Posted by Brandon at 9:39 am
David Heineimeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals in Chicago, says that planning is guessing, and for a start-up, the focus must be on today and not on tomorrow. He argues that constraints–fiscal, temporal, or otherwise–drive innovation and effective problem-solving. The most important thing, Hansson believes, is to make a dent in the universe with your company.
Posted by Brandon at 1:34 pm
Many Startups fail simply because they don’t provide value to their customers with the products/services they offer. In order to provide value, Startups should focus on developing a product/services that addresses a need.
Here is an article I found, based on The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development, which will hopefully help you develop Product-Market Fit. You can view it here.
Identify and document your assumptions
The sooner you understand and accept that you, as a entrepreneur at somewhere pre-Product Market Fit with your startup, are operating in near-chaos, where all your assumptions/hypotheses about how you gratify your users, who they are, how you will acquire and monetize them – are simply that, untested assumptions, the better off you are.
With your assumptions documented and in-hand you will:
“Get out of the Building” to validate (or invalidate) your assumptions
You must find, meet and speak with prospective customers about your product and ascertain the validity of your assumptions. This is the crux of Customer Development. Only by speaking to these people will you have any sort of understanding about “their reality” as Dan Martell likes to put it. What problems do they face? How do they solve them? What matters to them? What is a must-have for them?
As you speak to potential customers, you should:
