Startup Advice

Steve Jobs: The more dependent Google is on Apple, the better October 10, 2008

In this world, there is an abundance of products, and every industry becomes far more competitive.

How can a startup survive in this environment? The answer is deceptively simple: Have good taste.

Collapse the talent stack every chance you get . As I reflect on the teams I’ve led and hundreds of start-ups I’ve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage i’ve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more

Being original is always the best strategy. We now live in a world where every day there are hundreds of companies launching or redefining themselves. Brand is no longer a secret and the process to create one has been codified

Time to Value is a metric that considers the amount of time required after starting to use a product for the user/customer/buyer to begin experiencing meaningful results.

For example, if you buy a car and drive it off the lot, the TTV value — let’s call it a TTV ratio — is basically 1:1. You buy the car, you start driving to where you want to go,... 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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Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those... See more