Test commercial feasibility and do the easy stuff first

By Thomas Klem Andersen, Published on september 14th 2015

This week Jakob Svagin from Scion DTU and Andreas Cleve Lohmann from Copenhagen Lean Startup circle are challenging the participating hardware startups in Danish Tech Challenge on their value propositions and market assumptions. Here are some insights from the kick off talk yesterday when the lean-rubber hit the road.

Running lean is different than “just doing it” (a mystic approach to entrepreneurship based on intuition) and the approach of traditional innovation management (an approach based on plans, specs and waterfall processes with way too long feedback loops). Running lean is neither about chance or planning rather it’s about optimizing learning under circumstances characterized by extreme uncertainty.

You have to build to test. And there’s a bunch of things you can do without even building anything because it’s crucial that you test your entire business model and not just the technical feasibility. Sure you need to test your technical solution. But you need to conduct commercial experiments and generate commercial data as well. 

Recognize that your big vision is based on assumptions and they all need to be tested. Test your value hypothesis, your market hypothesis, your growth hypothesis – which include sales channels, partners and customers. These are all part of the uncertain context which your technical innovation needs to adapt to in order to achieve problem-solution fit and product-market fit.

You should build minimum viable products (MVP’s) of your actual product. But you should also build and hack MVP’s for how you interact with key partners, suppliers, users and customers. You can do that very early on and long time before you finish your product development (if you ever do). It’s never fun to be sold a bad product, but it’s always fun to be part of building something that can become big, so have an inclusive mindset from the start.

Most likely your potential customers aren’t out there actively looking for you. So the questions you need to ask yourselves are:

•          How can you make them care?
•          Why is your product valuable to them?
•          Do you know their criteria for buying?

Your technical product development might take six months or longer. But testing commercial feasibility can be done in a matter of days and is essential to developing a sustainable business model. So go do the easy stuff first!

A world of experience in the form of advice

Whether you're engaged in a startup or a maturing company, you most likely often find yourself operating in circumstances characterized by extreme uncertainty regardless if your challenges concern acquiring new customers, refining your value proposition, attracting capital etc.

A skillful way to deal with uncertainty is to plan for fast learning and systematically test your assumptions in order to either validate or change them. A simple and extremely useful way to do this is to talk to those whom you expect to be your primary customers. 

Another powerful way to accelerate learning is to establish a relationship to accomplished individuals who are willing to lend their experience and insight to the venture you are undertaking. That is; entering a mentor relationship. If you manage to build trustful relations to mentors they will apply the world of their experience to your venture in the form of valuable advice.

However good mentor relationships don’t just evolve by themselves. So what do you need to consider to build such relationships? Here are 10 basic principles formulated by Martin Zwilling on his Startup Professionals blog for both the mentor and mentee to remember to get the most out of any mentoring relationship:

1. Good mentoring requires building a relationship first. A positive business or personal relationship between two people normally requires a high degree of shared values, common interests, and mutual respect. Remember that good relationships take some time to develop, so don’t assume that your first discussion will seal the deal.
2. Agree on specific objectives and time frames. Mentoring that consists of random discussions is not very satisfying for either side. I recommend one or more early discussions of mutual objectives, with a written summary of goals and expectations from the mentee to the mentor, with timeframes and milestones.
3. Make efficient use of time for both parties. This means being respectful and diligent about scheduling and keeping appointments, and returning emails and phone calls. Don’t attempt to multitask, or allow constant interruptions, during meetings. Book follow-up sessions, with an agenda, rather than fill time with random discussions.
4. Identify strengths and weaknesses early. Both the mentor and mentee should put their cards on the table, to avoid surprises later. Then both should look for opportunities to leverage strengths, and shore up weaknesses. This avoids wasted time and speculation, and provides the motivation to bring in other experts or mentors as required.
5. Mentor feedback must be thoughtful, specific, timely, and constructive. An important aspect of a mentoring relationship is how the mentor provides feedback to the mentee. Formulate negative feedback in a constructive fashion. Using open-ended questions that start with “how” or “what” help the mentee to arrive at their own solution.
6. Mentees should avoid any defensive reaction to feedback. The right response to most mentor feedback is a thoughtful question for clarification. Immediately responding with “reasons and rationale” to every feedback will be read as insincerity, and will likely end the mentoring relationship quickly.
7. Practice two-way communication and candid feedback. Mentoring is not a series of monologues and lectures, from either side. But candid feedback means not pulling punches when they are deserved. Both sides need to practice active listening and thoughtful questions. Constructive conflict is good.
8. Agree to deal with unforeseen challenges openly. The most common challenges involve time and accessibility demands on either side, or the level of help expected. Both sides need to honor business boundaries, and not stray into personal relationship issues. Agree up front on how to end the relationship if other unforeseen circumstances arise.
9. Celebrate successes, and deal openly with failures. This will help the learning process and build the mentee’s confidence. With patience and time, the partners should develop a good rapport and become more comfortable with openly and freely conversing with each other.
10. Evaluate mentoring requirements on a regular basis. The mentee, as primary beneficiary, should be proactive in making sure the review process occurs on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly. This allows for frank discussion of unanticipated changes, and the potential for discontinuing the process and declaring success.

Martin concludes:

“The end of a mentoring relationship should be seen as an opportunity to review what did and didn’t work, and more importantly, to reflect on the results, so that every lesson that can be learned from the relationship is recognized.

 
Both the mentor and mentee should celebrate the successes, review the learning from failures, and conclude the relationship with positive feelings. To bring it full circle, mentees should now consider passing on their new knowledge and skills by entering a new mentoring relationship – as a mentor. That’s the ultimate satisfaction.”

A secret sauce for running Lean?

By Thomas Klem Andersen, Published on January 20th 2014

Last week the Copenhagen Lean Startup Circle and Silicon Vikings co-hosted yet another interesting event on the Lean Startup concept. This time at Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship (CSE) headlining Ash Maurya who has authored the Lean Startup methodology book Running Lean.

 Ash is a serial entrepreneur and a keen ambassador for the Lean Startup movement, which is sweeping the startup world at the moment. He is the creator of the Lean Canvas (start your own here), author of the books Running Lean and the Customer Factory (in process). Back in December 2013, he headlined the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco and he is behind one of the most read startup blogs in the world: www.practicetrumpstheory.com.

In his own words his Lean journey started when confronted with the works on Customer Development and Lean Startup pioneered by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. He joined in on the conversation and started applying and testing the principles on his own ventures all the while sharing his learnings on his blog mentioned above. The blog eventually turned into the Running Lean book aimed at helping entrepreneurs raise their odds of success.

At CSE Ash shared some of the insights from his book. Here I will share what I took with me from the event:

The myth about the perfect idea and the visionary entrepreneur

Entrepreneurial success is not so much about starting with the perfect idea. Rather it is a question of arriving at a plan that works before you run out of resources. For this you need to be willing to learn and you need to be ready to do it fast. In contrast to the glamour picture of the entrepreneurial genius, most successes are based on a lot of failures and learnings along the way.

Some principles of Running Lean

-       Plan for systematic learning

To be a systematic learner you need to find ways to test your assumptions and visions. You also need to be aware of the fact that entrepreneurs often fail to see the entire business potential of initial and even mature ideas.

-       Listen to customers

A simple way to design for fast learning, which is key to the lean startup concept is talking and genuinely listening to customers. By doing so you can learn about their problems and start figuring out how to solve them. The most important entrepreneurial mantra in this context is: You don't need to build a solution to validate if you've found a problem worth solving! Simply ask your customers. This practice can save you a lot of time and a lot of wasted resources and thus get you running Lean.

-       Test to learn

Document your plan. Knowing what you are doing and how you are doing it, while measuring for progress will let you test the plan in order to change it for the better. This includes testing solution and product feasibility, testing customer demand and testing business model repeatability etc.

-       De-risk your business model

Identify the riskiest parts of your plan and work systematically on de-risking your product and business model

-       ‘Canvas’ your plan

An easy way to do this is to work with the Lean canvas which condenses a business plan to one sheet and brakes it down into workable elements.

There’s no secret sauce and no silver bullet

There's no guarantee for success but living by the Lean principles will raise the odds of it. However as Ash put it: You should never take the Lean principles on faith. You have to go test them out for yourself! Running Lean is not a theory, it is build on experience and requires hard work, strong intention and an attitude supportive of learning, focus and speed. Thus Ash supports Steve Blank’s urging mantra for entrepreneurs to get out of the building which is clearly emphasized by the title of his blog: Practice trumps theory!

5 Ways to get out of Startup Mode and Grow your Business

Entrepreneur blog post by Grant Cardone | October 7, 2013| 

Entrepreneurs stay in startup mode way too long. Keeping a small business in startup mode requires you to stand on the brake. If you keep telling people you're "just a startup," you will never take actions for real growth.
 

It's time to move from startup to grown up mode and from planning to doing. In two years, you want to look back at your startup phase as an important part of your thriving business' history. This is the mindset to move towards and here are five ways to do it:

1. Delegate. When you're in startup phase, you are handling everything. To become a going concern you have to start investing in people to do tasks you can no longer do. Three quarters of all small businesses have zero employees, which underscores the resistance people have to delegating. You have to grow your business. It is a misnomer to think people cost money. A lack of production and failure to grow your business costs far more.

2. Pick your battles. Don't get wrapped up for a week deciding on a logo when it ultimately doesn't matter. Your brand will evolve as your business evolves, so your logo is likely to change. There are more important things to obsess over -- gaining customers and making money. When you are hunting big game, don't swat mosquitoes.

3. Get attention. The single biggest problem every startup has is becoming known. Your most important task is to get attention for you and your company. It's the gateway to every dollar you raise. Muhammed Ali told the world he was the greatest long before anyone knew him. He got attention and infuriated people. But he proved himself, which turned criticism into world admiration. Get attention. Get critics. Then get admiration.

4. Change your pitch. Instead of saying "I own a small web design company," say "I own a web design company like none other that guarantees your company increased sales." Notice the difference? The first makes you seem small and insignificant. It makes no claim. The second makes you seem unique, confident and capable of being a money maker. Know how to pitch yourself and your business. Be ready to quickly explain what your company does that is better, faster and of value to the marketplace. Then, make big claims to the world.

5. Create urgency. If you start a business venture without setting specific timelines for action and achievements, you will be stuck forever with excuses. One of the biggest mistakes I have made in business was not operating with enough urgency. Being an entrepreneur is a marathon activity with lots of sprints. Win a lot of little races and you will provide your people and company with momentum. We recently shot a television show at my office and I told the editing staff that I wanted rough cuts in half the time they thought necessary. Then I called everyday for a progress update. This pressure to perform doesn't lead to inferior products; it get products to be finished. Urgency is key to getting things done.

Remember: Your vision is not improved by staying in startup mode. It's time to accelerate and become a going concern that is grabbing market share from the other bigger more established players.

5 Things that slow down your startup's growth

Excerpts from an insightful Six Revisions blog post by Sabelline Chicot, Sep 30 2013 

Creating a startup has never been easier. And once you get going — depending on your drive, vision and personal motivation — you will likely experience rapid growth and productivity at the start of your journey. Everything’s new and there’s seemingly endless potential to grow.

However, once the honeymoon period fades and reality sets in — and it will at some point — you will be faced with doubts, fear, and insecurity. This point in time is a crucial fork in the road; one path will move you forward and the other will lead you astray.

When that time comes, it’s important to deal with the following common issues experienced by most startup founders.

1. Waiting for Everything to Be Perfect

Sometimes it’s hard to get things moving because you want things to be flawless.

However, perfection never happens. Perfection is a pipe dream.

To succeed in business means focusing on the things that matter. Moving forward and growing means not letting inconsequential details derail you from launching your product or distracting you from your vision.

After all, a startup business is like a living organism, it will evolve over time. As long as you have the core features in a sufficient state, you will be fine.

It’s best to take your product to the market swiftly and improve it over time, rather than agonizing over non-essential features and ending up missing the mark. As LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman once said:

"If you’re not embarrassed by your first launch, you’ve launched too late."

You have to start some time, and that time isn’t when everything is perfect.

Even Apple — now one of the most successful companies in the world — started with a humble and imperfect product: The Apple I computer.

Successful entrepreneur and developer Dave Winer says this about building software: "Software is a process, it’s never finished, it’s always evolving. That’s its nature. We know our software sucks. But it’s shipping! Next time we’ll do better, but even then it will be shitty. The only software that’s perfect is one you’re dreaming about."

Suggested Reading:

·         Progress Not Perfection (medium.com)

·         Taming Perfectionism (www.defmacro.org)

·         I Want to Punch Perfection in The Face (medium.com)

·         Just Ship It (www.neiland.net)

2. Trying to Live Up to Your Competitors

It can be all too easy to compare yourself to your competitors. This process can be intimidating and discouraging, too.

Keeping up with industry news and knowing about your competition is an essential task for all business founders. But when it becomes an obsession, it can be unhealthy for your company.

Don’t waste time thinking about your competitors’ every move. Only you can be the maker of your business’s success. Analyzing the competition can be a long, dark maze in which you can easily lose yourself in.

Paul Graham — a successful entrepreneur, startup advisor and investor behind companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit — pointed out in a blog post that startups rarely fail because of its competitors.

A crowded market, according to Graham, is a signal that there’s an unfulfilled need in that market. The presence of competitors should be viewed as a healthy sign of market viability, rather than a threat.

Do your competitor analysis and keep abreast with what’s going on in your industry, but don’t let it discourage you from building your vision.

Suggested Reading

·         Stop stressing about startup competitors (startupnorth.ca)

·         Competing in a Startup World: Lessons From a CFO (insideindianabusiness.com)

3. Doing Everything Yourself

Don’t feel compelled to wear all the hats of HR, marketing, IT, finance, web development, and sales. Your energies are best channeled into a few specific and strategically crucial tasks, so make sure you get help from other people. Delegation is an important skill all entrepreneurs must master.

Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, looked back at his career as an entrepreneur and what he wished he had done differently. O’Reilly notes that one of his biggest failures was trying to do everything himself: "I believe it was Harold Geneen who once said, ‘The skill of management is to achieve your objectives through the efforts of others.’ Yet, like so many entrepreneurs, my first instinct was not to hire the team to go after a new product or market, but to do it myself, or with the team I already had."

Empower the relevant people in your business and give them the best tools you can afford to let them do their job.

4. Taking Yourself Too Seriously

With the number of business-critical decisions you will have to take, it’s easy to become a little too serious.

Serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson is probably the ultimate embodiment of a good-humored startup founder. Behind his cheeky smile, however, lays a very solid business rationale: a sense of humor and positivity tends to create a culture of openness where employees are more likely to be creative. "Granted, smiling can’t solve every problem, but it can make almost any situation a little better," Branson says.

Maintaining positive morale is crucial in the close confines of a startup.

5. Fear of Failure

There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that mistakes will happen. You will always wish you had done certain things differently.

The art of getting things right is also about getting things wrong. Nobody has ever had a perfect idea that didn’t need any work or changes — accepting this notion demonstrates a self-awareness and maturity that will be integral to the success of any young business.

Many successful entrepreneurs, from Rand Fishkin of Moz to Hiten Shah from KISSmetrics, have encountered hurdles along the way but have got up and kept going.

The key to their success was the ability to learn what had gone wrong, why it had gone wrong, and how they could stop it from happening again.

Suggested Reading

·         Why You Should Ignore Startup Failure Stats (venturebeat.com)

·         How My Start-Up Failed (alumni.stanford.edu)

And What if You Do Fail?

Try to make failure as low-cost as possible and learn from it as much as you can.

And have a plan Z. Having a backup plan if things go really wrong (which ensures you will have a roof on your head even if it means going back to Mom and Dad’s) will help you face difficult times with more objectivity and come out of it, if nothing else, at least a little wiser.

Seven Dilemmas for Entrepreneurs

Excerpt from a great blog post by Rajesh Setty | Published on: September 2nd, 2013

Here are seven dilemmas you might face as a first-time entrepreneur:

1. The lure to get back to past certainty vs the grit to persist under uncertaintyIn general, your past has a HUGE amount of certainty as you probably were working for someone and you were pretty good at what you did. On the other hand, your future as an entrepreneur has a HUGE amount of uncertainty. Any one thing that goes wrong in your entrepreneurial journey can derail your project and close that chapter. Since the combination of the “project” and “YOU executing that project” is extremely unique, there is no precedence to draw upon. Analogies will only go to a certain extent.

Your grit to persist under uncertainty has to outweigh the lure to get back to past certainty for you to continue on the journey.

 

2. The choice to stretch and do it alone vs the choice get good helpThere are times when you should stretch and grow to meet the escalating challenges of building a startup and there are times when you should aggressively reach out for good help. The former is your road to maturity as an entrepreneur and the latter is your road to maturity to build a strong ecosystem. Both – your personal growth and the growth of your ecosystem are important.

What is more important is the choices you make at every crossroad. If you make the wrong choices, you either rob yourself of much needed personal growth or you grow up as lone ranger and ultimately reach a point where your personal competence limit will limit the growth of your venture.

3. The question of sharingThe “sharing about your startup” question is an important one. On one end you can adopt a “seal your lips” attitude and on the other end you can adopt a “throw the kitchen sink” attitude and of course you can play the game anywhere in between the two.

Sharing about your startup always comes down to:

• What are you sharing – just the vision or the intricate details of how you will realize it
• With whom are you sharing – anyone and everyone or a select few
• When are you sharing – at major milestones or throughout the journey
• How are you sharing – casually without any design or in a formal fashion
• And most importantly… Why are you sharing – are you doing this purposefully or mindlessly.

Unless you revisit the question of sharing in-depth and have a strategy, you will end up having a lot of activity with limited productivity because you will waste time for both you and the person on the other end.

4. You vs ThemActually, it’s not simply “you vs them” but the slice and proportion of attention for your projects as compared to the slice and proportion of attention you set aside for their projects. When you are building your first startup, you are always hungry for any kind of resources and every connection looks like a possible piece of your startup puzzle. It is tempting to “use” anyone and everything that come across your way to further your quest. On the other hand, people that you meet are not simply cruising through their lives. They have their own projects too and rightfully so they may be seeing you as a puzzle piece to further their quests.

Rather than struggling with this, increase your capacity to move the needle for others quickly and at a low cost to you. Rather than expecting them to extend their hand to help you, reach out to them with a helping hand first.

Reciprocation is a powerful thing and the fastest way to activate that power is to proactively reach out and help others with their quests.

5. Crafting a great story vs making something that is worthy of a great storyIf you think coming up with an idea is hard, you have not experienced what it takes to execute one. Without blood and sweat, you can’t create something that is worth talking about. On the other hand, if you don’t know how to craft a great story about what you are trying to build, what you have built or how you are going about building it, you can’t get all the desired traction.

Balancing superb execution with flawless storytelling is a must to make something meaningful happen.

6. Going for a home run vs focusing on a series of singles and doublesThere are two schools of thought – one is to go for the “home run” so that you can get “backing” from serious people and the other is to go for “singles and doubles” to prove yourself first and then grow from there.

There are advantages and disadvantages of both of the approaches and you don’t have to pick one over the other as it is a “black vs white” choice. Your goal should be able to paint a grand vision while having a “staircase to heaven” execution approach. People should be able to see the vision and at the same time believe that you have a plausible execution plan.

Remember: If people don’t believe you, they rarely tell you about their disbelief. Their supporting actions after the meeting are a good indicator of how much they believe in you and your plan.

7. The signal vs the noiseThis is probably the simplest to understand but the hardest one to remember throughout your first entrepreneurial journey. There is an abundance of information about how to go from where you are to where you want to go. You will also find enough people to give you advice of all kinds. You owe it to yourself to gain enough wisdom to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and be able to do so very quickly. Your inability to distinguish between signal and noise will cost you way more than consuming that information. Why? Because every wrong turn in your journey will add incremental costs to recover and get back on track.

57 startup lessons

Blogpost by Slava Akhmechet, 13 Aug 2013:

There are already very good lists of startup lessons written by really talented, experienced people (here and here). I’d like to add another one. I learned these lessons the hard way in the past four years. If you’re starting a company, I hope you have an easier path.

People

1. If you can’t get to ramen profitability with a team of 2 – 4 within six months to a year, something’s wrong. (You can choose not to be profitable, but it must be your choice, not something forced on you by the market).
2. Split the stock between the founding team evenly.
3. Always have a vesting schedule.
4. Make most decisions by consensus, but have a single CEO whose decisions are final. Make it clear from day one.
5. Your authority as CEO is earned. You start with a non-zero baseline. It grows if you have victories and dwindles if you don’t. Don’t try to use authority you didn’t earn.
6. Morale is very real and self-perpetuating. If you work too long without victories, your investors, employees, family, and you yourself will lose faith. Work like hell not to get yourself into this position.
7. Pick the initial team very carefully. Everyone should be pleasant to work with, have at least one skill relevant to the business they’re spectacular at, be extremely effective and pragmatic. Everyone should have product sense and a shared vision for the product and the company.
8. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Pick a small set of non-negotiable rules that matter to you most and enforce them ruthlessly.
9. Fire people that are difficult, unproductive, unreliable, have no product sense, or aren’t pragmatic. Do it quickly.
10. Some friction is good. Too much friction is deadly. Fire people that cause too much friction. Good job + bad behavior == you’re fired.

Fundraising

11. If you have to give away more than 15% of the company at any given fundraising round, your company didn’t germinate correctly. It’s salvageable but not ideal.
12. If you haven’t earned people’s respect yet, fundraising on traction is an order of magnitude easier than fundraising on a story. If you have to raise on a story but don’t have the reputation, something’s wrong.
13. Treat your fundraising pitch as a minimum viable product. Get it out, then iterate after every meeting.
14. Most investor advice is very good for optimizing and scaling a working business. Listen to it.
15. Most investor advice isn’t very good for building a magical product. Nobody can help you build a magical product — that’s your job.
16. Don’t fall in love with the fundraising process. Get it done and move on.

Markets

17. The best products don’t get built in a vacuum. They win because they reach the top of a field over all other products designed to fill the same niche. Find your field and be the best. If there is no field, something’s wrong.
18. Work on a problem that has an immediately useful solution, but has enormous potential for growth. If it doesn’t augment the human condition for a huge number of people in a meaningful way, it’s not worth doing. For example, Google touches billions of lives by filling a very concrete space in people’s daily routine. It changes the way people behave and perceive their immediate physical surroundings. Shoot for building a product of this magnitude.
19. Starting with the right idea matters. Empirically, you can only pivot so far.
20. Assume the market is efficient and valuable ideas will be discovered by multiple teams nearly instantaneously.
21. Pick new ideas because they’ve been made possible by other social or technological change. Get on the train as early as possible, but make sure the technology is there to make the product be enough better that it matters.
22. If there is an old idea that didn’t work before and there is no social or technological change that can plausibly make it work now, assume it will fail. (That’s the efficient market hypothesis again. If an idea could have been brought to fruition, it would have been. It’s only worth trying again if something changed.)
23. Educating a market that doesn’t want your product is a losing battle. Stick to your ideals and vision, but respect trends. If you believe the world needs iambic pentameter poetry, sell hip hop, not sonnets.

Products

24. Product sense is everything. Learn it as quickly as you can. Being good at engineering has nothing to do with being good at product management.
25. Don’t build something that already exists. Customers won’t buy it just because it’s yours.
26. Make sure you know why users will have no choice but to switch to your product, and why they won’t be able to switch back. Don’t trust yourself — test your assumptions as much as possible.
27. Ask two questions for every product feature. Will people buy because of this feature? Will people not buy because of lack of this feature? No amount of the latter will make up for lack of the former. Don’t build features if the answer to both questions is “no”.
28. Build a product people want to buy in spite of rough edges, not because there are no rough edges. The former is pleasant and highly paid, the latter is unpleasant and takes forever.
29. Beware of chicken and egg products. Make sure your product provides immediate utility.
30. Learn the difference between people who might buy your product and people who are just commenting. Pay obsessive attention to the former. Ignore the latter.

Marketing

31. Product comes first. If people love your product, the tiniest announcements will get attention. If people don’t love your product, no amount of marketing effort will help.
32. Try to have marketing built into the product. If possible, have the YouTube effect (your users can frequently send people a link to something interesting on your platform), and Facebook effect (if your users are on the product, their friends will need to get on the product too).
33. Watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi, then do marketing that way. Pick a small set of tasks, do them consistently, and get better every day.
34. Reevaluate effectiveness on a regular basis. Cut things that don’t work, double down on things that do.
35. Don’t guess. Measure.
36. Market to your users. Getting attention from people who won’t buy your product is a waste of time and money.
37. Don’t say things if your competitors can’t say the opposite. For example, your competitors can’t say their product is slow, so saying yours is fast is sloppy marketing. On the other hand, your competitors can say their software is for Python programmers, so saying yours is for Ruby programmers is good marketing. Apple can get away with breaking this rule, you can’t.
38. Don’t use supercilious tone towards your users or competitors. It won’t help sell the product and will destroy good will.
39. Don’t be dismissive of criticism. Instead, use it to improve your product. Your most vocal critics will often turn into your biggest champions if you take their criticism seriously.

Sales

40. Sales fix everything. You can screw up everything else and get through it if your product sells well.
41. Product comes first. Selling a product everyone wants is easy and rewarding. Selling a product no one wants is an unpleasant game of numbers.
42. Be relentless about working the game of numbers while the product is between the two extremes above. Even if you don’t sell anything, you’ll learn invaluable lessons.
43. Qualify ruthlessly. Spending time with a user who’s unlikely to buy is equivalent to doing no work at all.
44. Inbound is easier than outbound. If possible, build the product in a way where customers reach out to you and ask to pay.

Development

45. Development speed is everything.
46. Minimize complexity. The simpler the product, the more likely you are to actually ship it, and the more likely you are to fix problems quickly.
47. Pick implementations that give 80% of the benefit with 20% of the work.
48. Use off the shelf components whenever possible.
49. Use development sprints. Make sure your sprints aren’t longer than one or two weeks.
50. Beware of long projects. If you can’t fit it into a sprint, don’t build it.
51. Beware of long rewrites. If you can’t fit it into a sprint, don’t do it.
52. If you must do something that doesn’t fit into a sprint, put as much structure and peer review around it as possible.
53. Working on the wrong thing for a month is equivalent to not showing up to work for a month at all.

Company administration

54. Don’t waste time picking office buildings, accountants, bookkeepers, janitors, furniture, hosted tools, payroll companies, etc. Make sure it’s good enough and move on.
55. Take the time to find a good, inexpensive lawyer. It will make a difference.

Personal well-being

56. Do everything you can not to attach your self esteem to your startup (you’ll fail, but try anyway). Do the best you can every day, then step back. Work in such a way that when the dust settles you can be proud of the choices you’ve made, regardless of the outcome.
57. Every once in a while, get away. Go hiking, visit family in another city, go dancing, play chess, tennis, anything. It will make you more effective and make the people around you happier.