Massive Damage is the location-based mobile game company that graduated from Year One Labs last year. I’ve written about them in the past. Their first game, Please Stay Calm (a zombie apocalypse game) is killing it with a strong, dedicated user base, fun / addictive gameplay, and lots of cool stuff coming soon. Plus, the […]
Reward Customers Earlier
Customers should be rewarded earlier and more often in the relationship they establish with vendors. This is true of any type of customer and any type of business. Keurig does a nice job of providing members with 10% off purchases. That’s not a ton of money when you’re buying coffee, but it’s something. More importantly, […]
There’s No “Shitty” in MVP
Lean Startup isn’t responsible for the deluge of crappy products being released by mediocre startups. Erick Schonfeld makes that suggestion in his recent post Details Matter. I’d argue that the mainstream usage of things like Twitter and Facebook (along with social media’s ability to create incredible influencers), lower costs and barriers to entry (development is […]
Performance vs. Features — Which is More Important?
It’s fairly well understood at this point that performance is a critical aspect of building for the web. Better performance typically means better results (for whatever you’re trying to get people to do.) E-commerce transactions go up. Sign-up conversions go up. And so on. The same holds true with B2B / enterprise software. People will […]
Imagination and Practicality
Watching my two kids play, it’s striking how different they are. My younger son (4) turns everything into a make-believe game. Give him two sticks and suddenly they’re space ships. Give him a handmade car (which we built recently at the Halifax Art Gallery; it’s meant to be Jeff Gorvette from Cars 2) and he’s […]
GoInstant is Hiring Web Developers and a Senior QA Engineer
I joined GoInstant a couple months ago. It’s been a great experience so far. We’ve been signing up beta customers (big and small) primarily in the B2B SaaS space (for sales and support) and e-commerce (for assisted sales), and launching new features. 2012 is going to be an amazing, action-packed year for GoInstant. And to […]
Gaps in the Market
Startup founders often say to me, “We’re going ahead with this new startup … we’ve identified a gap in the market!” It’s a common refrain explaining why someone is starting a business, and how the startup is positioned against competition. There’s a gap in the market. The question to ask at that point is simple: […]
Always Be Pitching
Build, measure, learn. That’s the Lean Startup mantra. It sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly tough to do well. And while it’s designed to eliminate waste and provide a speedier path through product development and validation, it can still lead to silos in how we think about startup progress. It’s so easy to spend an inordinate […]
Sleeping Under Your Desk
I’ve slept under my desk before. A few times in fact. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was more comfortable than sleeping on my chair or on top of my desk (I’ve tried both.) Somehow the existence of the desk made it feel a bit safer… At one point (at one of my startups many years […]
Small Features
We often measure the “size” of a feature based on how hard it is to build (development time) and how hard it is to use (for end users.) So a “small feature” is one that’s easy to code and easy to use. But are small features really that easy to build? Coding a feature may […]
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