Author: Sebastian Fittko
I held this lecture and workshop as part of the E-Entrepreneurship lecture series at Zeppelin University. The Presentation in German. I will update the slide deck in english soon.
Aim of the workshop was to provide a first view on the idea of lean startup, hypothesis development and testing, and qualitative UX testing.
Rockmelt’s engagement numbers through their beta period seem to confirm their thesis:
via ben's blog
by Brad McCarty
There’s no doubt in my mind (and really shouldn’t be in anyone else’s either) that the iPhone was the single biggest innovation in mobile phones. It completely changed the way that the market was heading and there have been copycats ever since. But if you look beyond the device itself and the first OS version, the innovation stops and the perfecting begins.
This is Apple’s forte. The company typically re-asks old questions and comes up with better answers than we’ve seen in the past. It holds true for nearly everything that the company does…outAside of the iPhone. The iPhone was a complete re-thinking of how mobile devices should operate, rather than perfecting an existing recipe.
via The Next Web
Author: Diego Rodriguez
1. Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world.
It’s true! And sad how often we don’t open ourselves up to inspiration in our busy lives. You cannot create without inspiration. And you can’t get inspiration from sitting in your office cube all day long staring at a computer screen. Take your dog to the park. Meet for coffee instead of scheduling a phone call. Take your employees out for dinner. Design an iPhone app. Pitch your greatest idea to your 2-year-old. Read a book that has nothing to do with your line of work. Travel, and then use Loosecubes to book office space abroad.
2. See and hear with the mind of a child.
Have humility. Have wonder. Be willing to play. He asked, “How can you use play to get to a productive end? How can you integrate play into your normal flow?” It’s these questions that great managers ask themselves. Read about why: The future of work is play.
3. Always ask: How do we want people to feel after they use it?
“It’s the difference between thinking about beer and the experience of drinking beer,” says Rodriguez. Emphasizing the importance of the experience, he draws a corollary between Hamburger Helper and Dream Dinners, an organization that brings together working moms, providing them with a place to cook together and all the necessary ingredients. They leave with plenty of meals to freeze and thaw when the time calls. So while it’s essentially the same idea as Hamburger Helper (microwavable meals) Dream Dinners is selling a totally different experience.
“The very best stuff is designed around the experience,” he said. “Think of Disneyland, it’s highly successful because it’s a seamless experience.”
Author: Peter Hanschke
Here’s the situation: Your development team is busy creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You have people off in all directions trying to secure some funding. But do you have a Market Validation Plan? Furthermore, are you executing this plan along with all the other activities? In other words, is this an activity that you are currently performing?
As the name suggests, a Market Validation Plan (another MVP for those who like TLAs) is about reaching out to your target market to determine whether:
The market likes your product or product concept
The market is willing to buy your product when you have it ready
“Like” is a bit of a weak word. But at this stage of development, the product may simply be an idea or a very early prototype. So “like” in this context is appropriate. As the development process advances and the product and concept solidify, you will require stronger validation. A vital aspect to validating the market is to determine if the market that you are targeting is willing to pay for your product. Are prospective customers willing to part with their cash either up-front or through a subscription model?
The three steps of an MVP
Step One: First, and probably most obvious, is to talk to people or companies directly in your target market. These, in fact, are your target customers. Many companies are reluctant to do this. They feel that they may lose a sale if they don’t have the product just right. It becomes a Catch-22 between sales and development. Sales says, “The product is not ready to sell,” while Development says, “We need to validate with potential customers to make sure the product is ready.” My philosophy is that it’s better to lose some of these early sales and learn what the product needs to be than to develop the product with no validation and lose every sale!
Micro-VCs: These are emerging group of professional investors (venture capitalists, ala VCs), who are investing from a fund of other people’s money, with a particular focus on seed-stage startup opportunities. Seed-stage means promising companies that don’t yet have a revenue stream, and may not yet have a proof of concept.
Super Angels: These are angel counterparts to VCs, who traditionally only invested their own money, but now have begun raising funds from outside investors, to do more than a few deals per year. Like most angels and micro-VCs, however, they still start with relatively small sums of money, often investing only $10,000 to $50,000 in the first increment.
Series-seed round: Since the economic downturn started, neither angels nor VCs have given much attention to startups without a product and a revenue stream. That was left to the realm of friends and family. In the last year, there has been a resurgence of interest, some say a bubble, by both angels and VCs, in a pre-Series A kicker to identify promising startups with seed funding, before major equity has been given away.
Early-stage startup: Every startup is early-stage to someone. For a startup founder, this stage is when the “big idea” has become a passion for him, but he hasn’t written anything down yet. For angel investors, early-stage means there is a good business plan and maybe a prototype, but no customer revenue. For VCs, early-stage means customer revenue is less than $10M. Thus the more precise term these days for early startups is “seed stage.”
Business accelerator: This term is replacing “startup incubator,” which is a facility provided by an individual, university, or local community for any new startups to congregate for almost no cost, with the hope of learning from each other. The business accelerator model is YCombinator and TechStars, who select only the best applicants, have a demanding process, provide experienced coaching/mentoring, some seed funding, with a required exit in about six months. Incremental investment may follow.
Lean startup: This is a concept coined (and trademarked) by Eric Ries a couple of years ago, primarily for software and web applications. Lean startups operate on minimal money, an open source environment, and assume multiple iterations, with customer feedback, to get it right. A popular phrase heard in this environment is “rinse and repeat.” Today, if you do well in this mode, you will get funded if and when you need it.
Author: Cameron Chapman
Apple product launches have become the stuff of legend.
The iPad sold 300,000+ WiFi-only units on launch day. Within three days, the iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units. The iPhone 3G sold over a million units on its launch weekend.
Clearly, Steve Jobs knows how to launch a product for maximum sales. You might even wonder if you can capture a bit of his magic to kickstart your own promotions.
And I believe you can. While Apple’s reputation and sometimes-rabid fanbase obviously plays a large part in the success of their launches, there are also a number of strategies virtually any company can employ to make their own product launch a huge success:
1. Put the Focus on the People, Not the Product
Rarely do you hear Steve Jobs talking about the various features of Apple products. Standing on stage, he doesn’t push the speed of the iPhone’s processor or the screen resolution, for example. He knows most people don’t care, and the ones who do can easily find that information on Apple’s website or product literature.
Instead, he goes out of his way to emphasize how the product affects you. He talks about how annoying it is to carry both a phone and an MP3 player and how, with an iPhone, you’re condensing them down to one easy-to-carry device. It’s about simplicity, productivity, style — all things he knows people are interested in.
And it takes discipline. When you launch a product, everyone in your company is probably excited by the technical specs, and all of the different ways your product pushes the envelope, and it’s easy to assume your customer feels the same way. But they don’t. They care about their problems and how your product is going to fit into their life
So, that’s how you have to frame your marketing. Don’t just talk about what your product does or why it’s superior; show them a compelling picture of how it’s going to make their life better. That’s what gets people excited.
Author: Doug Collom
There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula that can be followed for optimizing the chances of attracting professional investment. Each company is different and faces challenges and issues that can be overcome only through creativity, perseverance and resolve.
There are, however, some elements that are so basic they cannot be ignored. Most institutional venture investors either expressly or intuitively address these requirements whenever they evaluate a business plan for a potential investment. Here are four to be especially aware of.
1. Is it a company or is it a product? – With the dramatic level of innovation that’s taking place through startups in the social media/Web 2.0/online business arena, this question is increasingly important. Implicitly, investors want to know the product development – something that can go in a variety of directions. For example, can the product be developed to include additional features and functionality that will effectively redefine the offering in the eyes of the customer? Can the product be adapted to address the needs of more than a single vertical market? Is the product so compelling that the emphasis in the business plan shifts to the customer acquisition strategy?
by Jacques Mattheij
For many would-be entrepreneurs there are two basic routes open to achieve their goals. The first is to bootstrap, to figuratively pull yourself up by your own shoelaces and slug it out in a decade (or longer) march to achievement. Possibly, along the way, funding can be obtained through business Angels or other forms of participation.
The second is to hook up with one of several start-up incubators.
The differences between these two ways of running your business are significant and it would help to be aware of those differences before making a decision. It seems as though many people view the ‘bootstrap’ route as an alternative or last resort but in my opinion both alternatives have significant pros and significant cons.
In this article I’ll try to list those pros and cons as objectively as possible. To quote a dutch soccer legend: “Every downside has an upside”, and this holds true for most of the incubator vs bootstrapping debate. Almost every ‘pro’ for an incubator translates in to a ‘con’ as well, and the same holds for the ‘pros’ of bootstrapping. Which factors weigh heavily for you is highly dependent on your situation, your personality and your comfort zone, so you will have to assign your own weights to these items in order to be able to help you in reaching a decision which route is the right one for you.
