Recap From Nov-20-2103 MVP Clinic
This MVP clinic helps a researcher looking for action research topics in the KM4Dev community and an entrepreneur making athletic contests more engaging.
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Startup Stages
The Illusion of Omnicompetence: Smart and Competent Are Domain Specific Adjectives
The illusion of omnicompetence is the failure to recognize limits. Smart and competent are not a generic quality: they’re incredibly domain-specific.
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Audio and Notes from On-Line MVP Clinic Oct 23-2013 on Social Software
John Smith and I did an MVP Clinic for Social and Community Apps on Oct 23. We took notes live in a PrimaryPad (an EtherPad derivative application). What follows is a cleaned up version of notes that we took and the audience contributed to. You can see MVP Clinic for Social/Community Apps Wed Oct 23
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Don’t Give Your Investor Pitch To Customers, They Have Different Questions
Q: Can you please take a look at this pitch. I have created it as a promo for investors and potential users. Selling your offering to customers and selling your business to investors requires two different presentations They have fundamentally different questions they need answered before they “buy.” Customers want to understand how your product
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Balancing Engineering Vision vs. Customer Expectation
A deconstruction of the “How to Change Cars Forever” commercial for redesigned Dodge Dart as a distillation of engineering vision and an analysis of results
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MVP Clinic for Social/Community Apps Wed-Oct-23
If you are planning a new service offering, involving technologies and social interactions between customers, this clinic on minimum viable service can help you learn your way out of conflicting assumptions, lack of relevant data, difficulty understanding service value, and resource constraints. This is especially the case if you need to get adoption by a
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8 Tips For Interviewing Experts
Interviewing experts requires you to respect their time, doing basic research in advance to prepare a clear agenda and avoid unnecessary questions.
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Getting The Band Together To Overthrow The Current Order
Whether you call it the status quo, the current order, the way things are, or vested interests, the present arrangement is what entrepreneurs strive to obsolete by offering something better, faster, cheaper, or just different.
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Q: Customer Exit Interview Questions
Q: We have a SaaS offering that has been on the market for three years now and we have several dozen paying customers. Our offering is useful for firms with more than a hundred employees up to several thousand and is licensed at a corporate level. We have only lost two customers, one was acquired
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Q: How To Estimate Prospect Counts and Market Sizes
Here are some back of the envelope models to estimate prospect counts and market sizes.
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FounderSuite Worth a Look for Saving Time On Your New Startup
There are a number of forms packages now available for entrepreneurs that provide templates for incorporation, investment term sheets, hiring employees and contractors, etc.. And there are several business model canvas tools that are designed to facilitate useful discussions among founders and advisors (and potential investors) about a new startup. But Nathan Beckord‘s Foundersuite is
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Preserving Trust And Demonstrating Expertise Unlocks Demanding Niche Markets
Preserving Trust And Demonstrating Expertise Unlocks Demanding Niche Markets Q: We are preparing to enter a B2B market where the potential buyers are high-value but relatively few in number and close-knit. I am concerned that they will have a low tolerance for a minimum viable product (MVP) approach; much less pre-MVP research that misses the
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What is Under Your Control in an MVP
What is Under Your Control in an MVP? Your target customer, the problem you solve for them, and what capabilities you offer to help them.
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Q: How Do You Iterate An MVP So That It’s “Good Enough For Government Work”
Q: I am part of a hardware/embedded device startup working on our MVP. We want to develop a minimum product to cut our initial development costs and iterate scientifically through experimentation. My concern is that State governments are my primary customer type and their buying model is to do a pilot project and then write what
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College vs. Startup
Some thoughts on college vs. startups, the panels are sliced up from “Students” by Randall Monroe. This is which is a dream that I still have. I find it a marker for being under pressure.
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If You Knew How Hard a Startup Would Be
A new startup is often driven by a desire for autonomy, self-expression, and lifelong learning. Or it’s a creative solution to a lack of alternatives. Albert Hirschman observed that “creativity always comes as a surprise to us” which led him to suggest “the only we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging
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Even For Demanding Markets, An MVP That’s a 70% Solution is Often Good Enough
Stripping the least useful third of the features requested allows you to deliver a 70 percent solution much more rapidly that’s often good enough.
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MVP: Are You Building a Death Star?
Empires build a Death Star, Rebels build X-Wing fighters If your startup’s minimum viable product is a Death Star you are doing it wrong.
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Podcast with Pete Tormey: Bootstrapper’s Delegation Checklist
Pete Tormey and I did a short podcast on a delegation checklist. We wanted to help bootstrapping entrepreneurs decide what tasks it made the most sense to delegate in an early stage startup.
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Tips for Choosing a Logo
We get a number of questions about logos, here are three tips for designing or choosing a logo when you are bootstrapping or just getting started: Text Treatments: text logos are simple, the company name is always right there. Most high tech logos are text treatments, they are clear and simple. With text logos you
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