Startup Stages

OCT Offers Insights That Used To Require an Autopsy

3 Early Customer Stage, skmurphy / By /

Christoph Guetter suggests in “The eye is a window to the brain; but who’s looking?” that the micron scale resolution of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for in vivo cross-sectional imaging of the human retina may allow earlier and more accurate diagnoses of several common neurodegenerative disorders: Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic

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Webinar Replay: Innovator’s DNA Associating Skill

1 Idea Stage, Books, Customer Development, Video / By /

Panel sessions Feb 22, 2012 on Innovator’s DNA Skill #1 Associating. Terry Frazier of Cognovis, Steve Hogan of Tech-Rx, and Sean Murphy of SKMurphy. Part of the Book Club For Business Impact covered lessons learned applying a number of techniques for associating from chapter 2 of the “Innovator’s DNA” by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton

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Innovator's DNA

Webinar Replay: Innovator’s DNA Series Overview

1 Idea Stage, Books, Customer Development, Video / By /

Steve Hogan and Sean Murphy walk through a five part webinar series on “The Innovator’s DNA” by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen,and Clayton Christensen. Sean thinks it’s the best book on innovation and entrepreneurship for 2011 and useful for any team that is trying to innovate. Each webinar will be in a roundtable format and include

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Crafting a Value Proposition

2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Rules of Thumb, Sales, Startup Advice Column / By /

Q: I struggle with the value proposition for our product. Either I am too abstract “we offer a positive return on time invested” or too vague “help increase your ability to manage critical challenges.” Do you have any suggestions for how to frame or formulate a value proposition? Here a few questions that a value

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Entrepreneurial Passion: Good Servant, Poor Master

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, Rules of Thumb, skmurphy / By /

Entrepreneurial passion has to be based on a desire to create value, to be of service to a set of target customers. There may be many things you are interested in learning and room enough in your life for several hobbies, but pursuing a passion without regard to your ability to provide value in a

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Tristan Kromer on Testing Customer and Value Hypotheses

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Customer Development, skmurphy / By /

These are excerpts from  Episode 9 of Outlier on Air: Tristan Kromer, A Lean Approach to Business.  They are in the same sequence the took place in the interview but a number of stories and asides have been omitted to focus on what I felt were some extremely valuable insights from Tristan Kromer on clarifying and testing

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Map Customer Buying Process Before Sending a Proposal

3 Early Customer Stage, Checklist, Sales, skmurphy / By /

Map the customer buying process, needs, and situation before you invest time sending a detailed proposal. A quick request can mean you are column fodder. Q: We are still trying to close our first paying customer. We have a website up and have talked to a number of people. More or less out of the blue

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Customer Interviews: Spend an Hour to Save a Minute

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Rules of Thumb / By /

For customer interviews we have a rule of thumb that if an hour or research saves a minute early in the conversation it’s a good investment.  When you look at the list of questions you have prepared to learn about the prospect’s business and their needs, it’s easy to say to yourself, “I am really

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Minimum Viable Product: Enthusiastically Proceed Skeptically

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, 3 Early Customer Stage, Customer Development, MVP, skmurphy / By /

In a candid discussion about the challenges of managing your own expectations for a minimum viable product (MVP), Tristan Kromer observed, “It’s psychologically hard to enthusiastically proceed with skepticism.” And that is the challenge, we have to be enthusiastic about our product ideas to persevere to complete them and tell others about them, but we have to

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