Startup Advice
sari and
Startup Advice
One of the best ways to introduce a sense of urgency is to create a series of forcing functions: deadlines, milestones and goals with clearly-defined objectives,” Palan writes in a Medium article about the experience. “TechCrunch Disrupt was just the forcing function we needed. It forced us to tackle many of the things we’d been postponing. We... See more
Productboard’s Path to Product-Market Fit
Building the initial team for seed stage startups at andrewchen
andrewchen.com
Simply put, an ICP must be a single market segment :a group of people for whom the value of solving a problem is roughly the same, and who can be reached in roughly the same way. “People who use Excel” is not a market segment, because it says nothing about either the value of their problem or how to reach them. “Marketers who use Excel to build... See more
Jake Fuentes • Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it
Fundraising Is A Tactic (Not A Goal)
Michael Houck • Fundraising Is A Tactic (Not A Goal)
Someone else’s success isn’t your failure.
100 Simple Truths
If you are hyper-fixated on an ideal user, you will begin to think of your product as a single player game. You’ll develop tools that enable 1:1 interactions between that ideal user and your product.
But once you start thinking of your ICP as a node in a network – with a white hot center that enables you to spread to acquire new nodes of a network –... See more
But once you start thinking of your ICP as a node in a network – with a white hot center that enables you to spread to acquire new nodes of a network –... See more
James Currier • Finding the White Hot Center
I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of ads trying to sell you the greatest new tactics to get more customers, make more sales, and earn a bazillion dollars while you sleep.
The problem with most of these ads is that they’re selling you recycled tactics with new catchy names pulling you away from your goals.
I say this because tactics without a... See more
The problem with most of these ads is that they’re selling you recycled tactics with new catchy names pulling you away from your goals.
I say this because tactics without a... See more
Superhuman
On building “Flavored” startups
Enterprise software is (mostly) not flavor-based. Sure, there are enterprise fads like the metaverse, but generally speaking, large companies only sign contracts when it feels like there is an obvious commercial advantage to doing so.
Networks are (mostly) not flavor-based. If you’re using an app because of the content created by its other users, it’s not necessarily a guarantee for success, but at least if it fails it probably won’t be because it hit a flavor-based asymptote. For instance, BeReal leveraged a unique flavor of photo sharing to build a network, but people are still using it because they like the way it helps them stay in touch with their friends. If it were just a single-player utility, it would not have scaled in the same way. Another historical example is Instagram versus Hipstamatic. Both had a cool new flavor called “photo filters,” but one had a network and the other did not. Here’s a more recent example: the network is what sets Substack stands apart from its flavor-based competition.
Tech-enabled services are not flavor-based. If you act like a tech company but really do grocery delivery, banking, education, housing, healthcare, or any other real-world service, your competition is mostly not flavor-based because starting this type of business involves a lot of cost and complexity. (Also, some, like ride hailing and delivery, are networks.) The downside is that your cost structure is probably not as great as pure tech companies, but the upside is that you have less competition.
All of these types of products can involve some flavoring to help them get off the ground. The point is not that flavoring is bad. It’s good! But it has a very specific role. Flavor provides an initial product wedge. It’s helpful for standing out initially but doesn’t provide long-term differentiation or durable advantage.