This essay is written as part of the Startup Edition project – check out the other essays here. It would be awesome if your first iteration of a minimum viable product (MVP) perfectly addressed your target market segment, delivered great value…
This essay is written as part of the Startup Edition project – check out the other essays here. How do you discover what people really want? People are not effective at self-reporting, or letting you know what they will…
//Read about more mistakes in the newest Startup Edition “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” -Miles Davis. We all make mistakes. I’ve made a few mistakes in my time. I’m not talking about the garden-variety mistakes you might make…
Makers need to make in the real world Get out of the (electronic) building Last evening, as the Pacific Northwest sunshine (yes, we do have that here in the Spring and Summer and Fall) was blazing, I was weeding my…
This post is a contribution to Startup Edition. Tools are a Commodity We could talk all day about the tools we use. Agile is Best! Pomodoro is Best! Pen and Paper is Best! Getting everyone in a room is Best! (You…
In the movie Star Trek II (and in the more recent reboot), then-Starfleet Academy cadet James T. Kirk relates the story of the training exercise to try to save the Kobayashi Maru as a key learning experience for his transformation…
What does it take to succeed? this post was inspired by Bijan Sabet’s Who Took a Chance on You? and is a contribution to Startup Edition. If you’re reading this post, it’s likely someone took a chance on you. If you got a “lucky…
A recent post from the folks at the Buffer team got me thinking about the idea of customer happiness, and the ability to quantify it and measure it. In my experience, when you ask service providers if their customers are…
photo by In my experience, having effective, talented, and knowledgeable mentors has been the most powerful startup accelerator that I know. The best mentors I’ve worked with do a lot of the things on this list. You can call these…
