TAG: Startups

1 hour of research saves 10 hours of development time

I was recently talking to a developer who was building out a new stream view for a web app she was working on. She was in the middle of getting infinite scrolling to work, which isn’t very hard for developers these days but it does take a significant amount of time to do elegantly. My […]

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Growing from 10 to 100 to 1000 users

Lots of folks I talk to about building products want to know how to grow from a tiny initial user base (10 people) up through 100 to 1000. It certainly seems like each of these stages is different, but it’s not clear why. I recently thought a lot about this when interviewed by Jay Acunzo […]

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Show growth

Adrian Sanders, an alum of the startup accelerator program YCombinator, gives some advice on what is important when talking about your startup: “Do not tell me how your idea is going to work, show me that it is working. That is far more convincing. Every idea out there has been dreamed up (save money on […]

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What, exactly, is a startup?

Two definitions of startups: One from an excellent piece by Steve Blank on why companies are not startups: “a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. The corollary for an enterprise is: A company is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable and scalable business model. […]

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Dear Josh

Dear Josh, I have some exciting news to share with you. Our startup, one you’ve never heard of, recently acquired your email and now want to let you know that we’ve released something that isn’t relevant to your life. But, and here is where you come in, you have the opportunity of a lifetime to […]

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Research can often prevent the need to fail fast

I have several drafts on the topic of research and startups. Until I finish one of those I leave you with Erika Hall’s excellent summary of the topic: How the ‘Failure’ Culture of Startups Is Killing Innovation. Money quote: “Somewhere along the way, it got to be uncool to reduce one’s risk of failure. Part […]

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Paul Graham’s Do things that don’t scale

A must read for any product person working on a new product, Paul Graham’s Do Things that Don’t Scale will become a classic in startup literature. This is one of many good parts: “Airbnb now seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, but early on it was so fragile that about 30 days of going out and […]

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Marketing and product design are the same thing.

Product marketing guru Seth Godin says that product design and marketing are the same thing, and I agree with him.

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Which problems to build product from?

A nice little slide deck called Stop thinking up startup ideas. This point is worth repeating. Don’t imagine ideas that don’t exist, solve existing problems instead. So instead of “hey wouldn’t it be cool if…?” it’s more like “hey, did you know that…?”. It’s a small change of words, yes, but the first question is […]

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Amy Hoy’s tips on starting a business

Building a business? Here’s a good place to start: Justin Jackson’s What Amy Hoy taught me about starting a business. In it, Amy Hoy shares a good framework to start with: Define what you want to achieve Forget ideas, study a market Target people with money Make sure you like your customer Identify where you’re […]

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