupted, Companies that have fallen behind the innovation curve. All of these situations are characterized by the need for exploration and discovery instead of continued execution of the current
Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most? Read More »
What follows is a sequence of E-mails with an entrepreneur bootstrapping an EdTech startup around the challenges of doing customer interviews that have been recast as a conversation, with the original content edited for length and clarity. Entrepreneur (E): I am working with a couple of friends–we all have day jobs–on an idea for helping
A Conversation With A Bootstrapping EdTech Startup On Customer Interviews Read More »
This post curates content and commentary related to the 2012 Lean Startup Conference: videos, blog posts, slides, articles, etc.. Lean Startup Conference Main Program Mon-Dec-3-2012 Opening Remarks by Eric Ries Presenter: Eric Ries / blog / @ericries / W: Eric Ries / The Lean Startup Book: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Video: pending Articles/Blogs/Commentary Lean Startup Not Just
Lean Startup Conference 2012 Roundup Read More »
Successful entrepreneurs have a passion to see their inventions adopted as innovations not admired as works of art. This is the science of startups.
Entrepreneurial Passion and the Science of Startups Read More »
Building the “wrong product” is not a waste of time you learn about the market and technical feasibility. Right and wrong are both gray, not black or white. Customer development and technical development typically require a sequence of prototypes that are “less wrong” over time under they become good enough.
Q: Is Building The Wrong Product A Waste Of Time? Read More »
Conversations with prospects unfold in real time: you must listen for what’s said and not said, manage your emotions, and understand the implications.
Conversations With Prospects: Practice, Review, Share Notes, Ask for Feedback Read More »
So much marketing is “me too”, if you have read one press release or marketing material you have read them all. It is always a trick about how to reach your audience and stand out from the crowd by being different. In an age of low-cost email campaigns and social media, we are actually finding
Standing Out From The Crowd Read More »
Early focus on a niche market (a small market) enables a startup to achieve “small wins” faster (and experience “small losses” instead of large ones). Over time these accumulate into larger wins.
Small Wins Enable Larger Wins Read More »
My father used to complain that a friend of his would make his doctor practice veterinary medicine. The doctor would ask him what was wrong and his friend would reply in a non-committal way. Some entrepreneurs, especially in the early market, seem to prefer veterinary marketing: running tests and making changes in their application without
Don’t Practice Veterinary Marketing: Talk to Prospects Read More »
We have Fortune 500 clients who are launching new products and who want to take advantage of customer development methodologies (or have come to the conclusion that they need a framework to revisit assumptions that are not working). There are broadly two types of situations where a large company is launching a new product: It’s
Customer Development Is Not Just For Startups Read More »
You waste time and reputation using these methods for B2B customer discovery: surveys, landing pages, and asking for endorsement before product experience.
Pictures Are to Words as Conversations are to Surveys Read More »
A few thoughts on customer interviews and why their capacity to surprise us makes them preferable to surveys and landing pages for early market exploration.
Customer Interviews: Allow Yourself to Be Surprised Read More »
In a blog post last October entitled “Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack” Steve Blank suggested Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur defined a business model as how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. More importantly they showed how any company’s business model could be defined in 9 boxes. It’s an
Business Model Representations Read More »
