Opportunity Cost

By on June 14, 2013 in Main

Let me tell you two stories. Bob and Misha are both entrepreneurs. They each have startups in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space. Each started with the same initial investment of their own money. They started their companies at the same time. They both had trouble finding product/market fit, and they each spent 3 months iterating, trying [...]

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How to Pick a Customer Segment

By on May 30, 2013 in Main

In a lean startup, we like to say that it is better to pick the customer you want to serve and figure out what problems they have than to come up with a solution and then figure out who needs it. Entrepreneurs following this advice often ask me how they should decide which customer to [...]

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Ego Risk Downs DC Startup Tixelated

By on May 2, 2013 in Main

In an article in the Washington Business Journal, Philippe Chetrit speaks candidly about the factors that caused Tixelated to shut its doors. “What we ran out of first, before ideas, before money, before time, was steam,” [Chetrit] writes. “We spent two years tirelessly working, putting all our time, faith and resources into Tixelated. And what we were [...]

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The Ideal Profile of an Early Adopter

By on April 14, 2013 in Main

When you’re doing customer development, you are specifically NOT trying to understand and satisfy all of your possible users, or the total addressable market. You can deal with the whole market after you get off the ground, but you’ll never get there unless you understand and satisfy (or better yet, thrill) your early adopters. You [...]

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Interview with Elliot Susel: Tech Risk + Agile

By on February 22, 2013 in Main

An interview with Agile expert Elliot Susel about using agile to mitigate tech risk. Full Transcript Teague Hopkins: Welcome. I’m Teague Hopkins. Today I’m here with Elliot Susel, the senior project manager and primary Agile evangelist for Taxi Magic, an app that helps people book ground transportation. Elliot’s an expert on Agile has worked on [...]

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