- Thanks for the Advice, Grandpa – Debunking Conventional Startup Wisdom There is a lot of conventional wisdom about startups and side projects that is just plain bad advice. “How do you know it is bad advice?” you may ask. Well, for over eight years I’ve co-hosted a tech startup podcast where we’ve interviewed many successful entrepreneurs. With each interview I’ve ‘unlearned’ a little bit more. Here are some of […]
- How to Multiply the Potential of Every Startup Idea Did you know wild deer are free to roam the forest, yet they seldom roam “free”? Instead, they walk the same route day after day. So much so, they create a visible deer path on the forest floor! We do that same thing with our thought patterns. The technical term is cognitive bias. When someone […]
- Don’t Validate One Idea, Validate Three When first starting out, at the idea-picking stage, I try to advise people to pick at least three ideas to run validation tests on to see if customers are willing to pay. Here’s a little example of why that is an optimal strategy: Let’s say you were drilling for oil. You didn’t know exactly “where” […]
- Someone Created a Startup Just like Mine and Here Is Why That Is Awesome UPDATE: The beginning of this post used to have a section that outed a competitor for perhaps being a little too inspired by Nugget. I have removed that, because, it had data which enabled a reader to identify the competitor. — Firstly, I want to say congratulations to this competitor for doing something. The fact that he […]
- Building a One Man SaaS App Offers a Profound Sense of Personal Achievement It’s Raining Mobile Out of 20m global software developers, very few have built a profitable SaaS business. To give some context, consider “software developers” as a group, have built 4m mobile apps, but only 15k SaaS businesses. This is especially odd, given the amazingly commoditized and fickle nature of app marketplaces, with low price points and […]
- Competition Does Not Matter Something that comes up a lot during my conversations with founders is – Competition – with a capital C. Often times, they steer clear of really interesting projects because they feel there is too much competition in that market. It’s a common cognitive bias because that’s how we’re taught to think about competition in the “normal” business world. However, […]
- Product/Founder Fit, Your Most Important Strategy Product/founder fit We hear the term Product/market fit all the time, but few talk about Product/founder fit. Ironically, it may be a great deal more important for your individual success. So what exactly is it? Product/founder fit is a measure of how well your startup fits YOU. The better it fits, the more likely you are […]
- Don’t Start Big, Start a Little Snowball Little Snowballs When myself and my co-host interviewed Travis Kalanick on our podcast, he had recently co-founded a little snowball called UberCab. It was so early in Uber’s existence he didn’t even mention it. I notice Uber falls into a category of companies I call little snowballs. There are some fundamental features these companies have in common. I thought it might […]
- Don’t Form a Company There’s nothing more intoxicating than the moment you pick the idea that will be your next startup. To make things more real your next step is to form a company and seal the deal, right? My advice is DON’T do that… until you have proven your business is actually going to work. I’ve learnt this lesson […]
- Your Ideas Don’t Suck, Your Feedback Loop Does So, you have a great idea! You buy a great domain name! You start to think about how to build it! You get pretty excited! Then, you tell your family, a few trusted friends, and even some of your colleagues about it. And… They don’t like it. They have all sorts of logical arguments for […]
