Startup Advice

A few of your strongest customers can teach you more than many of your weaker ones. Your strongest customers are generally your most engaged users, deriving the most value from your product. If you use the Sean Ellis question, your strongest customers will be those with the highest scores. Try to learn: what characteristics make them a better fit... See more

1. The 7 sources of power:
   
   
   1. Brand: Your unique brand identity attracts and retains a significant number of customers.
   
   
   2. Process power: You can produce something more efficiently than competitors, and the competitors can’t easily copy the method.
   
   
   3. Cornered resource: You have exclusive access to a vital resource, such as the only rights to a patent.
   
   

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Take, for example, the ambition to “make your venture-backed startup profitable”: to develop, market, and distribute a product or service that’s never existed before, in a form that’s valuable and accessible enough for large numbers of people to want to pay you for it, in sufficient quantity that your revenue consistently exceeds your costs.

If... See more

Bill Gates on Microsoft's "hard-core detractors" December 4, 1993

Choose Your Reason and Season Wisely

Some entrepreneurs build businesses for a compelling, undeniable, passion-fueled reason regardless of their venture’s timeline. Others hop on a bandwagon or try to master a trend and either sink or swim in one short season. Rather than try to compete with a herd of rats who are already decades ahead of you in an... See more